My history as a climber

Climbing has always been sort of a sacred practice to me. The countless hours that I have spent training, the days that I have accumulated being on rockface, indoor gyms, and scouting for new, better climbing have all meddled me into not just the climber, but the person I am today. It truly is a beautiful thing as well as an art. The best thing about it to me, is that you simply cannot justify the risk. Its not something that has great importance in society, its not hiding a real purpose. Its simply about wanting to push your own personal limits, and prove to yourself and others, that you can climb that big ass rock in front of you. That's it.

In my early days, it started out as a dirtbag existence with a sole purpose to get up off the ground and onto vertical rock. There realy wasn't anything graceful or artful about the practice. I gained interest in climbing when I was about 9 years old and my friend Brad and I went on a family vacation up to Canada where we saw the massive monoliths of granite extending out of forest. Instantaneously, we had the undeniable, yet questionable urge to be on top of that. So we snuck out of our cabin on the second night and climbed up the backside on this 400 foot cliff and the sense of accomplishment was just overwhelming. We knew at that time we were destined to climb.

This experienced turned into years of training and climbing outrageous things that most would deem insane. As we were young, unemployed, and honestly quite uneducated, we pretty much just went into the woods, found suitable rocks, and we climbed them. No gear, No climbing shoes, Nothing. Sometimes climbing features that were hundreds of feet high with no gear whatsoever, a style called "free solo". These days spent just camping out for days on end in the forest with little to nothing, climbing anything we could get our hands on, really shaped the way our dirtbag existence would evolve in the next ten years.

Flash forward to the age of 13. My friend Brad unfortunately lost a bit of interest in climbing so I was mostly climbing by myself. By this time, I discovered indoor climbing, and that's where my skill absolutely skyrocketed. I went from scrambling rocks in the forest with no gear, to climbing professional made routes. Within the first 2 months, I had already advanced 5 climbing grades being able to climb a 5.11 fairly easily. This is where I realized I had a true potential to start something great and really push limits, and that's when I got into competitive climbing.

Competitive climbing truly was a glorious phase in my life. I trained at the very least 5 days a week, climbed at least 5 days a week, and competed around once a month. I really did hone in my technical and raw climbing skill in these few short years. I won several local competitions, placed high in a couple of statewide and national competitions, and have climbed with some of the best sport climbers in the world such as Kai Lightner. In just two short years I had gained a plethora of knowledge and experience.

This all ended one day when I was climbing for fun, took a fall, and shattered my right shoulder in 6 places. This spelled the end of my days as a competitive climber as I had a lengthy year long recovery from this injury. I remember being absolutely devastated. All that progress, all those long hours spent training, everything I busted my ass off to work for- all gone. To this day I still regret that accident.

Though, around the age of 16, I bought a jeep, got my license, and hit the road. My friend Gordon and I set off on a road trip out west in order to find comfort in nature and find the best climbing in America. My days as a competitive climber were over, so I turned to something even better: Mountaineering, and big wall climbing. This is where the real adventures began. We travelled across the country for 6 weeks climbing along the way Devils tower, Medicine rocks, a free solo summit of Grand Teton, Moab, and various places in Colorado. In these 6 weeks, we climbed over 22,000 of vertical feet.

Since then, I have been travelling around the eastern side of the continent climbing some of the biggest summits and walls. These include stone mountain, Seneca rocks, pilot mountain, table rock, and my current project- the east faces of grandfather mountain.

This past summer, My friend Gordon and I made another western voyage almost retracing the same steps we took two years ago. Though this time we added in Mt. Whitney, a couple of illegal, yet exhilarating climbs in Glacier national park, some odds and end crags in Yellowstone, and a new form of climbing to us called Canyoneering down in Utah.

While I continue to climb and push myself to this day, I have a much more busy life which is bullshit because it takes away from my climbing. Ive decided as soon as I finish my associates degree, I'm going to hit the road again for about two years, live in a van on the road, and finish some of my goals such as Half Dome, El Cap, Denali, and Mt. rainier. I truly cannot wait for this endeavor.

So in this blog that maybe 2 people will read, contains the basic outline of my history as a climber.