An Interview with American Climbing Journal Editor

American Climbing Journal editor Matt Samet showing love to his cockatiel, Gandalf. Photo by AAC staff Foster Denney

By Hannah Provost

Originally published in Guidebook XVIII.

The American Climbing Journal (ACJ) is a new publication of the AAC. Building on the 97-year history of The American Alpine Journal, the ACJ will be the journal of record for the most significant rock climbs each year, covering sport climbing, single-pitch trad, bouldering, and shorter multipitch climbs in sport style, as well as performance-oriented achievements such as outdoor speed climbing and link-ups. AAC members can expect to receive the very first edition of the ACJ in the fall of 2026.

Editor’s Note: The following discussion includes a lot of sidebars, as Matt Samet managed his cockatiel, Gandalf, who was flying around Samet’s home office and making a ruckus as we chatted. Sidebars to Gandalf are noted in parentheses.

Matt Samet: [Referencing the cockatiel on his hand] He’s been flinging fruit pellets at me all day. He’s such a f#@ker. Gandalf?

Hannah Provost: Is that just a plea for attention?

MS: Well, he likes to sort through and get the seeds he wants, but some of it’s just, yeah, being a bird—being a brat. Look at that: Are you a brat? Yes, you are.

HP: Haha. Well, let’s get started. Why is there a need for something like The American Climbing Journal [ACJ]—why should it exist if we have the internet? I.e., what’s the argument for your relevance, Matt?

MS: I think it’s important to have a journal of record for rock climbing, just as it’s been important to have a journal of record for alpinism, like we’ve had with The American Alpine Journal [AAJ] for 97 years now. Rock climbing in the last 40 years has become just as relevant as alpinism, I think. For years, the magazines functioned in that capacity with news departments, features, articles about areas, and profiles on climbs. The magazines were the keepers of that record. Before the internet, they were the only way you could find out what had been done.

(Hi, Gandalf. You are a pretty birdie. You’re a very pretty birdie. He’s ridiculous, isn’t he?)

So, with Drifter’s Escape, the 5.15a traditional climb that Connor Herson freed in Squamish, Connor did something that’s very trendy these days, where he waited to post about it online—some kind of punk-rock marketing, I suppose. But how deep can any Instagram post ever go?

My goal with the ACJ would be to get Connor to write a first-person story and to help fill in the details, which he and a Squamish local and climbing historian, Nat Bailey, did an incredible job of. That way, it’s preserved forever in journal form. And then we have a searchable archive like we have with [the] AAJ, and you can be like, Hey, when was Drifter’s Escape done? and get detailed answers about the facts, but also a first-person description of the experience. It’s also important to have these facts, not because names, grades, and dates matter so much, but because there is a continuum and a living history that’s still evolving, and in very unique and unpredictable ways.

It’s important to have as much documentation as you can for old, geeky history nerds like me, but also for people new to the sport.

(Gandalf, are you a pretty birdie or are you just a pain in the ass? You are a pretty birdie.)

HP: Definitely pretty birdie. Haha. Okay, well, how is the ACJ structured, and in what ways is it similar to or different from the AAJ?

MS: We have our primary features, which aren’t necessarily just the most important things that happened in 2025—they’re also the ones that lend themselves to the best storytelling.

So, for example, there’ll be [Adam] Ondra’s flash of Lexicon, the world’s first flash of an E11—basically a 5.14 death route. Seb Berthe doing the fourth ascent of the Dawn Wall— he took a boat over here twice to get it done, because he’s committed to green travel. Sasha DiGiulian and her first female ascent of the Platinum Wall, a 39-pitch 5.13d on El Cap.

Hamish McArthur, with his astonishing V17 repeats. Connor Herson, as I mentioned, doing Drifter’s Escape, perhaps the first-ever 5.15a trad pitch. Katie Lamb talking about being the first woman to do a V16 “twice,” and what that meant.

Then we get into the gallery section, with photos of [climbs] that are stunning and/or difficult across the world and country, with longer captions that offer deeper storytelling from the people who did the climbs. We’ll also have images of new areas (and newly protected old areas) that have opened (or reopened) up because of successful pushes by local climbing organizations and the Access Fund—places like The Venue at the Red, Farley Ledges in Massachusetts, and Howard Knob in North Carolina.

And then we have a section that’s new in the sense that you wouldn’t necessarily see it in the AAJ: Crag Profiles, which are basically what they sound like. This edition, we have the Ships Prow in Rocky Mountain National Park, and then Cheat Canyon, West Virginia, which is this crazy bouldering, soloing, highballing, off-the-radar gritstone area.

Then we have our American Rock section, which features regional reports on climbs significant to their area. And then World Rock, which is the international version. One idea with some of these American Rock and World Rock reports is that we also want to clue people into areas they might not have heard about—kind of like the Climbs & Expeditions section in the AAJ.

(Stop eating a $10 bill, you f#@ker.)

HP: One of my favorite things about working with Dougald [MacDonald, editor of the AAJ] and Pete [Takeda, editor of Accidents in North American Climbing] is that they’re both big personalities. You are also a big personality, and of course, so is your bird Gandalf...

MS: He’s a bigger personality than me—look at this. Now he wants scritches, or he’s going to bite me.

Matt Samet examining a boulder at his local gym. Photo by AAC staff Foster Denney.

HP: So what’s your background in editing, and what parts of your professional and climbing background are you bringing to the ACJ?

MS: I’ve been climbing since age 15. I’m 54 now, so we’re coming up on four decades of climbing. Primarily rock climbing, a little bit of alpine rock here and there. I’ve always been into performance rock climbing; at one point, like, in my teenage years and into my 20s, I was a sponsored climber.

In 2002, I started working at Climbing Magazine after getting my BA in journalism and then a master’s in English/creative writing. I’ve been involved nonstop in editing or writing about climbing since then. So, 24 years of editorial experience, working as a desk editor at Climbing, at Rock & Ice, at Alpinist. I have twice been the editor-in-chief at Climbing, though it wasn’t quite as, umm, glorious as it sounds, because at times I had no staff other than myself. Like 100-hour weeks—I wouldn’t care to do that again.

And I’ve been involved with the AAJ as a freelancer since 2022. I’ve edited a lot of outdoor books and memoirs, too—through Mountaineers Books, Di Angelo Publications, Patagonia, things like that.

HP: Do you ever get bored with climbing stories?

MS: I don’t. I did get bored of climbing stories when I was at the magazines, and the frequency was 10 to 12 issues a year, and my workload was insane. Now, with the longer timeline to put a journal together, I get to spend more time with the stories.

For me, the coolest part is helping climbers/ writers find their voice and their story. When someone’s done a cool climb, but they haven’t quite figured out how to translate that to the page so that other people can experience it with them, it’s a really cool thing to be that conduit or bridge.

When you get into the details of climbing, it becomes this really fascinating thing, because it’s an experiential sport. Being at your limit is a universal experience, right? No matter what the grade or the climb is, we all have to dig deep in the same way in order to succeed at our physical or mental limit. When you’re able to take a climb that’s also at the very cutting edge and translate that climber’s experience into something rooted in details, and that feels universal, it makes for really cool storytelling.

Have you seen the video of Adam Ondra doing Lexicon? It’s insane. He talks [in his article for the ACJ] about the two minutes before he got on the wall, being scared. Here’s the world’s best climber admitting he was scared. That’s such a beautiful thing, because we all get scared. It’s this profound and very real and very human moment we can translate into our own experience. As a dedicated and passionate climber myself, I can see myself and my love of the sport in all these stories.

HP: In the course of sharing your answers to the previous questions, you gave us some sneak peeks of some stories. But can you tell us in detail about a story that really surprised you?

MS: There’s this Korean boulderer, Sungsu Lee, who’s extremely strong. In May 2025, he repeated Burden of Dreams, the world’s first V17, in Finland. But on the successful ascent from the ground, he pulled on, cocked, and maybe bounced off the pads, but maybe not. It’s hard to tell, because he had a baggy T-shirt on. Then he got to the top, and everyone’s like, “Yay!” And he has his celebratory beer.

But you could see something in his eyes where he’s like, Eh, I don’t know if I did it or not. So he went back and repeated it. We have an interview with him that a friend of his, Brian Kim, helped translate, getting into the mindset of why Sungsu went back to do it again. The second time, he did it with his shirt off, which I thought was funny.

To me, this all showed the sense of absurdity but also the seriousness with which we interpret climbing. I mean, someone who’s not a climber, if you tried to explain to them why this guy’s T-shirt and maybe butt bouncing off these foam landing mats below this tiny rock mattered, they’d be like, “Wait, what?”

But to a climber, to the diehards who are our Club members and readers, it’s everything.

Style is everything.

HP: You’ve been an obsessed climber for decades. Is there a climb that still haunts you?

MS: Okay, there’s one I haven’t done that I bolted that I’ve been trying now for three years. It’s up in Skunk Canyon in the Flatirons here above Boulder, Colorado, where I live. It’s 21 bolts long, and my friend Brandon and I bolted it in the fall of 2022. I did the first half of it that season. And I didn’t expect the second half to be that much harder, so I thought, I’ll come back next season and finish it off.

I’ve probably been up there 100 days since then, just trying to do the second half by itself.

Last fall, I almost did it—the second pitch. It’s essentially like V10 into a difficult clip, straight into a V9, on a 35° overhanging panel on small, awkward holds. I had my hand on the jug at the end of the hardest part. And all I needed to do was bring my feet up and bring my other hand in. And I just couldn’t—my elbows were in the sky.

I was very excited to train for it this winter, but then my right pinky finger got infected, as did the tendon. I haven’t been able to train, but I hope to be able to train in the summer and go back in the fall. I mean, at age 54, I don’t know if I can, but I know that it’s now or never. I’d like to do this route because I think it would mark the culmination of everything I’ve worked toward in four decades of climbing. And also to show that as you age, you can still push yourself.

The first half is called The Alpha. The second half is called The Omega. Together, they are The Alpha and The Omega.

HP: What’s an example of a unique challenge that you had to deal with when compiling the ACJ?

MS: The biggest challenge was coming in, and there was no ACJ, no template. We’ve had to develop it from scratch, which initially was very intimidating. We didn’t even quite know what this was—and we needed to get it done by spring 2026. But obviously, you, me, Dougald, and Shane [Johnson, the Vice President of Media at the AAC] put our heads together on it. I’m very grateful for all the help that you guys have given me. And I think the ACJ is going to keep evolving, too. I’m excited to see how people respond once the Journal is out in the world.

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Elsewhere: The Problem of Human Waste Management in the Wilderness

A Profile of AAC Member Geoff Hill

By Hannah Provost

Originally published in Guidebook XVII.

It wasn’t the first time, nor would it be the last, that Geoff Hill had chopped up frozen human waste—overflowing from a 200-liter barrel. He was a graduate student at the University of British Columbia (UBC), studying the effects of climate change in the Canadian Arctic. The university had arranged a deal with the Inuit whose land he was standing on. The students could conduct research there, but they could not leave any trace, including human waste—hence the chopping.

All around him, the Arctic gleamed in shades of dense ice, the ocean a penetrating blue. Below the tundra, in a hole, out of sight, was where the research team kept the thing no one ever talks about: a frozen bucket of human waste, a.k.a. a “sh*t barrel,” as Hill often calls it. Tucked away. Put elsewhere.

And that’s the trouble. In a wilderness like the Arctic, there is no elsewhere.

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As a climber who fell in love with alpine rock, Hill has spent much time on the road driving toward his next climbing destination. He learned quickly that what he loved most was swimming through a 5.10 hand crack high on a steep, sunny wall. That lifelong thirst for high-country granite would bring him to many wild places, including Mt. Barrill in the Ruth Gorge, El Cap, the Bugaboos, and Mont Blanc’s aiguilles. An epic during an alpine climb in the Canadian Rockies in 2004 spurred him to start reading Accidents in North American Climbing, and he would continue engaging with the AAC throughout his climbing career—for the rescue benefit, community, and research grants that would, in turn, help catalyze his calling.

His passion for these alpine landscapes was boundless, but Hill’s educational path in environmental science was bringing him up against the reality of outdoor recreation’s environmental impact. He wanted to do something about it.

Hill began with driving, launching the Biodiesel Project at UBC, which added sodium hydroxide and methanol to a vat of recycled cooking oil to create an alternative to diesel. “It was fun and dangerous in the beginning,” he recalls. “The pH is crazy. Like, if it splashed in your eye, for sure it would have dissolved a hole in your eyeball.” But it worked. He would fuel up his 1993 Volkswagen Jetta with this biofuel and hit the road to Canmore, Squamish, and even Yosemite. He would later teach some Yosemite rangers how to run their own trucks on biofuel from their waste kitchen grease.

Called by the mountains, Hill toyed with becoming an ACMG Guide (the AMGA equivalent in Canada), but when he failed his exam, he realized his heart wasn’t in it and that he’d rather serve the mountain environment itself—not clients.

Funded by Canada’s Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (and an AAC Research Grant), Hill started ringing up the rangers and national park personnel he’d worked with during his previous studies and guide training. He wanted to study the alpine environment in a way that would produce practical results: What did they need help with?

Geoff Hill installs a urine-diverting conveyor-belt toilet system at Rocky Mountain National Park.

Again and again, the National Park Service spoke to the problem of human waste management. Tara Vessella, who runs the backcountry program in Rocky Mountain National Park, spoke of the ongoing struggle to find new land for pit toilets. As Hill recalls her saying, “I cannot find a spot in the forest to put a new pit toilet because every time I dig a hole in the ground, I find old sh*t.” The pit-toilet model, so ubiquitous in the United States, wasn’t sustainable for backcountry landscapes with such intense visitation numbers. So Hill, recalling his frozen-waste-chopping days, embarked on a PhD that would make everyone else’s “business” into his business.

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Humans expel feces and urine daily—what we term “waste” when it’s not well integrated into the ecosystem, especially our poop. Yet when we look at the terms more commonly used for animal poop—dung, scat, droppings, guano—the “waste” subtext is absent, revealing a bias toward thinking that human excrement is dysfunctionally related to the natural environment. But Geoff Hill believes it doesn’t have to be that way.

The science is pretty straightforward: Human urine (and all mammal urine, for that matter) is excellent plant fertilizer. Meanwhile, human poop is food for invertebrates and microorganisms—in fact, in the process of eating mammal poop, microorganisms produce rich organic matter that makes for fertile soil.

We’ve evolved to be part of our ecosystem. As Hill puts it, “[We’re] no different than a buffalo running around, dropping a dump on the prairie.” But the problem comes at scale, and when these streams mix.

As Hill relates, “[Waste] became a problem when we moved into castles from nomad culture. It’s concentrated there; it’ll breed bacteria. People got really sick. Black plague. So, got to get it out of the castle. We [then] try putting it in buckets and sloshing it out onto the street.... More black plague. So, get it in the river. But there’s no sense in having a bucket of poo and a bucket of pee if you’re just going to put it in the river, so put it in one bucket intentionally—that’s the toilet.”

Continues Hill, “And from a human health perspective, it is one of the great inventions of all human time. Add to it flushing water and a waste water-treatment plant, so you’re not polluting the river, and you have this whole paradigm of human waste going together in a single-hole toilet and getting flushed downstream to be managed elsewhere.” This paradigm, so dominant in the Western world, doesn’t transfer well to the alpine, however, where there really is no “elsewhere” and where the single-hole toilet is in fact part of the problem.

With no plumbing and waste-removal being exceedingly expensive in such remote locations, the pit toilet—burying it and forgetting about it—has become the common solution. But when human urine and excrement are stored together, like in a pit toilet, urea—the main chemical constituent in urine—will rapidly oxidize into ammonia. And ammonia is toxic: It smells bad, and the invertebrates and worms that would normally happily eat mammal waste, catalyzing its decomposition, say no thanks.

In 2000, the EPA banned the creation of new large-capacity cesspools (which include many pit-toilet designs), “because untreated sanitary waste from cesspools can enter ground water and contaminate drinking water sources.” Between the ammonia toxicity, Vessella’s testimony about running out of land for new pit toilets, and the EPA ban, it was clear that what Hill was hearing from the rangers was rooted in very tangible problems.

At first, Hill was tempted to believe that composting toilets could be the solution. But as he researched and tested the output of various models installed in national parks, he repeatedly found grim results. Because these toilets required the introduction of dry goods like wood shavings for their “composting” process, they added volume. Moreover, they weren’t actually creating compost—with the amount of excrement added daily, the process for turning the results into safe fertilizer was too slow, plus most parks had to remove the waste anyway, instead of reintroducing it back into the ecosystem, because the composted waste didn’t meet federal safety standards for fertilizer.

Hill eventually found himself in France, looking at a conveyor-belt toilet. This model took the science seriously and did one major thing differently: The conveyor belt diverted the urine so that the combination of waste products wouldn’t create ammonia, leaving the worms and nematodes to gobble up the solids. And the design was feasible without running water—after a user does their business, urine is directed to the ground via grooves in the conveyer belt, while the inclined conveyer belt carries away the solid waste thanks to a few steps on a mechanical foot pedal. Once it’s in the storage container for solids, worms happily munch away. The example toilets Hill saw in Europe barely needed attention from their technicians, even after years of use, simply because the system was functioning properly, resulting in a significantly lower volume of end product.

He quickly licensed the use of these robust, reliable, stainless steel, urine-diverting conveyor-belt toilet seats from Emmanuel Morin, the industrial designer who designed and sold them through his company Ecodomeo, and started using them in toilets across the Americas. Hill’s business, Toilet Tech, was born.

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Through Toilet Tech, Hill has outfitted over 400 remote sites, from Alaska’s Wrangell–St. Elias National Park and Preserve and Glacier Bay to Los Glaciares and Torres del Paine in Argentina and Chile, respectively. You can also find Hill’s creations at Smith Rock and Angels Landing in Zion, where desert environments also make human waste management extra tricky. In fact, Hill’s toilet technology might be the most efficient and cost-effective solution for any public-use toilet that isn’t incorporated into existing municipal sewage structures.

However, the US Forest Service, BLM, and National Park Service move slowly, and often don’t have the funds for a new system, regardless of how badly they need it or how well it works. But despite these constraints, many enterprising NPS staff have partnered with Hill to implement this new vision of waste management in the backcountry—at Mt. Rainier, Rocky Mountain, Zion, and other national parks.

Ultimately, Hill isn’t making a crapload of money on this endeavor—it’s a side quest at best. Yet Hill’s passion for eco-forward innovation and deep knowledge of composting continue to motivate his work at Toilet Tech and his salaried position as head of science at Earth Funeral, a company that specializes in an environmentally friendly alternative to burial and cremation that uses a 30-day process to transform a body into nutrient-rich soil. Hill’s love for alpine granite remains undimmed as well, and has inspired a new dream that involves figuring out how to clean up water bodies in the alpine—he envisions a world in which climbers can hike up to alpine ascents with a teacup, no filter needed.

Though most of us climbers can’t do much more than incorporate good WAG bag etiquette into our climbing ethics, it’s inspiring to know that some climbers are using their expertise to move the needle on the infrastructure that supports our outdoor recreation. Perhaps someday soon those outdated pit and composting toilets at your local area will be replaced by one with conveyor belts, all thanks to Geoff Hill.

Beyond all this, Hill’s story also helps us shift a common paradigm: What would it mean to interrogate the things that we, as a community, let disappear into the elsewhere—that we bury and don’t address? Whether it’s our excrement, the way we interact with and support (or don’t support) each other, or our relationship with fear and risk tolerance, sometimes it’s worth taking a page out of Hill’s book and uncovering the stuff put elsewhere.

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Know Before You Go—Calling for a Rescue

Originally published in Guidebook XVI

If you’re an AAC member at the Partner, Leader, Advocate, or Great Ranges Fellowship level, then you have access to the AAC’s rescue benefit. Make sure you know how to initiate a rescue—before you find yourself in that kind of situation.

Pre-Program Your Garmin inReach

We know that a lot of our members put their trust into Garmin products* as a backup for when a cell phone isn’t reliable. Here’s how to prepare your Garmin device to contact Redpoint Travel Protection in the case of an emergency away from home:

1. Add Redpoint’s operations team as one of your emergency contacts with the email [email protected].

2. Save your preset messages for emergency and nonemergency scenarios.

3. Send a test message to Redpoint to confirm that you’ve successfully set them up in your device.

4. Go to americanalpineclub.org /rescue to learn more about your rescue and medical benefit and find further details about how best to set up your Garmin device.

Other Ways to Prepare

1. Make sure your climbing/adventure partners also have AAC memberships! If not, make sure they know that you are covered in the event of a medical emergency and how best to contact Redpoint on your behalf if you are incapacitated.

2. Inform your family and loved ones that if the worst thing happens, you are covered for $15,000 in mortal remains transport through Redpoint.

3. If you’re working with a guide company, inform them of your preference for using Redpoint Travel Protection in the event of a medical emergency.

*Did you know that AAC members receive 20% off Garmin products through ExpertVoice? Sign up for your account today at expertvoice.com/group/aac to start shopping with hundreds of brands.

Guidebook XV—Member Spotlight: Rob Mahedy

The Quiet Stories That Land Can Tell

By Joe Tedino

Photo by Eric Larson.

Rob Mahedy, a 59-year-old cancer survivor from Crested Butte, Colorado, arrived in Alaska this spring with a purpose: to summit Mt. Hayes via the Washburn route. No stranger to high-altitude climbs—he’s soloed Mt. Earnslaw in New Zealand, Island Peak in Nepal, and Denali (Mt. McKinley)—Mahedy encountered a different kind of challenge this time. In Fairbanks, he heard reports of a milder winter and below-average snowpack, signs of a shifting climate he could not ignore. He adjusted course, choosing not to summit this year but to climb as far as the famed knife ridge, saving the final push for another expedition. As with his own survival, the lesson was clear: adaptation is not a sign of weakness—it’s wisdom.

“I didn’t get to the top,” Mahedy said in an interview shortly after his eight days on Mt. Hayes, “but I do consider it a successful reconnaissance climb.”

First climbed in 1941 with low-tech gear and legendary grit, the Washburn route to the Mt. Hayes summit is still considered one of Alaska’s great mountaineering achievements. Known formally as the North Ridge, the route’s reputation rests not only on its technical difficulty, but on the boldness of those who first dared to climb it. Towering 13,832 feet and rising more than 8,000 feet from the valley floor in just over two miles, Hayes is the tallest peak in the eastern Alaska Range—and one of the steepest in the country. So formidable is its Northeast Face that it wasn’t summited again until 1975, when climbers Charles R. Wilson and Steve Hackett led a four-person team across the ridge. In the American Alpine Journal that year, Wilson recalled sections so narrow and soft that “you could not put your feet side by side”—a place where progress toggled between precision and peril.

Mahedy remembers a previous climb that took him to the top of Denali—the classic West Buttress, a route that was also pioneered by Bradford Washburn. Climbing with a small group at first, he broke off and made his way up during a 21-day adventure. “I stood atop the summit alone,” he recalled. “I had a clear summit day and could see down the Susitna River to Cook Inlet and west to the Bering Sea.” He descended for six days on skis. With Hayes, he was searching for a similar moment of stillness.

To begin his Mt. Hayes climb along the Washburn route, Mahedy flew to Anchorage and then boarded the Alaska Railroad for the 12-hour trip to Fairbanks, where his local fact-finding began. A number of questions ran through Mahedy’s mind as he met up with experienced climbers in Fairbanks. “What am I up for, what am I getting myself into?” he wondered. “These people have local knowledge, so what went through my mind was, ‘What can I learn?’ ”

Mahedy was confident about withstanding the bitter cold temperatures, which can drop below −4°F with windchill factors below −22°F. Even with his experience in Alaska and Nepal, he knew to be wary of the glacier travel and potential crevasse navigation ahead of him. Weighing heavier on Mahedy was how cancer would affect his strength and stamina.

Mahedy, a muscular six-foot-four alpinist, left New Jersey for Crested Butte as a young man and quickly took to the mountains like a local. He hiked, skied, cycled, and climbed with the quiet intensity of someone who doesn’t just visit wild places but needs them and absorbs the solitude. A carpenter by trade, he’s helped restore many of the historical commercial buildings in Crested Butte’s bucolic downtown, shaping the town with the same hands that have gripped ice tools on Himalayan ridges.

But his passion lies beyond the summits—deep in the hidden recesses of the backcountry. “I seek out remote mountain ranges that are not heavily visited,” he said. “I follow bighorn, mountain goats, elk, caribou—sometimes bear and wolverine—looking for freshwater springs, and often I’ll stumble on evidence of the people who were here before us.” For Mahedy, wilderness exploration isn’t just about elevation—it’s about connection, and the quiet stories the land can tell. Whether it’s a summit or a century ride, Mahedy tends to meet the landscape on its own terms—and rarely turns back.

But his battle with aggressive bladder cancer and lung cancer since the middle of 2024 has taken its toll on his health and fitness. Last November, a tumor was removed from his abdomen along with his bladder. Doctors fashioned a replacement neobladder using material from his small intestine. Then his cancer—urothelial cell carcinoma—was found to have metastasized in his lungs, requiring weeks of chemotherapy.

Mahedy had an abnormal winter as he underwent treatment—only a few outdoor adventures close to home, including a weekend camping trip in March that enabled him to experiment with how to empty his neobladder in cold temperatures. Climbing Mt. Hayes along the Washburn route was a goal he set for himself last year, as long as his body would survive.

On May 8, after receiving good news from his doctor that immunotherapy treatments had shrunk the tumors on his lungs, Mahedy set out for Fairbanks. There, he met local Mike Hopper, who told Mahedy that he had attempted Hayes five times himself. During a 90-minute meeting over coffee with Hopper, Mahedy spread out his maps on the table and described his plan. Hopper pointed out the best routes to take and the ones to stay away from. Later, at an equipment store, Mahedy met Grant Wilson, a local climber who has explored around Mt. Hayes many times as well. He and Mahedy discussed climbing together next April when the temperatures are likely to be colder and the snow conditions more favorable for a summit attempt. Wilson explained that the lack of snow, warmer May temperatures, and the fact that Mahedy was going it alone made reaching the summit this time unpredictable.

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Rob Mahedy documents his solo spring expedition to Alaska’s Mt. Hayes—a journey of resilience, reconnection, and reconnaissance. From trains and bush planes to whiteouts and ridgelines, each snapshot marks a step in his ongoing quest to meet the wilderness, and his own limits, on their own terms.

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Mahedy assembled supplies for a 14-day mountain exploration, then met pilot Jesse Cummings at Golden Eagle Outfitters. They planned a 45-minute flight into the wilderness, but trouble arose immediately. Due to a winter with low snowfall, their aircraft’s skis couldn’t land at the intended drop-off point. They had to return to Delta Junction, transfer Mahedy’s gear to another plane equipped with low-pressure tundra tires, and then fly back to the Stonehouse drop-off.

With little snow, Mahedy had to haul his 60-pound supply sled over bare ground, which required offloading some equipment and making multiple trips to a camping spot. “Every mile turned out to be three miles—up and back and up again,” he said. Eventually, he made his way up to “this beautiful lateral moraine on this massive Hayes glacier. I finally got to the snow.”

Carrying 50 pounds on his back and pulling the sled, Mahedy spent three days getting to an elevation of 6,000 feet, which revealed a stark truth: His strength had deteriorated significantly. His decline was a direct result of inactivity over the previous six months following surgeries and chemotherapy. Despite his attempts at prior conditioning—limited backcountry skiing and mountain climbing in March and April before his Alaskan venture—he had lost ten pounds and considerable muscle mass.

“My fitness was not as good as it could have been,” he said. “But I could feel myself getting stronger as I went up—my legs, my thighs, my back. So that was encouraging. I was certainly physically weaker than I’ve been in over a decade, but I felt I was mentally stronger than ever to climb and climb safely.”

But cancer had not only taken a toll on his muscles and fitness. There were now new logistical challenges to contend with as he learned to navigate utilizing his replacement neobladder. On Mt. Hayes, Mahedy carried a lightweight cot that enabled him to recline above the ground and, when necessary, to use gravity to help the flow of urine into a urostomy bag. “I had to catheterize myself, and I figured all that out; nothing froze,” he said with a laugh. In this way, Mahedy locked down some survival beta that most alpinists never think twice about.

Over the course of his days on the mountain, two whiteout snowstorms dumped a foot of snow on the glacier, adding more uncertainty to his quest. During those hours, he read and enjoyed the sounds and sights of the wilderness. It also gave him a chance to reflect on why he does these climbs. “It’s a quest for me to find happiness,” he said. “I find joy in deep wilderness, where there is solitude, and it’s just me, the elements, and the animals in nature. I really do enjoy being high up in the mountains by myself.”

Once the snow let up, he was able to continue to an elevation of about 9,000 feet where he got a full view of the route that goes up the knife ridge to the summit. “It was very valuable to have two days of clear weather to get up on the ridge high above the glacier and see the original Washburn route,” Mahedy said. “I give them a lot of credit for doing what they did back in the 1940s.”

Mahedy feels good about his Mt. Hayes trial run and has made plans to climb with Wilson, the Fairbanks climber, next April to finish the job. “He and I will get together, perhaps with another guide or two—we’ll try to keep it a small group—and go for the full summit push,” Mahedy said.

The plan fits Mahedy’s new mindset since his cancer diagnosis. “I know I need to rely more on others and to not go it alone,” he said. As a cancer patient, Mahedy experienced an outpouring of support from family and friends, as well as from two local cancer support organizations—Gunnison Tough and Living Journeys. Both have been at his side since his diagnosis in May 2024.

“When I tell my doctors about the help that I’m getting, they are pretty amazed,” he said. “Our small community is really helping me financially, mentally, and nutritionally. I think the love is as important as the medicine.”

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Guidebook XIV—Member Spotlight

Photo courtesy of the Grunsfeld Collection.

No Mountain High Enough

The Intersections between Space Travel and High-Altitude Mountaineering

Member Spotlight: Dr. John Grunsfeld, Astronaut
By Hannah Provost

Spacewalking outside the Hubble Space Telescope, John Grunsfeld wasn’t that much closer to the stars than when he was back on the surface of Earth, but it certainly felt that way. The sensation of spacewalking, of constantly being in freefall, but orbiting Earth fast enough that it felt like weightlessness, was more of a thrill than terrifying. Looking out to the vaster universe, seeing the moon in its proximity, the giant body of the sun, stole his breath away. Grunsfeld was experiencing a sense of exploration that very few humans get to. It was deeply moving, a sensation he also got in the high glaciated ranges when he’d look around and be surrounded by crevasses and granite walls of rock and ice. Throughout his life, he couldn’t help but seek out the most inhospitable places on the planet, and even beyond.

You might think that there is nothing similar between climbing and spacewalking. But when you ask John Grunsfeld, former astronaut and NASA Chief Scientist—and an AAC member since 1996—about the similarities, the connections are potent.

The focus required of spacewalking and climbing is very much the same, Grunsfeld says. Just like you can’t perform at your best on the moves of a climb high above the ground without intense focus on the next move and the currents of balance in your body, so, too, suited up in the 300-pound spacesuit, with 4.3 pounds per square inch of oxygen, and 11 layers of protective cloth insulation, you still have to be careful not to bump the space shuttle, station, or telescope as you go about the work of repairing and updating such technology—the job of the mission in the first place. Outside the astronaut’s suit is a vacuum, and Grunsfeld is not shy about the stakes. “Humans survive seconds when vacuum-exposed,” he says. With such high risks, it’s a shame that the AAC rescue benefit doesn’t work in space.

Not only is spacewalking, like climbing, inherently dangerous, it also requires intense focus, and it can be a lot like redpointing. Grunsfeld reflects that “it’s very highly scripted. Every task that you’re going to do is laid out long before we go to space. We practice extensively.” In Grunsfeld’s three missions to the Hubble Space Telescope, his spacewalks were a race against the clock—the battery life and limited oxygen that the suit supplied versus the many highly technical tasks he had to perform to update the Hubble instruments and repair various electronic systems. It’s about flow, focus, and execution—skills and a sequence of moves that he had practiced again and again on Earth before coming to space. Similarly, tether management is critical. Body positioning, and not getting tangled in the tether, is important in order to not break something—say, kick a radiator and cause a leak that destroys Hubble and his fellow astronauts inside. But to Grunsfeld, the risk is worth it. The Hubble Space Telescope is “the world’s most significant scientific instrument and worth billions of dollars. Thousands of people are counting on that work.”

Indeed, perhaps a little more is at stake than a send or a summit.

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Grunsfeld climbing at Devil’s Lake, WI. Land of the Myaamia and Peoria people. Photo by AAC member Tom Loeff.

Growing up in Chicago, Grunsfeld’s mind first alighted on the world of science and adventure through the National Geographic magazines he devoured, and a school project that had an outsized effect. Grunsfeld’s peers were assigned to write a brief biography of people like George Washington and Babe Ruth. Rather than these more familiar figures, Grunsfeld was assigned to research the life of Enrico Fermi—a nuclear physicist who was instrumental in the Manhattan Project, the creator of the world’s first artificial nuclear reactor, and a lifelong mountaineer. Suddenly, science and the alpine seemed deeply intertwined.

Grunsfeld started climbing as a teenager, top-roping in Devil’s Lake, back when the cutting edge of gear innovation meant climbing by wrapping the rope around your waist and tying it with a bowline. Attending a NOLS trip to the Wind River Range and further expanding on his rope and survivor skills truly cemented his love of climbing in wild spaces. Throughout the years, climbing was a steady beat in his life, a resource for joy. He would climb in Lumpy Ridge, the Sierra, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, Tahquitz, Peru, Bolivia, and many other places with his wife, Carol, his daughter, and close friends like Tom Loeff, another AAC member.

If climbing was a steady beat, his fascination with space and astrophysics would be a starburst. At first, his application to become a NASA astronaut was denied, but in 1992, Grunsfeld joined the NASA Astronaut Corps. It would shape the rest of his life’s work. Between 1995 and 2009, Grunsfeld completed five space shuttle flights, three of which were to the Hubble Space Telescope—which many consider to be one of the most impactful scientific tools of modernity, because of how its 24/7 explorations of space have informed astronomy. On these missions, Grunsfeld performed eight spacewalks to service and upgrade Hubble’s instruments and infrastructure. Over the course of his career, he has also served as the Associate Administrator for Science at NASA and the Chief Scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. His own research is in the field of planetary science and the search for life beyond Earth.

Grunsfeld [left] and team on the summit of Denali (Mt. McKinley), Denali National Park, AK. Photo provided by Grunsfeld Collection.

But in 1999, even with two space missions under his belt, Grunsfeld couldn’t get the pull of high-altitude mountaineering out of his mind. He has an affinity for the adventure of exploring some of the most adverse places humans have ever explored. He was ready for his next great adventure. He wanted to climb Denali (Mt. McKinley).

Many aspects of Grunsfeld’s Denali saga are familiar. Various trips resulted in unsuccessful summit attempts: from a rope team he didn’t fully trust, to eight days at the 17,000-foot high camp with bad weather. On his 2000 attempt, he was followed around by cameras for a PBS special that never came to fruition, and he attempted an experiment about core temperatures in high-altitude terrain using NASA technology. Ultimately the expedition came back empty-handed—without a summit and with a faulty premise for their measurements of core temperature. When he returned in 2004 with a team of NASA colleagues, Grunsfeld was able to stand atop Denali and take in the jagged peaks all around him.

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The connections between climbing and space travel aren’t limited to the physical demand, focus, and calm required. Both activities are inherently dangerous, and nobody participating in either of these activities has been left unscathed. Just like how many climbers have had a friend or an acquaintance experience a significant climbing accident, Grunsfeld knew the true danger of space travel. In 2003 while Grunsfeld was still in Houston, one of the most tragic space shuttle disasters in American space history occurred. On reentry into the atmosphere, the space shuttle Columbia experienced a catastrophic failure over East Texas. According to NASA’s website, the catastrophic failure was “due to a breach that occurred during launch when falling foam from the External Tank struck the Reinforced Carbon Carbon panels on the underside of the left wing.” Grunsfeld was the field lead for crew recovery—picking up the pieces of the disaster so as to bring the bodies of the lost crew members home. It’s no wonder that in other parts of his life and in his climbing, he is deeply committed to safety and disseminating as much climbing knowledge as possible about safety concerns.

After the Columbia disaster, Grunsfeld was often asked why he would consider going back to space when the risks were so high. On his final flight to the Hubble Space Telescope in 2009, Grunsfeld reports, there was a 62% probability that he and his team would come back alive. Those aren’t the most inspiring mathematical odds. But as a crew, and for the agency NASA, it was critical to update the technology on the Hubble Space Telescope at that time. He reflects: “It may seem crazy to fly with those odds, but in fact my earlier missions were much more risky, we just didn’t know it at the time.” In comparison, risk assessment in the mountains is considerably more individualized.

Space exploration and mountaineering also have a distinct investment in monitoring the state of our natural landscapes and environment. From space, it’s a lot easier to see how fragile and small Earth is, in the grand scheme of things. It’s also easier to see the changing climate and its impact across the planet. Putting on his scientist hat, Grunsfeld tried to capture the significance of space observations to climate research, saying, “Most of what we know about our changing climate is now from space observations, because we get to see the whole Earth all the time, and you really have to look at sea level not as a local phenomenon, but [look at] how does it change over a whole Earth for a variety of different reasons.”

From sea level rise to vanishing bodies of water, Grunsfeld has seen some dramatic changes to Earth’s surface from the first time he was in space, in 1995, to his last time in 2009. With his decades of exploration in the mountains, he’s also seen glaciers and once permanent snowfields disappear. You can tell from the passion in his voice that Grunsfeld has a keen awareness of what’s at stake as the climate changes—he’s seen it happening already.

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In addition to bringing Grunsfeld to incredible places, climbing also brought him into close connection with incredible people. Grunsfeld had originally met the famous photographer, and fellow AAC member, Brad Washburn through AAC annual meetings and at Boston’s Museum of Science, where Washburn was the director for many years. Their friendship would result in two incredibly rare moments for climbing, photography, and space exploration.

Photo provided by the Grunsfeld Collection.

Washburn, the raspy-voiced photographer who was excellent at pulling off the unbelievable, was working on a documentary recreating the famous journey of the explorer Ernest Shackleton when he called up Grunsfeld for a favor. For the film crew to cross the mountainous, cold, and deeply unfriendly landscape of South Georgia just like Shackleton did in 1916 was still an incredibly unlikely feat. Luckily, Grunsfeld had what you might call “pull.”

“I was able to get space shuttle photography from a classified DOD shuttle flight which flew over South Georgia and made these huge prints for Brad,” Grunsfeld says—ultimately giving Washburn and his team the information they needed to safely traverse this rugged terrain.

But that wasn’t the end of Grunsfeld and Washburn’s story. Grunsfeld was attempting Aconcagua in 2007 when Barbara Washburn called to share the news that her husband had passed away. When Grunsfeld landed back in the States and was able to connect with Barbara on the phone, he offered to do something to honor his relationship with Washburn. His 2009 space mission was coming up, and he could take something of Washburn’s along. In the end, Grunsfeld brought Washburn’s camera from the famous Lucania expedition on his last flight to the Hubble Space Telescope. The 80-year-old camera (at the time) was used to take photographs from Hubble, including an image of the Hubble Space Telescope with Earth’s rim in the background, as seen on the back cover of this Guidebook. Washburn’s camera and the prints of the photos that Grunsfeld took remain as some of the AAC Library’s most fascinating holdings in the climbing archives.

But in fact, Grunsfeld’s (and Washburn’s) story isn’t the first to connect the vastly different fields of astrophysics and mountaineering. Lyman Spitzer, a longtime AAC member and supporter of the Club, and a prolific mountaineer, is credited for the idea that led to the Hubble Space Telescope. It almost makes Grunsfeld’s life’s work seem written in the stars.

Surprisingly, Grunsfeld reflects that there is little time for fear in space travel. Take launch, for example. The astronauts in the space shuttle are sitting on “four and half million pounds of explosive fuel,” says Grunsfeld, ticking down the seconds until they are launched into space. The launch mechanics are so powerful that within eight and a half minutes, the shuttle is traveling 17,500 miles per hour, orbiting Earth. Grunsfeld recalls that on his first mission, sitting in the flight deck of space shuttle Endeavor, at 30 seconds to launch, he heard the final instructions over the intercom: Close your visor, turn your oxygen on, and have a good flight. Was this the point he was supposed to get scared? There was no turning back, no getting off, no stopping the ride. So he didn’t let fear in. There was no use for it. And at the same time, there was so much awe that despite the risk, he felt deeply alive. It was a lot like the calm that comes with executing in the face of danger when climbing or in the mountains. In the face of danger, utter clarity.

With the focus and body awareness and rehearsal, the firsthand witnessing of our changing climate and its impacts, the risks involved and the utter sense of awe, space-walking and climbing are not as different as they might at first seem. And for Grunsfeld, one adventure could fuel another. In his downtime floating within Hubble, one of his favorite activities used to be looking back down on Earth, using a camera with a long lens to zoom in on various alpine regions—and scout the next mountain to climb.

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Drowning at Altitude: A Nepal Rescue Story

In this episode, we talk to AAC member, alpinist, and ski mountaineer, Maddie Miller, about a Nepal trip gone wrong–what she hoped was going to be a level-up in her climbing career, turned into a medical evacuation. At 16,200 feet, Maddie started experiencing signs of the extremely life-threatening medical condition HAPE, or High Altitude Pulmonary Edema. Thankfully, she had the ability to call for a helicopter, and get emergency care–all covered by her AAC rescue benefit and medical expense coverage. We dive into her experience with the freaky feeling of gurgling lungs, what other people don’t realize about this extremely deadly medical diagnosis, and what it means to feel as fit as possible but still affected by altitude. 

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Episode Resources

Learn More about Maddie Miller

Learn More about AAC Rescue Benefit

Discover Melissa Arnot Reid’s Book

Ice Climbing Competition: A Team Sport

Catalina Shirley during finals at Longmont. PC: Sierra McGivney

Photos and Story by Sierra McGivney

The intense winter sun bore down on Longmont's Ice Climbing World Cup stage in Colorado on February 22-23. For the first time since 2019, the United States hosted a UIAA Ice Climbing World Cup. The USA Ice Climbing athletes showed off figure fours and nines (similar to a figure four, but the climber wraps their leg over the same arm instead of the opposite), epic dynos into hanging hoops, and celebrated wins with views of Long's Peak in the background.

The warm weather led to thin ice, and an ice pick punctured a pipe, destroying one of the speed climbing walls Saturday night during the speed finals. As a result the format was changed from duel climbing to single. USA Ice climbing athletes Sam Serra and Catalina Shirley podiumed in speed despite the challenging ice conditions. Shirley took silver in speed with a time of 13.64.

Serra won his first-ever UIAA Ice climbing medal at Longmont, taking the bronze with a time of 9.07. Making the podium in speed was a "soft" goal for Serra in the Longmont World Cup.

"It's just been a steady progress all season," said Serra.

Lindsay Levine at Longmont. PC: Sierra McGivney

During the France World Cup, which was held from January 29 through February 1, Serra's left hand slipped, and he stabbed his thigh with his ice tool, needing three stitches. The past three weeks leading up to Longmont he was mainly focused on recovering in time for the competition.

Thanks to the Longmont Climbing Collective building a competition wall for the World Cup, the USA Ice Climbing team has been able to train all season in Longmont. Serra ran a weekly speed training night every Monday.

"I think everyone saw a lot of progress, and it's really rewarding to see that pay off, and everyone is performing super well this weekend and in the past World Cups," said Serra.

Donned in glitter, Sam Castro, Joann Dyer, Jessica Perez, and Alex Rudow bring their own personal style to competing.

"Glitter really makes me send hard," said Jessica Perez with a laugh. This is her third season on the USA Ice Climbing Team. She saw athletes competing in the World Cup in Denver in 2019 and dove into competition ice climbing headfirst.

Although doused in the same glitter, the four athletes had different goals for their seasons.

Roz Reynolds at Longmont. PC: Sierra McGivney

"It was my first season, so honestly, my only goal was not having a false start for speed and not stabbing myself, which I was very happy about," said Sam Castro. She achieved her goals this season.

"My goal is to enjoy the process and see how far I can test and push my limits and climb with confidence," said Jessica Perez.

Each athlete competes individually on the wall, but the USA Ice Climbing team is so tight-knit and supportive that it's almost a team sport.

"[Ice climbing competition] is so supportive, too, and it's like such a niche sport, I think. And it's growing. It's cool to be a part of a growing community and see the youth get really into it," said Joann Dyer.

Alex Rudow said, "I try to be supportive. The community is already so supportive. I have mainly competed in team sports, and this is probably my first individual sport. But despite that, you spend like nine times out of ten cheering on your teammates. It's awesome to see just how supportive everyone is." This is Rudow's first season on the ice team.

In the competitive world, mindset is everything. Seasoned competitor Ryan McCauley made a big mindset change this season. She went into the season wanting to be more playful and present on the wall.

Ryan McCauley at Longmont. PC: Sierra McGivney

"I think that in the past, I've tended to be really rigid and structured with my training. I've told myself this narrative: I just want to train really hard and get really strong, and then it can be really playful during competition season. And then I get there, and I'm like, why doesn't this feel playful? It's because I've related to it for months in a militant way," said McCauley.

Her main goal for the Ouray competition was to be more present, and it paid off when she podiumed and took third place. For logistical and financial reasons, McCauley decided to focus on the three competitions in North America: Ouray, Longmont, and Edmonton. At Longmont, McCauley fell early in qualifiers. She sees it as a testament to the finickiness of dry tooling, saying, "shit can happen."

"I can't control the outcomes, so I might as well savor the parts of the process that are meaningful," said McCauley.

Keenan Griscom During Finals at Longmont. PC: Sierra McGivney

On Sunday, energy was high through the semi-finals and finals. The USA Ice Climbing Team put their all into the semi-finals. Athletes and ice tools flew through the air while the crowd cheered. USA Ice Climbing athlete Catalina Shirley took center stage, topping the semi-final route. Keenan Griscom made it to the rodeo board, a semi-horizontal rocking piece of plywood with tiny holds, and moved on to finals. The competition was fierce on the wall, with all eyes on Shirley and Griscom during finals. Shirley placed fourth, and Griscom placed seventh.

The USA Ice Climbing Team operates as a team, supporting and cheering each other on through wins and losses. Ice climbing competitions can be unpredictable, but the team is steadfast.

Catalina Shirley. PC: Sierra McGivney

Wilson Whitley. PC: Sierra McGivney

Keenan Griscom. PC: Sierra McGivney

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Highlights from the 24/25 USA Ice Climbing Season:

The USA Ice Climbing Team Adult Team highlights:

Speed gold in Cheongsong, Korea - Catalina Shirley

Lead bronze and speed silver in Champagny-en-Vanoise, France - Catalina Shirley

Speed bronze in Longmont, USA - Sam Serra

Speed silver in Longmont, USA - Catalina Shirley

Lead silver in Edmonton, CA - Catalina Shirley

Overall World Tour speed silver medal - Catalina Shirley

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Adult North American Lead Championship highlights:

Gold—Keenan Griscom & Catalina Shirley

Silver—Noah Bergman & Ryan McCauley

Bronze—Tyler Howe & Lindsay Levine

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USA Youth Team highlights:

U16 lead and speed silver World Championship medals - Mathias Olsen

U16 lead silver and speed bronze World Championship medals - Nina Mankouski

U18 lead gold World Championship medal - Zoe Schiffer

U18 lead silver World Championship medal - Shelby Holmes

U20 lead bronze World Championship medal - Maple Damien

U16 lead gold Continental Cup in Sunderland, UK - Conner Bailey

The USA Youth Team finished second at the Ouray, USA World Championships in team rankings

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The USA Ice Climbing Team is supported by

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CONNECT: Remembering Charlie Through an Epic on Mt. Whitney

In this episode, we’re sitting down with AAC member David Corvi to talk about his Live Your Dream grant experience—a beautiful day that turned into a 24 hour epic on Mt. Whitney in September of 2024. Getting off route, climbing through pockets of ice and show, and getting lost on the descent were only some of what the team experienced that day.

Because there is another layer of complexity to this story, a mental load that added a unique weight to that experience. David’s trip to Whitney was also in memory of his stillborn son, Charlie. In the episode, David shares about his family’s experience with infant and child loss, how climbing and other forms of outdoor adventures have helped him process his grief and continue to parent Charlie even though he is gone, and likewise he reflects on how physical challenges, like half marathons and the Whitney trip, are a way to honor the life Charlie won’t ever get to experience. Dive into this episode to hear about your classic alpine day gone wrong, and just one way that grief and loss can be processed in the mountains.

David and his wife with Charlie.

David and his Whitney expedition partners Dan and Brian.

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Episode Resources:

Apply to the Live Your Dream Grant (Opening March 1st, 2025)

Charles Martin Corvi Fund Website

How to Buy the Book: “Dear Charlie...Letters to My Son: A Father's Journey of Loss, Grief, and Remembrance”

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzalez

Resources On Infant or Child Loss:

Healthy Birthday (Stillbirth Prevention Advocates)

Star Legacy Foundation

Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep

Keenan Griscom is Doing Everything Your Parents Tell You Not To Do

Keenan Griscom giving it his all during the 2023/2024 competition season. Photo courtesy of the UIAA

Every year, ice climbers flock to the Ouray Ice Festival to test their skills on the human made ice flows in the park. A select few test their skills on the ice climbing competition wall. Routes are created that include ice, rock, and plywood in the Scottish Gullies section of the ice park. 

The American Alpine Club sat down with USA ice climbing competitor Keenan Griscom. Griscom was rocking a North Face leopard-print 1996 retro Nuptse puffer and Y2K gray wrap-around sunglasses, as chill as the ice around us. We chatted about growing up competing in ice climbing competitions, his new link up Tommy's X (5.14b) in Clear Creek Canyon's Nomad’s Cave, and his experimental competition headspace. The experiment succeeded clearly, since Griscom took home the gold in the Ouray men's lead finals the next day. 

AAC: You were the youngest American to win the Ouray Elite Mixed Climbing Competition at age 16. When did you start climbing? How did you get into competitive ice climbing?

Keenan Griscom: My dad actually started me ice climbing when I was four or five here in Ouray. So I've had tools for a long time. And then through Marcus Garcia, [I] found the competition scene and got hooked. I was doing rock comps, and the community in the ice climbing comps was just, so, so good and supportive and friendly, so, as someone who's already into competing, starting the ice comps is just like, oh, this is it. This is a cool spot to be in.

AAC: What was it like competing at such a young age?

KG: I don't know, I've been competing since I was nine. It was somewhat second nature. I've always wanted to give it [my] all in the comps. And Ouray was really special because when I started, there weren't any age categories. It was just the open format, and anyone could sign up. So if you were in, you're competing with everyone. My first two seasons, I didn't place particularly well. But it was so cool to be competing with people like Will Gadd and Ryan Vachon and all these epic mixed-climbers and alpinists who I looked up to. 

AAC: What drew you to continue doing competition ice climbing while you fell away from competition bouldering and rock climbing? 

KG: I stopped competing in rock comps mainly because the scene isn't as welcoming. There's a lot more toxic competitive nature there, and a lot of people get really worked up and will take other people down to get a better result. There's not really any of that in the ice climbing crew. Ice climbing comps are really fun. I'm going to stick with that. But I've been rock climbing outside nonstop. 

AAC: On that note, I noticed you put up an alternative finish to Tommy's Hard Route (5.13d)—Tommy's X (5.14b). What is the relationship between route development and ice climbing? How do those two things relate, if at all for you?

KG: They don't relate a ton since I haven't really done much development for ice or mixed. I've gotten a lot of help from mentors like Marcus, who I met through ice climbing, to teach me development ethics. That route, specifically, it's in a cave near my house, and there's a lot of link ups. I didn't put in any new bolts [for Tommy's X] it was just a new line that hadn't been done yet.

AAC: And what inspired you to do that?

KG: Tommy's Hard Route (5.13d) is an old school natural line in a cave that's almost all manufactured. There is this really, really big dead point crux that I always thought was super, super interesting. Then it's over. You do this really gnarly dead point, and it's jugs to the chains. Which is nice, but more sustained climbing is more my style. There's this other route called Predator X (5.13a/b) that comes in from the left and finishes basically directly above that dead point. And one day, I was wondering if I could link those up, and then it'd be like a perfectly straight line of bolts through the wall. Yeah, it ended up being a really interesting crux sequence after the initial crux. 

AAC: That's awesome. You also boulder, can you tell me a little bit more about that?

KG: Yeah, I grew up almost exclusively sport climbing, and then started to do a little bit of bouldering through friends and kind of got hooked on it, because it’s a little bit easier. You can go out and solo sesh a lot of stuff in Clear Creek Canyon near the crib. I took that and ran with it. I've been doing more bouldering than sport lately, and that's currently what I'm probably most excited about, pushing bouldering grades.

AAC: Do you have a preference between sport climbing, bouldering, ice climbing, ice climbing competition, and mixed climbing?

Keenan Griscom is all about staying chill, captured during the 2023/2024 competition season.

KG: Really hard to say. I might put bouldering at the top, but then it's a massive tie for second. Ice climbing comps are unbeatable. There's no other scene that's as fun and welcoming, and the movement is so dynamic. You just don't get the same movement on rock. It's a really fun change of pace. With actual ice and mixed I'd really like to get into doing some more big things and exploratory multi-pitch in [Rocky Mountain National Park]. But I've definitely been more focused on competition and rock climbing lately.

AAC: What does training look like for you?

KG: It depends. This year has been more casual—been working on a lot of power, strength, and technique. Last season was a pretty full-on training block. I basically trained from August through December, like super structured for the World Cup tour, and it ended up panning out really well.

AAC: It definitely did, you received the overall World Cup lead medal in silver, last year. What about competition ice climbing sparks inspiration or joy for you?

KG: Initially, it's like basically everything your parents tell you not to do. You get to jump around with blades on your feet and in your hands and take massive falls in the air. Honestly, on the World Cup scene, it's all a massive party. Everyone's a big family. I find the movement really fun. It's really physical. So you get to actively try hard while you're doing it, which is a good feeling. Honestly, it's the community, like the scene is so fun. That's a large part of why I'm here.

AAC: Who do you think you are as an ice climbing competitor? 

KG: I'd like to say Keenan is just a climber who wants to do it all. In ice climbing comps, I'd like to be seen as someone who's really focused on doing as well as they can. But I've done some coaching in Boulder at the Ice Coop, and for me to, like, not feel the stress of the competition, I tend to try and help everyone; making sure everyone else is doing good helps me a lot with not worrying about how it's gonna go. So I guess I would like to be seen as someone who's a wealth of knowledge to come and get help from. But at the same time, I'll put my headphones in and lock in for the warm-ups.

AAC: Who are you outside of climbing?

KG: Outside of climbing, I'm trying to be an artist. I'm wrapping up my Arts Associate right now. I'm a little unsure of what I'm doing afterwards, but I'll figure it out.

AAC: What mediums do you work in?

KG: Fashion and then dry mediums, so, charcoal and graphite.

AAC: What do you hope to get out of this 2025 season?

KG: I'm really excited to go into it with a casual mental space. I'm trying to just put it all on the line during the competitions. I haven't done as much training and prep for this season. I'm trying to play around with different approaches to the competition headspace. Instead of treating it as a competition, I want to treat it as redpointing a project. The goal is not to get a certain placement, or even do well in the comp. The goal is to top the routes. At a world cup level that almost always means winning. It's not like I want to win to top the route, I just want to top. Topping is the main objective. 

AAC: What has been the most pivotal moment in your climbing career?

KG: In competition climbing, it was definitely my last season as a U16. I won that year's Youth World Cup. The whole prep I was focused on winning, and when I won, it wasn’t very fulfilling. I felt pretty hollow. That drastically changed how I approached my whole preparation and training. I think that was a massively positive moment. 

[For] rock climbing it's really hard to say. I think potentially [when I stopped] competition rock climbing, because I grew up doing camping trips to Indian Creek and Vedauwoo and following leads all the time. And taking a step away from the competition rock was really nice and refreshing to go back to the routes and try really hard on rock without any external things happening. 

AAC: If you could be any climb, what would it be and why?

KG: I have two lines in mind. Biographie (9a+/515+) in Céüse, France, because it is the most beautifully perfect chunk of rock I have ever seen. It just looks so incredible—proper dream line. Or Off the Wagon (V14), that V14 in Switzerland. The beta on that thing is the definition of swagger. It's so cool.

AAC: Could you elaborate on that, and leave us with some climbing beta humming around in our heads?

KG: Yeah, the history of that boulder is pretty sweet. Dave Graham and Chris Sharma tried it forever ago, and it's this massive right hand dead point for this first move and then you do a campus row sequence. And that's it. It's a two move V14. It's smash, hold, campus, done. It's in this beautiful little meadow valley in Switzerland, and you start on a wagon. It's a really cool chunk of rock. It's like a perfectly flat 45 degree panel.

Just one podium among many. Keenan Griscom celebrating his bronze medal in the 2024 Champagny Continental Open. Photo courtesy of the UIAA

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For the Ouray Competition men's results, click here, and for the women's results, click here. The Ice Climbing competition scene returns to Colorado for the World Cup in Longmont on Feb. 22-23. Watch Team USA compete this February, or learn more about getting involved here. 

Want more ice climbing content? Check out A Little Extra Spice: Stories from the World of Competition Ice Climbing

Celebrating AAC Member Bill Atkinson's 100th Birthday

Provided by Holley Atkinson.

Climbing is a powerful force that connects us. Even when climbing takes a backseat in our lives, we are still connected to the people we have partnered with, the places we have climbed, and the impact we have had.

Today, we celebrate the 100th birthday of one of our members, Bill Atkinson. Bill started climbing in the Shawangunks in the late 50's and joined the American Alpine Club in 1978. He was the New England Section Chair and was awarded the Angelo Heilprin Citation Award in 2006 for exemplary service to the Club. He is one of our oldest members and has been a member of the American Alpine Club for 47 years.

Happiest centennial to you, Bill!

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Below, you'll find reflections from climbers celebrating Bill's incredible impact and character:

PC: Chris Vultaggio

Bill, your presence in our climbing world has been productive and prolific—and your life has been the same! Your postings have always been inspiring. Thanks for doing all of those. Some segments should be required before being granted membership in the AAC!

We never climbed together – except at the Annual AAC New England Section and some Annual Dinners. That is to say, climbing up to the bar. I'm fifteen years younger, so you were out there ahead of me. But I have you beat on one score! I climbed Mt. Sir Donald via the same route you took, but back in 1962. I was also in the Bugaboos that summer.

You'll be getting a lot of these postings, so I'll keep this short. Thanks again for all you've done for our world. Happy Century! Hang around for another 15 so you can help me celebrate mine.

–Jed Williamson

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Happy Birthday, Bill,

You are one very special person, a thoughtful, helpful climber with such an important history of climbing in New England. I respect you and your contributions to the AAC and climbing. Hats off to you, young man. I salute you for your many contributions.

Thank you, and special wishes every day.

Happy Birthday,

Bruce Franks

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Rick Merrit celebrates Bill's Birthday by remembering the times they connected through climbing…

Bill was a great section leader as I became more involved in the AAC. He worked hard to recruit and recognize new members through our section's formal dinners. I remember climbing with him on White Horse Ledge in North Conway when he was in his 80s. I also remember hiking with Bill and his friend Dee Molinar when the ABD was at Smith Rock.

Warm regards to Bill,

Rick Merritt

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I mainly know Bill through the AAC, specifically the New England chapter, which Bill energetically chaired for many years. We all looked forward to the wonderful black tie annual dinners held in the old Tufts mansion in Weston, MA, that he so carefully organized.

I always enjoyed listening to Bill's extraordinary life experiences, like when he served as a radar navigator in a B52 in the Pacific during WWII, or marveling at his many fascinating inventions and creations, like the beautiful chess boards he crafted and, of course, his amazing climbing career. Bill remained extremely active as a climber long after most of his peers retired, and I remember he climbed the Black Dike when he was 80, I think! That may have been the oldest ascent ever!

I've always appreciated Bill's kind, soft-spoken character and the interest he always showed in others. Bill is a true Renaissance man, and I feel fortunate to know him.

Happy 100th birthday, Bill!

What a milestone!

–Mark Richey

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Guidebook XII—Member Spotlight

Josh Pollock “smedging” his way up Con Cuidado y Comunidad (5.6) at the Narrow Gauge Slabs. Land of the Ute and Cheyenne peoples. AAC Graphic Designer Foster Denney

Con Cuidado Y Communidad

By Sierra McGivney

Driving towards Highway 285, we pass strips of red rock cutting through the foothills of Morrison in Colorado’s Front Range, chasing the promise of new climbs. In the front seat, Josh Pollock describes the Narrow Gauge Slab, a new crag he has been developing in Jefferson County.

Pollock is the type of person who points out the ecology of the world around him. As the car weaves along the mid-elevation Ponderosa Pine forest, Pollock describes how we’ll see cute pin cushion cacti, black-chinned or broad-tailed hummingbirds, and Douglas-fir tussock moth caterpillars.

We pull into a three-level parking lot about seven miles down the Pine Valley Ranch Road. With no cell service and heavy packs, we set off along an old railroad trail toward the crag. Not even ten minutes into our walk, Pollock turns off, and we are greeted by a Jeffco trail crew building switchbacks to the crag.

As we approach the base of the Narrow Gauge Slab, Pollock picks up the dry soil. Fine granular rocks sit in the palm of his hand as he describes how this is the soil’s natural state because of Colorado’s alpine desert climate.

Photo by Anne Ludolph.

Unsurprisingly, Pollock was a high school teacher at the Rocky Mountain School of Expeditionary Learning in a past life; now, he is a freelance tutor and executive function coach. A Golden local and climbing developer, he has been working to develop the Narrow Gauge Slab since 2021.

Pollock first became interested in route development in 2011. He wasn’t climbing much then, instead focusing on raising his second child. Flipping through a climbing magazine one day, an article about route development caught his eye.

Between naps, diaper changes, and bottle-feeding cycles, he would go for quick trail runs in the foothills by his house in Golden. During his runs, Pollock noticed cliffs that weren’t in guidebooks or on Mountain Project. He began imagining how future climbers might experience and enjoy the rock.

“The routes I can produce for the community are moderate and adventurous but accessible,” said Pollock.

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Climbing in Clear Creek is a high-volume affair. Jeffco Open Space (JCOS), the land management department for Jefferson Country, started to recognize this during the five years from 2008 to 2013 when climbing in the area exploded. With such a high volume of all kinds of outdoor enthusiasts recreating in Jefferson County, including climbers, adverse impacts on the land followed, including increased erosion and propagation of noxious weeds. Previously, Jeffco Open Space took a more hands-off approach when it came to climbing. However, because their mission is to protect and preserve open space and parkland, they concluded the increased popularity of climbing in the area warranted more active management.

While Jeffco Open Space had a few climbers on staff, they quickly realized they were not qualified to make decisions surrounding fixed hardware and route development. They turned to the local climbing community.

In 2015, Pollock began developing routes at Tiers of Zion, a wooded crag overlooking Clear Creek Canyon in Golden. In 2016, Jeffco Open Space established the Fixed Hardware Review Committee (FHRC) with Pollock as one of its seven advisors—now eight. The FHRC provides expert analysis to Jeffco staff members regarding applications for installing or replacing fixed hardware in the area (including slacklining). As a formal collaborative effort between local climbers, route developers, and Jeffco land managers, it is one of the first of its kind in the country.

Eric Krause, the Visitor Relations Program Manager and Park Ranger with Jeffco Open Space, deals with literal and figurative fires weekly and is responsible for all climbing management guidelines. He sits in on meetings and speaks for Jeffco.

“I think really good communication between a landowner or land manager and the climbing community is imperative,” said Krause.

Since 2015, Jeffco Open Space has invested more than 1.5 million dollars to improve the access and sustainability of existing crags by stabilizing eroding base areas, building durable and designated access trails, supplying stainless steel hardware to replace aging bolts, supplying portable toilet bags to reduce human waste at crags, and rehabilitating unsustainable areas.

If new routes for an existing crag are submitted to the FHRC via their online form, it’s already an impacted area, so it’s more likely to be approved. During their quarterly meeting, each member of the FHRC reviews the submission and discusses whether the new route(s) is a worthwhile addition to climbing in Jefferson County. A route that might be denied is within the 5.7-5.10 range at a crag with limited parking and heavy trail erosion, because routes in that range tend to attract the highest volume of climbers.

“We don’t really want to be adding more sites that are just going to degrade, and we’d rather get in there ahead of time and build it out to where it’s sustainable to begin with,” said Krause.

If a new crag is submitted, this triggers an entirely different internal review process called the “New Crag Evaluation Criteria (NCEC),” overseen by Jeffco Open Space. Every individual on the JCOS internal climb- ing committee (comprised of staff from the Park Ranger, Trails, Natural Resources, Planning, Park Services, and Visitor Relations teams) independently rates the new crag based on various categories: potential access trails, environmental considerations, parking, traffic, community input, organizational capacity, visitor experience, and sanitation management. They then average all of the scores for the submitted crag, and its viability is discussed.

To combat the ever-growing need for accessible places for new climbers, families, guided parties, and folks looking for high-quality moderate climbing, Jeffco asked the FHRC and others if they could find a beginner-friendly new crag in the southern part of the county, where there are fewer climbing areas.

According to Krause, Pollock took this request to heart and started looking all over the county for a new crag. He struggled to find a place with adequate parking, access to bathrooms, and the ability to build new trails on stable ground. “Threading that needle is hard, and it took several years and maybe half a dozen possible locations to find one that worked,” said Pollock.

An open space staffer suggested he look at the area that is now the Narrow Gauge Slab.

When Pollock first walked along the base of what would become a major project in his life, the Narrow Gauge Slab, he felt compelled by the rock’s position, composure, and aesthetic. He began imagining routes to climb. The crack features broke the wall up into clean-looking panels.

For Pollock, unlocking the potential of a crag is an unanswered question until the last moment.

“There’s a great drama to it,” said Pollock.

He proposed the crag in 2021. The Narrow Gauge Slab would become the first crag approved under the NCEC framework.

“I think what I’m most excited about is that this whole endeavor has been collaborative and cooperative with Jeffco Open Space from the get-go,” said Pollock.

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Jeffco is constantly playing catch up with erosion damage in an arid climate like the Front Range. At the Narrow Gauge Slab, Jeffco had the opportunity to identify and implement adequate infrastructure for the area before route development began.

“In some ways [it is a] first of its kind experiment, with building a sustainable access trail and stabilizing belay pads on the base area and things like that before lots of user traffic shows up,” said Pollock. The Boulder Climbing Community, the AAC Denver Chapter, and Jeffco collaborated to stabilize and build out the area before the crag opened to the public.

According to Pollock, the crag does not have a theme. Since this crag has many developers, and sometimes multiple developers to any given climb, the route names have personal meaning to the developers or the circumstances of the route. But when you look closely, a kaleidoscope of meaning comes into view: collaboration.

His primary objective with the Narrow Gauge Slab was to develop a moderate and accessible crag, but the project evolved into something much more: mentoring climbers on route development. He reached out to different LCOs, such as Cruxing in Color, Brown Girls Climb Colorado, Escala, Latino Outdoors, and the AAC Denver Chapter, inviting members to participate in a mentorship program based on route development. In total, there are 16 mentees and five mentors, plus Pollock. Despite uncovering the crag, Pollock has barely put any hardware in.

Route development is a niche aspect of climbing that requires extensive resources and knowledge. Pollock wanted to invite new groups of climbers who might not consider themselves route developers but were interested in learning. He is pleased that the mentees have learned from this project and are developing new routes near the Front Range. Some mentees have been swallowed whole by the development bug. Lily Toyokura Hill is so enthused that she was recently appointed to the nearby Staunton Fixed Hardware Review Committee.

Photo by Anne Ludolph.

Hill and Ali Arfeen collaborated on Bonsai, a 5.7 climb featuring a tiny tree sticking out of the rock. Hill, who is shorter, and Arfeen, who is taller, would take Pollock’s kid’s sidewalk chalk and mark key holds they could reach, helping to determine where they would place bolts when they were developing the route’s first pitch.

To the left is Con Cuidado y Comunidad (With Care and Community), a three-pitch 5.6 put up by (P1) Sharon Yun and AAC employee Xavier Bravo, and (P2+3) Maureen Fitzpatrick and Cara Hubbell.

While Pollock racks up to lead Con Cuidado y Comunidad, Douglas-fir caterpillars inter- rupt our conversation. Pollock stops, pointing out the fuzzy horned creature on his bag. He describes how their population erupts every seven to ten years. His father was a biology teacher, and both of his children are fascinated by ecology.

On top of Con Cuidado y Comunidad, we picnic overlooking the epic landscape of the South Platte. Pollock explains how climbing at the Narrow Gauge Slab requires what he calls “smedging,” a mix of smearing and edging.

Climbs are littered with minuscule footholds and often require both smearing and edging to climb. Pollock prefers this type of movement: slow and thoughtful.

The last bolt for the Narrow Gauge Slab was drilled on August 19, just in time for opening day on the 24th. Pollock feels immense pride in the crag.

“It is really satisfying to share the crag with folks and give to the community,” said Pollock.

On these south-facing slabs, there are thirteen routes ranging from 5.4 to 5.9+, spread across the crag’s granite rock. You can listen to the babble of the South Platte River as you climb, breathing in the smell of fresh pine needles as you stand up on a tiny food hold. Don’t forget to look out for the Douglas-fir caterpillars inching their way across the rock as you clip the bolts.

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CONNECT: The Next Generation of Crag Developers

The mentorship gap is a frequent topic of discussion in a lot of climbing circles, and the gap seems to be especially pronounced for climbers trying to get into crag and boulder development. In this episode, we dove into the joys of having too many mentors to count.

Long-time developer and AAC member Josh Pollock decided to collaborate with Jefferson County, in the Front Range of Colorado, to develop a beginner-friendly crag called the Narrow Gauge Slabs. For this project, sustainability and accessibility was a focus from the start, and Josh and other local developers designed a mentorship program that would coincide with developing the crag, to support climbers of traditionally marginalized backgrounds who want to equip themselves with knowledge and mentorship resources so that they could be developers and mentors in their own right. In this episode, we sat down with Lily Toyokura Hill and Ali Arfeen, two mentees in the program who have really taken this experience and run with it, stepping into leadership roles in the local climbing community. We cover what inspired them to become developers, perceptions of route development and who belongs, grading and individual bolting styles, and much more. The conversation with Lily, Ali, and Josh illuminates a lot about the power of mentorship and the complex considerations of developing in modern climbing.

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Protect: First Ascents, Ground Falls, and the AAC Rescue Benefit in Action

In this episode, we sit down with Jarod, a long-time AAC member, to discuss a crazy accident he had at his home crag in Missouri, and how he utilized the AAC’s rescue benefit to cover the cost of his medical expenses. If you’ve been wondering if the AAC’s rescue benefit is for you, Jarod’s story helps explain how it works. We dive into the quirky concept of “girdle traverses” or mulitpitches that go sideways, and analyze his accident— the decisions he made, how traversing complicates gear placements, and the close calls he had. Funnily enough, Jarod also did a FA on that same wall—putting up Missouri’s potentially longest rock climb with Jeremy Collins, and this FA made it into the American Alpine Journal! We discuss the vision behind this 8-pitch traverse, what went into making it happen, the silliness of climbing, the unique belay tactics for traversing, and more!

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All Aspects

The AAC DC Chapter hosts a New Ice Climber Weekend in the Adirondacks with Escala

PC: Colt Bradley

Grassroots: Unearthing the Future of Climbing

By: Sierra McGivney

The sun peeked over the Pitchoff Quarry crag, hitting the ice and creating an enchanting aura. The cool February air was saturated with people laughing and ice tools scraping against the ice. If you listened closely, you'd notice that the conversations were a beautiful mix of English and Spanish. 

PC: Colt Bradley

The New Ice Climber Weekend (NICW), hosted by the AAC DC Chapter, has become an annual event. Piotr Andrzejczak, the AAC DC chapter chair and organizer of the New Ice Climber Weekend, believes mentorship is paramount in climbing. The weekend aims to provide participants with an opportunity to try ice climbing, find ice climbing partners, and have a starting point for more significant objectives. Above all, it aims to minimize the barrier to entry for ice climbing. 

Last year, Andrzejczak approached Melissa Rojas, the co-founder of Escala and volunteer with the DC Chapter, about partnering to do a New Ice Climber Weekend with Escala. Escala is part of the American Alpine Club's Affiliate Support Network, which provides emerging affinity groups with resources in order to minimize barriers in their operations and serving their community. Escala “creates accessibility, expands representation, and increases visibility in climbing for Hispanic and Latine individuals by building community, sharing culture, and mentoring one another.”

Climbing can be a challenging sport to get into. It can require shoes, a harness, a gym membership, and climbing partners. Ice climbing requires all that plus more: ice tools, crampons, and winter clothing. 

"There's a lot more complexity to ice climbing," said Rojas.

PC: Colt Bradley

Ice climbing can be limited not only in quantity but also in quality. Due to climate change, the ice in the Adirondacks loses its quality faster than previous decades and the climbs are only of good quality for a limited amount of time. DC climbers are at least seven hours from the Adirondacks, plus traffic and stops, so ice climbing for them has unforeseen logistical challenges. During the NICW, participants can focus more on the basics of learning to ice climb and less on logistics.

Rojas and Andrzejczak hosted a pre-meetup/virtual session so that participants could get to know each other and ask questions ahead of time. "We wanted to give folks an opportunity to ice climb in a supportive environment where they felt like they were in a community and were being supported throughout the whole process, from the planning stage to the actual trip," said Rojas.

Another focus of the weekend was creating a film. Colt Bradley attended the New Ice Climber Weekend in 2023 as a videographer and as a participant. Bradley volunteers with the AAC Baltimore Chapter and is also Andrzejczak's climbing partner. Last year, he created four Instagram videos that captured the excitement of ice climbing for the first time. When asked to film the Escala x NICW this year, he wanted to do something longer and more story-focused. Bradley and Rojas talked beforehand about focusing the film on the Escala community and highlighting the bond made possible through its existence. 

Rojas has worked hard to build up this blended community of Spanish-speaking climbers. Spanish has many flavors, as it is spoken in many different countries with different cultures—all unique in their own way. The film focused on reflecting and representing the vibrant community of Escala. 

Soon, they all found themselves at Pitchoff Quarry in the Adirondacks. While the participants learned how to swing their ice tools and kick their crampons into the ice, Bradley sought out community moments. He wanted to put viewers in the moment as participants climbed, so he mic'd some participants; including Kathya Meza. 

Meza spoke openly during interviews and had a compelling story that Bradley thought would resonate with the viewers. 

PC: Colt Bradley

In the film's final scene, viewers can hear Meza swinging her tools into the ice, see her smiling, and experience her problem solving as she pushes herself outside her comfort zone. Bradley filmed this scene the first day before they even identified her as a focal point of the film. 

Bradley continued to capture the essence of the Latino influence over the weekend. On the second day, the group headed to Chapel Pond. Despite the cold 21-degree weather and whipping wind, the energy was high. Mentors taught mentees how to layer correctly, and folks danced salsa at the base of the crag to stay warm. Later, feeling connected and energized from this incredible trip, the group salsa danced on the frozen Chapel Pond with the iconic ice falls that makeup Chounaird's Gully and Power Play in the background.

"For the twenty-some-odd years I've been going to the Adirondacks to ice climb, I've never even thought that maybe one day I'll be dancing on Chapel Pond, hosting a new Ice Climbing weekend with Escala" said Piotr. 

For Rojas, it was some of her best salsa dancing. She was so focused on staying warm that it freed her from overthinking her dancing skills. The dancing didn't stop at Chapel Pond. After dinner, the group returned to the inn and fired up the woodstove in the recreation room. The sound of salsa dancing and glee filled the room. 

The NICW isn't about going out and sending, so naturally, this isn't the type of climbing film where climbers try hard on overhung climbs overlaid with cool EDM music. Every climber remembers the moment they got hooked on climbing, whether sport, trad, ice, or alpine climbing; they remember the thrill of reaching the top of a climb for the first time, out of breath but more excited than ever. Climbing is a multifaceted sport, and climbing films should be reflective of that. Showing the first-time-swinging-an-ice-tool moments at the NICW inspires someone to take that first step toward something new or nostalgic for the longtime climber.

PC: Colt Bradley

"I think the thing about Escala is it's more than just a climbing group. It's a community," said Rojas.

Escala is a place where Rojas can be all parts of herself. Rojas has four children and refers to Escala as her fifth baby. She doesn't have to explain why she climbs or her love for Sábado Gigante–a famous variety show in Latin America. Everyone in her community recognizes all aspects of her. Her identity as a climber and as a Latina can be one. 

One participant of the NICW approached Rojas and said it was the best experience of their life. 

PC: Colt Bradley

"He said it with such sincerity that it was really humbling in the moment," said Rojas. 

Leading an affinity group can often feel like running on a never-ending treadmill of organizing event after event, where reflection takes a backseat. However, according to Rojas if she can positively affect just one person, it makes all the work worth it. 

Salsa music playing over Chapel Pond, smiling faces red from the winter frost, and dancing in crampons are the mosaic of moments that make up the heart of Escala, the DC Chapter, and the New Ice Climber Weekend. 

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Watch Escala En Hielo Below

Climb United Feature: Finding Impact in a World of Performance

Salt Lake Area Queer Climbers (SLAQC) showing some pride at Black Rocks, St. George, UT. Land of the Pueblos and Paiute people. AAC member Bobbie Lee

A Deep Look Into the Affiliate Support Network

By Shara Zaia

Drawing on personal experience in co-creating Cruxing in Color, and the experience of affinity group leaders across the country, Shara Zaia reflects on the unpaid labor that goes into creating affinity spaces within climbing—and yet just how much it means to so many traditionally marginalized climbers to find community. Zaia uncovers the true cost and benefit of this work, and lays out why the AAC has developed the Affiliate Support Network (ASN)—our Climb United program that provides fiduciary and other administrative support to affinity groups across the country so that they can raise donations and/or become nonprofits, ultimately making their organizations more sustainable and long-lasting. Dive in to get a behind-the-scenes look at the incredible power of this work, and how the Climb United team has been determined to find impact.

Artist Spotlight: Marty Schnure & The Art of Maps

By Sierra McGivney

Photo courtesy of Marty Schnure.

In this profile of cartographer Marty Schnure, we uncover the philosophy that has influenced her creation of several beautiful maps for the American Alpine Journal (AAJ), the world-renowned AAC publication that reports the cutting-edge ascents and descents of each year. For Schnure, map-making is about blending geographical information while also evoking and displaying the relationship between that geography and whatever is important about that place to the map user—aka climbing routes, or the animal corridors of that area. Dive into this article to learn about the art of map-making, and how Schure thinks about the responsibility of a cartographer, the power of maps to express an idea, and more.

A Little Extra Spice: Stories from the World of Competition Ice Climbing

Catalina Shirley Climbing in Ouray. PC: AAC Member Nicholas Moline

By: Sierra McGivney

Ice cascades into the Uncompahgre Gorge, creating an ice climber's paradise. With more than 150 manmade ice and mixed climbs across almost 2 miles of terrain, Ouray Ice Park is an ice climbing playground, and the Ouray Ice Festival is the ultimate celebration of that. This year, the ice fest kicked off on Thursday, January 18, with a Barbie pool party and lasted through the weekend. Pros and ice climbing connoisseurs taught clinics, pushed grades, and had fun, but Ouray is also often the first and only time rock climbers try ice climbing. All types of clinics are offered, demo gear is included in an all-access pass, and volunteers belay at the walk-up wall, making the Ouray Ice Festival an accessible entrance to the sport. 

That's precisely how Ian Umstead, now a USA Ice Climbing Team athlete, tried ice climbing for the first time two years ago. He originally wasn't sold on ice climbing. He had fun but thought it was sketchy. But something clicked when a friend invited him to go dry tool at a local crag in March 2023. 

"It's like sport climbing with a little extra spice," said Umstead. 

Ian Umstead Climbing in Korea. PC: Provided by the UIAA

Umstead is primarily a sport climber, so he had strength built up from sport climbing that translated into dry tooling. A couple of athletes on the Ice Team encouraged him to try out for the team even though he had only been dry tooling for three months. Umstead was surprised they suggested it but thought: If I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it right. So, he put off his sport project and trained on tools for eight weeks. Then, he went to tryouts and made the team. He was stoked. Umstead returned to training for his sport project, and after five weeks, he sent his first 5.14. Umstead has a semi-professional bike racing background, so he eats and breathes training and competing. 

"I'm a projecter's projecter," said Umstead. 

He picks challenging projects, trains, and tries hard. Drytooling fulfills that, adding an element of goofiness. The movements feel silly and fun and keep Umstead engaged. 

Umstead is one of many athletes who started in Ouray. Connor Bailey first tried ice climbing in Ouray at eight years old. He remembers his crampons falling off because his boots were too small, but he liked it. Scratch Pad, a dry tooling gym in Salt Lake City, contacted his climbing team and asked if anyone wanted to try out for the youth ice climbing team. He and one of his friends, Landors Gaydosh, decided to check it out.

 "I thought it was going to be just ice climbing," said Bailey. "I was pretty excited. I went in there and saw all the different holds and was like—huh?"

Left to right USA Ice Team Athlete’s Connor Bailey, Tyler Kempney, Mathius Olsen. PC: Provided by Stephanie Olsen.

The holds and movements were similar enough to rock climbing that Bailey found success. Initially, the comps had no age requirements, so he could join the team and compete. Unfortunately, this past year, the youth age requirements changed, and Bailey, who is 12, falls below the youth age requirements. Thankfully, he could still compete in Ouray. 

Bailey sometimes questions why he chose this sport, especially when it's cold, but once he begins swinging his tools and warms up, he loves each movement.

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From the snow-covered bridge leading into the vendor village, the giant competition wall rises up from the gorge. Starting from the bottom of the gorge, competitiors climb on rock and ice, until they reach the artificial wall, where they begin placing their tools on holds made of various materials. The Ouray Ice Festival is a crucial competition for the USA Ice Climbing athletes as part of the UIAA Continental Cup Series. On the Saturday of the festival, commentators and spectators gather, and above the din of music playing, people cheer on the competitors in the finals. 

Catalina Shirley began her climbing career young—like most of us do—climbing trees and doorways, scaring the sh*t out of our parents. When Shirley began venturing to the roof of her parents' house, her mom drew the line and signed her up for summer camp. Shortly after, her family moved to Durango, Colorado, where she joined Marcus Garcia's team. Garcia was working on building out the USA Ice Climbing Youth team. Shirley began training and went on to compete in France the following year when she was fourteen. 

"I love the kinds of moves that you can do in ice climbing that you can't quite get in rock climbing—like the crazy floating underclings and gastons and, of course, figure fours and anything on swinging features," said Shirley. 

Shirley likes the thought required for every move and the freedom of movement in dry tooling. Climbers can put their feet anywhere, regardless of body size or strength. But in Ouray, the competition wall reminds Shirley of a puzzle, with only one right way to solve it. Part of that puzzle in the Ouray Finals was a dyno. Shirley set up for it, looking out at the crowd. Then she jumped and closed her eyes, landing slightly above the hold but sticking it. When she opened her eyes, everyone screamed, infusing her with energy. With one minute left on the clock, she went as fast as she could, letting the crowd's energy flow into her. She placed first in the women's lead competition. 

"I feel like I perform the best when I'm under a little bit of pressure," said Shirley. 

Catalina Shirley Climbing. PC: AAC Member Nicholas Moline

The weekend before, January 12 through 14, Shirley placed second in both lead and speed in Cheongsong, Korea. She is the first American to make the lead podium—man or woman. The competition setting is her style: long figure fours, roof climbing, and endurance-based; climbing fast is one of her strong suits. She got to the top of both qualifier routes. She was one of three women to do so, next to Marianna Van Der Steen and Woonseon Shin, both of whom Shirley had been watching since she was a kid. 

But in the Cheongsong finals, Shirley had fallen three moves from the top because she missed the dyno. Sticking the dyno in Ouray means that much more. She credits her team as a big reason why she made the podium. They provided support for her all weekend, from food to encouragement. Her team had her back.

"It really felt like the whole team's medal," said Shirley.  

Shirley believes there are four main challenges to competitive ice climbing: strength, problem-solving, fear of falling, and fear of failing. It's what keeps bringing her back. In "regular" life, rarely are all those elements compounded.

"Overcoming all of that is the best feeling in the world," said Shirley.  

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Sam Serra Climbing. PC: AAC Member Nicholas Moline

Each person on the USA Ice Climbing Team has their own story. 

Sam Serra attended an intro to ice climbing class hosted by the Ice Coop in August 2021. Tyler Kempney was teaching it and asked if anyone wanted to try dry tooling. Serra had a blast. 

"I went to get into ice climbing, but I feel like I really got into dry tooling," said Serra. 

He didn't get on ice until two months later. As Serra spent more time at the Ice Coop, he got dragged into competing. His first competition was in Michigan, only a couple of months after he began climbing. It wasn't his strongest competition, but he found climbers he wanted to surround himself with. The community kept him around until he learned to like dry tooling competitions. Serra grew to love the movement and style of competition dry tooling. The unique way of using your ice tools pushes the climber to be creative in a way that differs from traditional ice climbing. 

Sam Serra being lowered. PC: AAC Member Nicholas Moline

"When It comes to dry tooling and really competition style dry tooling–it just opens the door to so many new movement patterns that they don't even exist outside–they almost can't exist outside," said Serra.  

Phoebe Gabrielle Tourtellotte's story looks a little different. Tourtellotte had to drop out of speed climbing due to a joint condition in the fall of 2021. She felt aimless. At the time, she lived across from the Ice Coop in Boulder. Her boyfriend encouraged her to try that dry tooling thing. Despite inner doubts about how she would look or perform, she went. 

In the first couple of months that she was learning to dry tool, she had to confront why she was still climbing at all after speed climbing hadn't worked out. Then it hit her: here was an opportunity to start over.  

"It's so cool getting to learn all new stuff," said Tourtellotte, "There are so many tiny nuances I never would have expected to learn about in this sport."

She had gone from one of the fastest disciplines to one of the slowest and methodical. Coming from a speed-climbing background, Tourtellotte moves more dynamically. At the Ice Coop, she gets beta and technique spray-downs from everyone in the gym. Her teammates are open to mentoring each other, even if they're competitors. 

The USA Ice Climbing Team in Cheongsong, Korea. Provided by the UIAA

The small community of competition ice climbing supports and uplifts one another. It brings together people of all ages and backgrounds, connected through their niche passion for ice climbing and dry tooling. The team will continue to swing tools, compete, and celebrate their love of climbing through silly and unique movements. 

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Ouray Ice Fest Results 

Catalina Shirley placed first in the Women's lead final, with Corey Buhay in Third. Tyler Kempney placed first in the men's lead final, with Sam Serra placing second. They both topped the finals route. The Ouray Ice Festival competition is a special place for the team, for everyone to gather and celebrate. The USA Ice Climbing team will end their season at the World Championships In Edmonton on February 16 through 18. Tune in to the UIAA YouTube channel to livestream the event and support the USA Ice Climbing Team.

UIAA Ice Climbing Continental Open - Ouray, USA: Top Three

The Women's Lead Final

1 Shirley, Catalina USA 1 [1] 1 [36.100]

2 Louzecka, Aneta CZE 4 [12.0] 2 [31.000]

3 Buhay, Corey USA 3 [9.0] 3 [28.100]

The Men's Lead Final

1 Kempney, Tyler USA 1 [1] 1 [TOP (0:00)]

2 Serra, Samuel USA 2 [4] 2 [TOP (0:00)]

3 Howe, Tyler CAN 3 [15] 3 [33.000]

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The USA Ice Climbing Team is Supported by

Banding Together: AAC Member Feature

Climbers & drone pilots in training. Photo provided by Emily Johnston.

Grassroots: Unearthing the Future of Climbing

By: Sierra McGivney

Emily Johnston didn't know much about Ukraine before 2022, but like many Americans, she found herself glued to the screen, following the conflict closely. She watched as Russian troops waged war with Ukrainians in an attempt to bring Ukraine back in as a 'vassal' of Russia. Gunfire, missile strikes, and violence continue to wreak havoc on Ukraine's cities, towns, and citizens, and Emily’s story, and her desire to share the stories of Ukrainian climbers, continues to be as relevant now then at the beginning of the conflict.

Emily Guiding on Everest in 2018. Photo provided by Emily Johnston.

As she learned about the violence in Ukraine, Johnston couldn't help but think back to the times when she had met Ukrainian guides while guiding in Antarctica, Nepal, and other places all over the world. They were just like her, sharing their love of the mountains with clients. At the time, she didn't realize how important these connections she made would become. 

Johnston was 12 when she first started mountain climbing. She talked her way into a trip up Glacier Peak in Washington at her summer camp. She explored, climbed, and fell into a crevasse.

"It was great," she recalls.

In high school, Johnston and some friends bought Royal Robbins Rockcraft, Freedom of the Hills, and Cascade Alpine Climbing and headed into the alpine. She distinctly remembers sitting at a belay ledge, comparing a picture of a clove hitch and checking it with her work. 

Emily skiing the Tetons in 2017. Photo provided by Emily Johnston.

In 1987 she got hired as an Outward Bound instructor and then tried out for Rainier Mountain Guides two years later. She worked there until graduate school and has worked for International Mountain Guides for the last ten years. She joined the American Alpine Club when applying for a permit to climb Annapurna in 1993 and has been a member since. 

In February of 2022, she did a quick Google search of "Ukrainian Climbers," and the first thing that popped up was Climb Army—a grassroots network of Ukrainian climbers put together by Mykhailo' Misha' Poddubnov, a Ukrainian mountain guide. She reached out to them and began chatting with Misha.

She asked Misha, Is what I'm hearing about real? What's going on over there?

PC: Emily Johnston

His response was an offer to show her around Ukraine and introduce her to their network of climbers. The next thing she knew, she bought a plane ticket to Poland and was waiting to be picked up on a train platform in Kyiv. 

"Meet a Ukrainian guy online, fly to Ukraine; what could go wrong? I actually didn't tell my parents that I was going," said Johnston with a laugh.

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Johnston is no stranger to being bold and journeying into the unknown, so it's unsurprising that she ventured to Ukraine during a war. She spent the month of December couch-surfing, meeting climbers, and being welcomed into their climbing community. 

Climber & doctor on the right and Misha Poddubnov.Photo provided by Emily Johnston.

Despite language barriers, Johnston felt as though all the climbers she had met could immediately walk into her climbing circle and fit right in. The climbing community in Ukraine is just like your local community or group of climbing friends. They go to the local climbing gym after work, gush about their projects, and love climbing in all its forms. They have banded together through climbing to create a network of climbers helping each other. 

Johnston traveled with Misha from end to end of Ukraine, collecting supplies and then delivering them to the front. Along the way, she collected story after story of Ukrainian climbers, the terror of the war, their resilience, and how they have supported each other as a community. 

"It's this community without borders," said Johnston.

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Emily interviewing a climber, soldier and doctor near the front lines. Photo provided by Emily Johnston.

Lena, a climber in her late 20s, was in Kyiv on the morning of February 24, 2022, when the bombing started. Lena's friends had a cabin outside the city, and the two fled Kyiv hoping to find safety. The cabin was in Bucha, where Russian forces invaded and are currently under investigation by the Hague for war crimes. The two hid in the basement with their neighbors for four days and listened to the gunfire rain outside. When there was a break, they ran for it and escaped. 

Lena ended up in the western part of Ukraine. She had nowhere to go. Desperate, she remembered she had gone on a climbing trip with a guiding company in the area a few months earlier and called them up. They offered to let her stay in their office as long as needed. She slept on their couch and lived there for months. 

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A wife and husband duo who own a climbing shop housed 50 people who lived in the building above the shop for three months. Another climber she met named Tanya, who Johnston describes as very poised, composed, and educated, went online and learned how to make Molotov cocktails because they didn't have guns. 

***

A group of climbers had gathered clothes, food, and supplies and drove trucks to the front lines. One woman, Oxcana, delivered drones, clothes, body armor, and kilos of Christmas cakes baked by these climbers. When she's not providing supplies and Christmas cakes, she runs a boarding school for kids whose parents are fighting or whose parents are in occupied Ukraine.

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Borodianka, Ukraine. Photo provided by Emily Johnston.

Johnston has story upon story upon story about the climbers who are fighting for their freedom. Amongst all of the couch surfing and visiting the front line, Johnston filmed interviews with all of the climbers she met. She recorded around 15 hours of interviews sitting with the climbers and listening to their stories. With the help of a friend, she is currently putting together a film in hopes of getting the word out. 

"It was even more inspiring than I expected," said Johnston.

Once she returned from Ukraine, Johnston needed to do something, to take action. She created a donor box account where people can donate directly to the climbers. She added links to her Facebook with photos, videos, and information regarding the Ukrainian climbers. 

Emily, near the front, talking with Misha Poddubnov. Photo provided by Emily Johnston.

As climbers, we inherently believe in the power of partnership. To climb together is to partner with another person. Every "On Belay" and "I got you" tie us together as climbers. Johnston traveled halfway across the world during a war to help others who shared her love of climbing. This network of climbers has unified and become a community based around climbing. If you want to get involved, visit the Ukrainian Climber's website here. 

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The Power of Beginning Again: Reflections from the USA Ice Climbing Team

Chelsea Kyffin and Jessica Perez jogging to warm up near the World Cup competition structure in Champagny-en-Vanoise, France. PC: Ryan McCauley

By Ryan McCauley (she/her)

“I mean this in the nicest way possible,” my teammate Marian Prather said, hesitating to finish their sentence. “But this experience kind of reminds me of helping my Mom with social media.” I erupted with laughter as I glared at my iPhone screen in the middle of a South Korean coffee shop, mouth agape, processing the newly learned fact that it was impossible to edit a posted Instagram story (that I had just spent 45 minutes carefully crafting with a lot of hand-holding from Marian and another friend on the USA Women’s Ice Climbing Team). I wrinkled my nose and jokingly prodded back, “Your Mom sounds cool. Is she also 35?”

This was Ryan's third and final speed run in women's finals in the World Cup in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. PC: UIAA Livestream

It was honestly the first time that weekend that I had truly relaxed, given myself permission to sit with the ridiculousness of the moment, and allowed joy to creep in. I had been too busy focusing on the pressure of my performance expectations at the first UIAA Ice Climbing World Cup of the ‘22-’23 season. Sadly, this anxiety was quickly replaced by disappointment as the results started rolling in. Nothing like training for months and flying across the world, only to fall off one swing into the speed climbing competition or slip off a lead move I had done numerous times at the training gym back home, to make me question my efforts. Although it was only my second season competing, my hopes had exceeded reality. Beginner or not, I should have done better.

If I was being honest with myself, the desire to make my Instagram story perfect by zooming in on every detail was representative of more than just my mindset at the South Korean World Cup. As a woman who has been drawn to sports historically dominated by athletes identifying as male, I have often leveraged perfectionism as a way to prove that I am good enough to belong in a given space. Asking for help is something I’ve learned to avoid at all costs. I have a tendency to approach other women with a slight hesitation or skepticism—as I try to assess how others might compare my performance to hers. Vulnerability is something I don’t share easily.

Ryan climbing in Women's speed climbing finals in the World Cup in Champagny-en-Vanoise, France. PC: Nils Paillard

So, it was intentional that my first-time dry tooling (the nuanced, competition-version of ice climbing) was at a Ladies’ Night at the Ice Coop dry-tooling gym in Boulder, which was the only facility of its kind in the U.S. at the time. I did not want to be a total novice in front of men. Beyond being male-dominated, it was also a sport nobody had ever heard of.

I joked that I was going to the hardware store when trying to explain the concept to others. Even presenting it as “indoor mixed climbing” seemed to fall flat for many. Traversing climbing routes by hooking ice tools on plastic or metal rock climbing holds was hard to comprehend. Kicking into plywood walls with specialized crampons to simulate ice climbing was confusing to visualize. And doing it all in a bouldering format at the Ice Coop without ropes seemed downright dangerous. But there was something about the challenge that hooked me. The promise of what was possible was too enthralling to ignore as I watched old YouTube videos of experienced athletes hanging upside down from swinging boxes during the 2019 UIAA Ice Climbing World Cup in Denver. However, even with this excitement, I swindled a coworker to go with me that first night so I didn’t have to risk looking like a fool in front of a group of strangers. Beginner or not, I was not going to embarrass myself.

Ryan McCauley climbing Catwoman (D10) at a dry-tooling crag in Quintal, France. PC: Justin (Jay) Jacobs

Despite my initial insecurities, that first evening dry-tooling injected an energy into me that I didn’t know existed. As a sport climber who was used to navigating routes that demanded either a lot of power or a plethora of precision, I loved how dry tooling required both. Moments that forced me to intentionally slow down my breathing and trust my exhausted arms to connect the pick of my tool with a tiny pocket on the side of a hold sent waves of enthusiasm through my entire body. I was stronger than I knew.

For the next year, I dove headfirst into every opportunity to grow and improve. I signed up for a gym membership, joined the local team, entered competitions, invested in new gear, and started attending a summer training group. Things were going well and I was excited. However, I had been so consumed with competition outcomes or team rankings to prove my “enoughness” in the sport that I hadn’t paused to reflect on the bigger picture or express gratitude for the larger value I was deriving from this space. Beginner or not, I would not allow myself to make excuses or fail.

Climbing to Not Fall

France Competition structure. PC: Ryan McCauley

If you had told me in the summer of 2021 that I would be representing the U.S. in the Ice Climbing World Cup a mere year later, I would have laughed uncontrollably. I would have rolled my eyes at the thought of re-activating my Facebook profile so I could communicate with people just over half my age to schedule team practice for a sport that had hardly any training facilities. But I also didn’t anticipate the power of the community I felt that Friday at Ladies' Night. The possibility posed by the non-judgmental, inclusive space allowed people of all ages and backgrounds to show up as total beginners and be genuinely embraced for who they were. Trust, support, and advocacy were offered to each individual who showed up and tried, no matter how guarded or hesitant they were. While resources and funding for dry tooling are more limited in the U.S. compared to some other countries, countless people are volunteering their time to expand the sport and welcome new members with open arms.

And here I was, sitting in Cheongsong, getting discouraged and fixating on my mistakes a little over a year into the sport. I couldn’t help but ruminate on how it might have played out if I could only go back in time and edit my personal story—what if I had swung the tool slightly differently; had shifted my weight at a different angle; had trained harder; had found the sport at a younger age? It still felt so hard to disconnect from the scoreboard. Beginner or not, those results defined my success.

Keenan Griscom climbing in Men's Lead Semi Finals at the France World Cup in Champagny-en-Vanoise. PC: Nils Paillard

That evening, while riding the bus back to our hotel from the competition venue, I sat next to Keenan Griscom, the top-ranked athlete on the USA Men’s Ice Climbing Team. He was just shy of his 19th Birthday and had been competing in a variety of climbing disciplines since middle school. As we debriefed the day, I was struck by the way he balanced both seriousness and lightheartedness when talking about his own performance expectations. As someone who had made finals and was slated to compete again the following day, I anticipated him to feel much more pressure than he did. Intrigued, I pummeled him with questions about his journey as an athlete, how his training had evolved, and even concerning his personal definition of success. Keeping a humble tone, Keenan noted times when a higher ranking he received didn’t elicit pride because he knew deep down that he had failed to fulfill his own potential. Similarly, he confidently recounted times when a lower score ended up being a cause for celebration because he knew within himself that he gave the competition his all. 

I had noticed this same open-mindedness and curiosity earlier when someone had asked for advice on filing their picks and he had encouraged them to trust themself, experiment with an approach, and see how it went. The feisty millennial in me wanted to say something to the effect of, “It makes sense you don’t feel pressure to get it right this time, you have so many competitions ahead of you before your knees fall apart!” and it suddenly hit me. I was getting in my own way. I was the only one telling myself I had to show up perfectly now; believing that there was indeed an expiration date on this opportunity. 

Keenan Griscom climbing in Men's Lead Finals at the South Korean World Cup in Cheongsong. PC: Rhea Kang

Sure, I wasn’t getting younger. And I might still never get to the same level as some of my teammates who had already been competing for nearly a decade and were 15 years my junior. But, hyperfocusing on my scores was damaging my confidence and blinding me to the massive privilege of the opportunity in front of me. Just as with the stupid Instagram story, things were already live and I couldn’t go back and update the countdown hashtags (or so I’m told— please reach out if you know otherwise) or go back in time and swing my tool into the ice tower further to the right when speed climbing. All I could do was laugh about it, remember to tag people before hitting “upload” next time, and be present with the amazing community around me at that moment.

What if I shifted the story from “What place did I get?” or “How did I compare?” to instead be about “What did I learn today to get 1% better?” “What progress can I celebrate?” or “Who did I connect with?” So much of my current narrative was driven by fear and the pressure wasn’t getting me on the podium. What if I reframed success to be about the experience rather than whether or not I fell?

Climbing to Play in the Present Moment

Ryan McCauley reaching the top of the speed wall during Women's Speed Climbing Finals in the Saas-Fee, Switzerland World Cup. PC: Robert Hendriksen

As naive as it felt, I pushed myself to focus more energy during the France World Cup on things like laughing with teammates about our “Nascar pit stop” sharing of speed crampons or joking about the record time it took my Nalgene to freeze. By the third and final competition in Switzerland, I found myself fully dancing to the music at the base of the ice tower while waiting for my turn to climb. It was the longest and steepest speed structure we had encountered so far and people were falling fairly consistently. If anything, the pressure was higher—but I had slowly started to feel gratitude for it all. “Once in a lifetime opportunity” had shifted from meaning I only had this one competition to demonstrate my entire worth to instead serving as a reminder to soak it all in. I chatted with international athletes and made silly faces at the live-stream cameras. I was going to make the most of this moment. 

Suddenly, everything clicked. My tools hooked the ice smoothly one after the other and my feet glided up the wall in a delicate, nearly effortless dance. I shrieked as I turned around to look at the timer: 20.52—nearly 9 seconds off my last run and a time that would put me in 4th place overall. I guess this approach wasn’t so silly after all. I’d be lying if I said it was easy to sustain this mentality in a high-pressure competition, that it looked the same for every athlete, or that it didn’t take the same kind of practice as showing up to training each week. But, wow, it made the effort so much more worthwhile and fun. Beginner or not, letting go of my fixation on the outcome could result in a more lasting definition of success.

Reflecting on the Season

USA athletes cheering on teammates in lead finals during the South Korean World Cup in Cheongsong. From left to right - Jessica Perez, Noah Bergman, Sam Serra, Marian Prather, Dominic Gonzalez-Padron. PC: Rhea Kang

Overall, as a Team, the U.S. walked away with one of the most successful seasons we have had in the past few years. There were a lot of milestones to celebrate, such as Cat Shirley setting a record for the first-ever American woman to qualify for UIAA World Cup lead finals or Keenan Griscom earning 4th and 5th place, respectively, for lead climbing in two of the World Cups! (*see box below for more specifics).

Perhaps even more exciting to see was how much closer our community became through the shared experiences of relentless months of training, hectic or jet-lagged travel, competition stressors or mistakes, celebrations of personal or team growth, and unexpected memories made. Early morning group warm-up runs, aggressive games of Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza back at the Airbnb, and hugs from other athletes after emotional moments of doubt are the things that will stick with me for years to come. 

There is still so much work that needs to be done in the United States to help strengthen our reputation as a competitive team and develop the sport of dry-tooling. There were moments where we jokingly noted how dry tooling was a “real sport” in other countries as we came across a multitude of gyms in Seoul where we could train and found celebrity-style posters of dry-tooling athletes in the local tourist office. It could have been tempting to be frustrated by how far behind the U.S. is concerning this, but many teammates also commented on how incredible it was to be at the frontier of this sport in our country, helping to build a stronger foundation alongside organizations like the American Alpine Club and Rab.

Justin (Jay) Jacobs warming up on the dry-tooling warm-up wall at the World Cup in Champagny-en-Vanoise, France. PC: Sam Montgomery

We may not be able to successfully revolutionize the future of dry tooling in the U.S. overnight. However, this season taught me so much about the power of giving ourselves permission to embrace the imperfections and be patient with growth. The acceptance and vulnerability that comes with this approach allows us to clearly see our own strengths and empathetically show up for others. We get to choose to contribute to success that is bigger than ourselves and accelerate our growth with each mistake. Beginner or not, letting go can actually magnify the power of our team.

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Some of the specific USA women’s achievements worth noting include:

Cat Shirley (right) congratulating Roz Reynolds (left) on qualifying for Women's Lead Semi Finals at the South Korean World Cup in Cheongsong. Sam Serra is standing in between the women and Noah Bergman is off to the right. PC: Rhea Kang

South Korea:

• Jessica Perez & Roz Reynolds competed in their first-ever World Cup competition!

• Cat Shirley & Roz Reynolds reached the top of the lead climbing qualification routes and continued on to compete in the semi-finals, placing 8th and 16th respectively, out of a field of 31 female athletes. Cat is the first US woman to ever qualify for the UIAA World Cup lead finals!

• Cat Shirley, Marian Prather, & Roz Reynolds progressed to speed climbing semi-finals, ultimately placing 3rd, 8th, and 11th respectively, out of a field of 25 female athletes. Cat walked away with a bronze medal for this performance!

Champagny-en-Vanoise:

• Chelsea Kyffin competed in her first-ever World Cup competition!

• Jessica Perez, Chelsea Kyffin, & Ryan McCauley climbed in temperatures of 8 degrees Fahrenheit each day during women’s lead qualifications and still made gains between their first and second routes averaging about three quickdraws higher!

• Ryan McCauley & Chelsea Kyffin competed in women’s speed finals and shaved off a combined 10 seconds on their runs as they placed 7th and 14th respectively, out of a field of 16 women.

Saas-Fee:

• Gabrielle (Phoebe) Tourtellotte competed in her first-ever World Cup competition!

• Ryan McCauley & Lauren Shartell earned spots in women’s speed finals and placed 4th and 8th, out of a field of 21 women. With scores in all three competitions, this put Ryan in a tie for 6th place in overall women’s 2023 World Cup speed standings!

Some of the specific USA men’s achievements worth noting include:

Keenan Griscom working out the sequence for Men's Lead finals at the South Korean World Cup in Cheongsong. PC: Rhea Kang

South Korea:

• Sam Serra, Ian Wedow, Daniel Koepke, Noah Bergman & Dominic Gonzalez-Padron competed in their first-ever World Cup competition!

• Keenan Griscom & Tyler Kempney progressed to lead climbing semi-finals with Tyler successfully reaching the top of one lead qualification route and Keenan topping both. Keenan further advanced to lead climbing finals and the two athletes ultimately placed 4th and 10th, respectively, out of a field of 37 male athletes.

• Sam Serra progressed to speed climbing semi-finals, ultimately placing 14th out of a field of 26 male athletes. 

Champagny-en-Vanoise:

• Noah Rowley & Justin (Jay) Jacobs competed in their first-ever World Cup competition!

• Keenan Griscom progressed to lead climbing semi-finals, ultimately placing 11th out of a field of 56 male athletes.

• Noah Rowley progressed to speed-climbing semi-finals, ultimately placing 14th out of a field of 37 male athletes.

Saas-Fee:

• Erik Gomez competed in his first-ever World Cup competition!

• Sam Serra, Noah Bergman, & Keenan Griscom all successfully reached the top of one of the two lead climbing qualification routes.

• Noah Bergman & Keenan Griscom progressed to lead climbing semi-finals, with Keenan advancing to lead climbing finals. The two athletes ultimately placed 13th and 5th respectively, out of a field of 49 male athletes.

• Sam Serra progressed to speed climbing finals, ultimately placing 12th out of a field of 35 male athletes.

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The USA Ice Climbing Team is supported by