I started climbing in 1992 toward the end of my senior year of high school. When I discovered rock climbing, I thought, “Great! So this is what having a passion feels like. Now I just need to find a career option that I feel this way about, and I’m all set.”

Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, I never did discover a “real-world” career that fueled my passion for living the same way that climbing did and continues to do, so I did the only thing any logical person would do – I made climbing my career instead. (I’m also a prolific freelance writer, which has helped support my climbing habit, along with my awesome team of industry sponsors, for the past two decades.)

Today, I continue to be as inspired and excited about rock climbing as ever. Sport climbing is my primary passion and focus in climbing these days – particularly steep sport climbing, as it’s a relatively new endeavor for me, after years of honing my skills as a vertical/technical face climber. I revel in the mental, physical and emotional challenge involved in successfully redpointing steep, demanding, long sport climbs. I seemingly never tire of working out beta, piecing it together, strategizing as I figure out details like pacing and rests, and visualizing my current project(s) when I’m not at the crag…not to mention the sweet sensation of sending, of course!

More recently, I’ve become fascinated with the science behind training for climbing beyond just climbing to train for climbing. After applying training techniques to myself with marked success (hence my newfound appreciation of steep sport climbing), I began an online climbing coaching service in late 2008. Today, I continue to offer that service and to read all of the athletic training information I can get my hands on. If you run into me at the crag and start talking about training, watch out! I will willingly discuss climbing training for hours on end, so feel free to tell me to stop when you’ve heard enough.

If I could climb at my peak ability level every day, I would. My passion is that one-dimensional, and I’m totally okay with it. You have to accept yourself for who you are, and that’s what I am – I am a sport climber, through and through, and I love it and live for it, for sure. Having a passion is a wonderful expression and experience of being fully human, however silly and inconsequential that passion may be. Nothing makes me feel more alive and in tune with my surroundings and my entire being than climbing.

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