Stay ConnectedWhen climbing was a fringe sport, the epic tales of achievement were told around the campfire. As the sport continues to grow, Alex Honnold and co-host Fitz Cahall grab the mic to share stories from the people who define climbing by pushing the boundaries and challenging the status quo of the previous generation.
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Sometimes you don’t get to choose the risks you take. It’s a matter of survival. Alex talks with climber and photographer Nikki Smith about what she gained when she took one of the biggest risks of her life, how her passion for climbing has evolved as she’s forged her path to live authentically, and the importance of standing up for others. We ask some hard questions and get honest answers.
To manage risk, you first have to see the threat. Best-selling author Michele Wucker and Alex talk about how he evaluates risk, creating safety nets and his greatest fear.
In early 1980’s Yosemite, big wall climbing was tedious, difficult and often terrifying. Enter Lydia Bradey, a 19-year-old New Zealander. She’s not good at free climbing, but she has this overwhelming desire to experience the feeling of being on one the steepest bits of El Capitan thousands of feet above the ground. There are people who dream of doing things and there are the people that go do them. Today, we talk with Lydia about the dark art of aid climbing, Mount Everest and the power of big nature. Lauren Delaunay Miller, author of Valley of Giants, joins us to help tell her story.
As humans, we sometimes prefer to ignore big risks that are lurking within our view. See climate change or storm clouds building over a ridge. Best-selling author Michele Wucker has dedicated her career to understanding how humans interact with risk in big and small systems. Her hypothesis: the risks we take create a unique fingerprint. Colin Haley, aka Captain Safety, has shaped his fingerprint through two decades of elite alpinism, soloing and identifying risk factors.
Hazel Findlay and Alex dive deeper into the intricacies of British trad climbing. Just don’t hit the ground.
Far away from Yosemite’s spotlight on a crumbly backwater cliff, an unknown climber was about to change a sport by breaking some of its most sacred rules. Today, we are all very grateful he did. We talk with Alan Watts, pioneer of sport climbing in America, about the highs and lows of breaking the status quo. There’s an upside and a downside to every risk we take.
British trad climbing might be the most unique flavor of all. Is it an audacious game of risk or merely a fast track to a Darwin award? In 2000, while following in the footsteps of his heroes, a young James McHaffie booted up in front of the famed Masters Wall and launched upwards. What followed was a four hour fight for survival. Hazel Findlay helps supply perspective on the strange craft of British trad.
This year's Olympic climbers weren’t the original USA climbing team. That honor actually goes to a rag-tag group of adventurous dirtbags including Beth Wald, Russ Clune and Todd Skinner, who managed to travel to the USSR at the tail end of the Cold War to compete in a one of a kind climbing competition.
Were the Olympics more a bust than a boom? If you had $20 million to grow the sport of climbing how would you spend it? Are we at the end of the era where we climb alongside the pros? The Climbing Gold Team takes a look back at the learnings from season 2 and looks into the future of our sport.
These are the things in the shadows that no one wants to talk about. The open secrets elite athletes carry. The behaviors coaches would prefer not to see. The hard realities fans tend to ignore about the sport playing out in front of them. Today, Kai Lightner and Beth Rodden help us shine a light on disordered eating in climbing.
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