EP 01: Al Amores — sending 5.14a at 45, being the only Filipino at the crag in the 90s/2000s, developing Danao in the Philippines

🚀🚀 First episode! 🪨🍚

I'm Tim — a passionate climber and a proud Filipino. I've met lots of Filipino climbers who have a lot to share. How dope would it be if there was a podcast that featured us?

Rock and Rice is a podcast where Filipino climbers tell their story.

Follow us on  Instagram.

For this first interview, we're talking to Al Amores. 

Al Amores has been a climber for 29 years. He sent his first 5.14a at forty five years old. He's climbed all around the US, Europe, and Southeast Asia, and now splits his time between the Philippines, Colorado, and West Virginia.  He's also been developing a sport climbing area in the Philippines — Danao — for the last ten years.

Al's Links

• Al's Instagram
• Danao Climbing

Credits

• Podcast logo by Pat Palacio.
• Intro music: Bruiser by Winchip
• The "Rock and Rice" name comes from Julie De Jesus

Interview Notes

• 00:00:16 — Why Tim Casasola started Rock & Rice. And what it's about.
• 00:02:22 — Intro to Al
• 00:03:38 — Al's interview
• 00:08:28 — Being the only Filipino at the crag in the late 90's West Virginia
• 00:10:49 — Starting as a trad climber, then branching out into bouldering
• 00:13:34 — How the New River Gorge shaped Al
• 00:17:50 — Pursuing limits in bouldering, sport, and trad
• 00:21:34 — Meeting Julie De Jesus (and Chris Sharma) in Bishop
• 00:22:40 — Al, Julie, and Norm were the only Filipinos in Bishop in the early 2000s
• 00:28:23 — Style > Numbers
• 00:34:35 — Sending Art & Sport 5.13c/8a+ in Tonsai after his highest send being a 5.12b
• 00:38:24 — How Hidetaka Suzuki, a former pro from Japan, influenced Al
• 00:45:01 — Julie De Jesus was and is a well-rounded climber too (trad, sport, bouldering)
• 00:48:51 — The Lebron James approach to climbing
• 00:52:30 — Good climbing is like Kyrie Irving's game
• 01:00:40 — "The Temple Bouldering Cave in Tonsai is one of the best bouldering caves in the world."
• 01:03:23 — Al sends Beastmaster V10/7c+ in Tonsai then easily onsighted 5.12b's
• 01:05:00 — How Al discovered climbing potential in Danao
• 01:09:55 — Buying tons of bolts despite while new to route development
• 01:15:55 — First Ascent? Nah son, it's about the First Descent.
• 01:19:13 — Danao's place in the Philippines' larger climbing context
• 01:23:28 — Sending Jack Sparrow, a 5.14a in Cantabaco, Philippines
• 01:29:42 — "Routes are like restaurants. Your opinion isn't valid until you try it"
• 01:30:33 — If Al were to get after another 5.14a, it'd be Proper Soul at the New
• 01:32:49 — Tim reads Al's historical writeup on Jack Sparrow
• 01:38:13 — Veronica Baker Amores, the ED of Global Climbing Initiative and Al's wife!
• 01:44:56 — One aspect of climbing culture Al loves and one aspect he'd change
• 01:48:05 — Let's better support our route developers!
• 01:58:48 — Al's advice to the Filipino climbing community

Chapters

• 0:16 What is Rock & Rice?
• 2:22 Intro to Al Amores
• 3:38 Al introduces himself!
• 8:28 Being the only Filipino at the crag in the late 90's West Virginia
• 10:49 Starting as a trad climber, then branching out into bouldering
• 13:34 How the New River Gorge shaped Al
• 17:50 Pursuing limits in bouldering, sport, and trad
• 21:34 Meeting Julie De Jesus and Chris Sharma in Bishop
• 22:40 Al, Julie, and Norm were the only Filipinos in Bishop in the early 2000s
• 28:23 Style > Numbers
• 34:35 Sending Art & Sport 5.13c/8a+ in Tonsai after his highest send being a 5.12b
• 38:24 How Hidetaka Suzuki, a former pro from Japan, influenced Al
• 45:01 Julie De Jesus did (and still does) it all: trad, sport, bouldering
• 48:51 The Lebron James approach to climbing
• 52:30 Climbers should master the fundamentals like Kyrie Irving
• 1:00:40 "The Temple Bouldering Cave in Tonsai is one of the best bouldering caves in the world."
• 1:03:23 Al sends Beastmaster V10/7c+ in Tonsai then easily onsighted 5.12b's
• 1:05:00 How Al discovered climbing potential in Danao
• 1:09:55 Buying tons of bolts while being new to route development
• 1:15:55 First Ascent? Nah son, it's about the First Descent.
• 1:19:13 Danao's place in the Philippines' larger climbing context
• 1:23:28 Sending Jack Sparrow, a 5.14a in Cantabaco, Philippines
• 1:29:42 "Routes are like restaurants. Your opinion isn't valid until you try it"
• 1:30:33 If Al were to get after another 5.14a, it'd be Proper Soul at the New
• 1:32:49 The history of Jack Sparrow 5.14a
• 1:38:13 How Al met Veronica, the ED of Global Climbing Initiative (and now his wife!)
• 1:44:56 One aspect of climbing culture Al appreciates and one aspect he'd change
• 1:48:05 Let's better support our route developers!
• 1:58:48 "Strength in numbers" -- Al's advice to the Filipino climbing community

Transcript

 Intro music by Winship, it's called Bruiser. You can check it out on Spotify. I'm Tim Casasola. I'm your host of the Rock and Rice podcast and welcome to episode one. I'm a Filipino climber based in Los Angeles, California, and I'm second generation Filipino American. My parents were born in the Philippines.

My dad born in Tondo, Manila, and my mom born in Bataan. Both in the Luzon region and they immigrated to the States in their 20s and had me in California I started a podcast. I noticed that a lot of Climbing media doesn't really feature Filipino climbers. I wanted to create a podcast that I wish Existed when I first started climbing.

I first started climbing a little over six years ago and grew very passionate about the sport  and as I Grew more as a climber. I noticed that there are a lot of Filipinos who climb both in the Philippines and in the States And I assume in Europe too and  I thought how cool would it be to have a podcast that could share? 

there or our stories where we can talk about what it's like to be a Filipino climber  and Explore the intersection of the sport and our identity. The name of this podcast is called rock and rice It's a play on The climbing magazine rock and ice and the inspiration goes to a Filipina climber named Julie de Jesus She used to call her all Filipino climbing crew rock and rice Which you'll hear I'll talk a little bit more about in this episode I also hope to interview Julie on this show.

My goal is to publish one episode once a week  I intend to interview Filipino climbers, both in the Philippines and in the States and maybe even in Europe and other continents. And again, we're going to explore what it's like to just be a Filipino climber, the nuances of our identity and  what motivates us to climb. 

This first interview is with. Al Amores. Al is a friend and mentor of mine. He's a long time climber. He's been climbing for 29 years now. He's also a second generation Filipino. He was born in West Virginia. His family is from Cebu, another major island in the Philippines, and he's climbed all around the U.

S. and all around the world. He sent his first 514A at 45 years old. He's had long track record of boulders, trad climbs, multi pitch climbs, sport climbs, currently focused on sport climbing, and he's also super focused on  developing a climbing area in Danao. Danao is an hour and a half north of the main city in Cebu and I got to spend  almost three weeks in Danau and man, it's one of the best places I've ever climbed at the limestone is incredible.

The routes are long  pumpy. And some of the climbing is just really quality. And I'm excited for you to listen to this episode. It's the first episode of this podcast. And I hope you enjoy 

Algen. Welcome to the show. You prefer Al. Yeah, that was fine, man. That either one, Algen is what Brown people or my wife usually call me, but Al totally works. I grew up as Al. Nice. So yeah, man, that works. Sweet.  So Al, I guess like the conception of this podcast is talking to Filipino climbers and having them have a platform to share their story,  both as a climber and as a Filipino.

I, you, we've already had conversations about this before, just like the conception of this, but I'll be asking you some questions about your upbringing and what it was like to start as a rock climber in West Virginia, your adventures in California even your experience meeting Veronica and now what you're up to, into now.

How cool. How does that all sound? Yeah, it sounds good, man. Kick it off. Cool. Yeah, so first, tell me about your upbringing. Big question, but tell me about the early days of Al. Early days of me? I am a first generation Filipino American, much like you, right? Same. I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, at Queens County Hospital.

Just coincidence, but Michael Jordan and Mike Tyson were also born in that hospital. And me! Which means nothing in the grand scheme of things, but I think that's cool. Let's see, he was born to immigrant parents who are both medical professionals, lived in maybe six states before we settled in West Virginia.

I saw the U. S. out of the rear window of a U Haul for the first seven years of my life until we settled and grew up in a small, tight Filipino community in one of the whitest, most conservative states in the United States of America in West Virginia. So let's just say that we stuck out. Yeah. Yeah.

Damn. What what brought them to West Virginia? What was the impetus? Oh, when you're an immigrant doctor and moving just go into a country, a foreign country and trying to raise a family, you, I think everyone just wants community. And my father and his brother and a lot of their extended network from med school here in in Cebu.

Kind of made them all settle down, and  it's not ironic at all. It's not, I don't know how much of it was designed, but it's real small town USA. Like, when I was growing up, my hometown was maybe not even 100, 000 people, if that, and it suited their small town needs small island upbringings of just being close.

That's the difference driving 10 minutes across a river in West Virginia versus driving the same distance in L. A. in 40 minutes. Damn. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So I basically grew up with five or six different sets of parents and siblings in different households as the youngest. Classical Filipino experience.

Yep. As the youngest, as the bunso, I guess in Tagalog.  Yeah, as the baby, as the penangga in Bisaya. Yeah. Penangga. Yeah. Oh yeah, that's one of the names of your routes. Exactly. In Danau. Yep. I'm curious, as the penangga,  did you, how do you think that's shaped?  Maybe we'll get into this later, but I'm, I am curious how that's shaped your experience as an adult today, but Do you have any early thoughts on that?

Yeah it's basic. Being  inspired by a bunch of men and women role models who I considered my older siblings. Wanting to be as cool as them.  As Socially intelligent is them like you grew up in this extroverted Filipino community. You're just I'd spent a whole childhood watching everybody like they were the cool kids, you know I'd like they were and I got to watch them and but I also didn't want to be carbon copy a carbon copy of them I needed to forge my own path in everything like before climbing it was skiing before skiing it was something that I know we share a common bond with I was amongst the first wave of mid 80s break dancers. 

Like I had to make choices that were my own but with a with the ultimate goal to be as cool as the as all the adopted or just like non blood siblings of mine who I just thought were the coolest people on earth. Yeah. Shout outs to Lin, I've had a chance to meet. One of Alice's sisters, she's based in Highland Park with her husband, Josh.

And they've done a lot of help with some of the work we're doing out here. I can talk a little bit more about that offline. But shout out to Celine out in Highland Park. Oh, she'll love that. I'll tell her to listen to this. Yeah, for sure. Thank you. So were you often the only Filipino at the crack?

What was that? Oh, I was the, in West Virginia, I was the only Filipino at the crack.  So  when I first started. When I first got exposed to climbing in 95, it was actually through my, through one of my Filipino adopted siblings. She had a white friend, ambiguously a boyfriend at the time who went through I bet he was a boyfriend.

Yeah, I don't know, man. It's just to say a friend, ambiguous, friend for sure, ambiguously a boyfriend, but his name was Ryan and she randomly asked if I wanted to go climbing with she and Ryan one day. And it, the enticing part really wasn't even the climbing. It was the fact that he had non schwag weed that came from this magical humble place.

So I followed them. And got  learned how to, I didn't even learn anything now that I think about it. I just got tied into a harness and just trusted that the equipment worked and that everyone knew what they were doing. And I was just top roping and got pretty hooked from the first time I ever went. 

Yeah. And only Filipino at the crag, apart from Claire, who's Filipino American like me, just the two of us.  That's it.  Anywhere. Yeah. Where was this when you first tied into a rope? Where were you? New River Gorge, Fayetteville, West Virginia. About a one hour away from my hometown in Charleston, West Virginia. 

Cool. Must have been a different time back then. Oh, completely. There were no, no big commercial gyms. Not even a bunch of pieces of plywood someone just smashed together with nails and screws. Called it a, called it a home gym, right? There was nothing. There were maybe, I think in California there was a gym.

In Manhattan there was a gym. Only the biggest cities. Could even dare to experiment with such a fringe activity and try to make an artificial version of it I mean now climbing's evolved where you know, like indoor climbing is its own discipline It's definitely like a whole subset of climbing like bouldering or track climbing or sport climbing indoor climbing in and of itself whether you're bouldering or sport climbing is It's a whole different discipline that's almost, yeah, it's climbing, but it's definitely its own form of climbing that needs to be respected as their people are really good at that and just that.

And yeah, they're good at that for a reason. Yeah. So if I remember our past conversations correctly, did you start as a track climber first? Yeah. That's just, I think the way that anyone gets in, introduced to a sport or any activity, it's, it's, a lot of it's dependent on who is bringing you.

Nowadays, I feel like, I'm not sure what the metrics are, if there's even trackable numbers, but I think most people probably get introduced to climbing through bouldering. It's the least, it's the least cost intensive. It's the easiest or barely any barriers. You can rent a pair of shoes and then just get that.

sack of chalk and just go figure it out with your friends. And then at that point, your buy in is really minimal compared to owning a harness and a rope and quick draws or any gear, and then not just that, but paying  for the skills to even know how to use that equipment safely. Yeah, so I would guess that most people are introduced through bouldering, but the way I was introduced back in the day was through, through very traditional, like trad climbers who for one reason or another.

Just stuffed their flesh into cracks of different sizes, and that's what I thought climbing was and it still is it's a form of it But that's the all I thought climbing was mixed in with a couple of face climbing moves and then I ended up a semester student on knolls like a year after I started climbing like a year and a half and  Yeah, I learned a lot of outdoor technical skills that extended beyond climbing but a lot of knolls was traditional climbing based Like we did some face climbing, but a lot of it was like gear intensive.

This was not a sport climbing trip or a bouldering trip by, by any means. It was learning like hard technical skills. So I would say, yeah, for the first seven or eight years of my climbing, it was trad and bouldering focused. Even the bouldering was I, even I pursued the bouldering as a way to make me a better trad climber because bouldering doesn't lie.

Like you can climb a certain difficulty level. And when you know what those limits are, and then when you go trad climbing, you know how comfortable maybe you should or shouldn't be far above gear. So I use those two together, which is, Oh, I don't know. A lot of people thought that was unusual back then, or even like 15 years into my climbing.

But I feel like a lot of high ends, try climbers now are actually really good boulders and they focus on it for a reason. Yeah, totally. I'm curious about the new. You mentioned to me yesterday that right now it's kind of 50 50 trad sport. When you were starting, was it mostly trad at the new? No, it's always been about 50 50 because you have these the first of all, and I don't care what anybody says and some people have backed me up on this.

The New River Gorge is 300 million year old sandstone. It's down to like nature and the, and all the forces of erosion have gotten that sandstone down to the last. Just kryptonite bulletproof layer of stone. It's featured like crazy and it's skin friendly and it really there's no such I don't know what choss is they don't maybe don't even have that word in the New River Gorge lexicon because  The raw quality consistently might be the best in the world There's no way that anything surpasses it like and I haven't been everywhere yet I still need to go to the sandstone the ancient sandstone in Australia  I've heard it goes head to head with the new but Anyway the rock quality is incredible, and you have these faces that are either split by cracks, or they have really featured aretes, dihedrals, or there's lots of what would be by trad standards blank faces, unprotectable faces, and overhangs with all these shelves, and Wow.

Yeah, it's every hold imaginable is there. I think  I'm so fortunate in retrospect now to started my climbing part of my life at the New River Gorge, because having gone back recently,  For the first time in 23 years, it made me realize after all the global climbing I've done that it probably is the best single pitch climbing area I have ever seen.

Damn. Yeah. Yeah. I still really want to go. I've seen so many great sport climbing routes out there. It's it seems like it still holds its reputation today. Yeah, it's interesting it doesn't and it doesn't like a lot of people want to just go to the red Because it's it's like I'm not gonna say it's easy climbing It is hard climbing everywhere But I think it's more transferable for a gym climber to like for someone who starts inside and there's nothing disparaging here I'm not making any judgments, but the red, I've been there a few times and it resembles  what would be a  rendition of a gym, if gym climbing, if AI put gym climbing on Sandstone, it would basically just end up looking like the River Gorge.

And the New River Gorge does not look like that. It's why I think it makes you such a good climber if you climb there. You have to have a lot of tricks in your bag at the new to climb to navigate those just chaotic The chaos layout of what nature left behind is like what you have for Holtz there.

Yeah, that's yeah it's interesting like the other day when we were in Yggdrasil together when you saw me Reach down to the shelf and hand jam and do a high clip.  That's New River Gorge for you right there. Yeah, it's like something I would have learned 20 something years ago, 25, 26, 27 years ago.

Yeah. I remember belaying you on, so the listeners, we were in a crack in Iloilo one of the islands in the Visayas and Yggdrasil is their main crack and they, there was one route we tried.  which was shout outs to Kareem from Ilo climbing community. This was one of her projects and it took me a couple of goes to get it.

My first go, I was like completely in shock, I was like, Oh, succeed should be easy to do. And I was just like, wow, this is really good climbing. So good that I'm falling. And the final clip is. Really awkward. I think I remember you, Ali, you were like, why is Tim clipping that way? Like that, clipping shouldn't be a crux.

And you found your own beta where you, like you said, you stuck your hand in the jug because there was a crack there. I think you were chalking off both sides of your hand. Yes. Suck it in there if you're right. We were all like, How did Al reach the clips? And then you're like, guys, my days of track climbing really paid off there.

I did a hand jam and reach the clips. And then instantly Kareem did the same thing. And she was like, damn, that shit goes. Yeah. Yeah. It's that's what happens. Like I, I've always focused from right around the 10 year point of my climbing. I always I wanted to do. Everything. I wanted to, on my own personal level, maximize my limits at what I consider to be like the three climbing disciplines.

There's a fourth now, for sure. Gym climbing. Climbing on plastic. But track climbing, sport climbing, bouldering. I if anyone's ever read the old John Long, How to rock climb or advanced rock climbing and those old school books in advanced rock climbing.  He had a quote. I'm not sure if he was quoting someone or if this is a john long quote from the man himself, but  He said and granted the metrics are different now, but he said i'm going to paraphrase here Rare is the bird who can climb 5.

11 trad and 5. 11 sport equally And I took that as a challenge in my early days of climbing. And I, I'm like, all right I want to throw a bouldering in there, but I want to be, I want to have climbed at least a 5. 11 sport route, a 5. 11 trad route, and a V5  boulder problem. Like when you're like six or seven years into it and you don't have the fast track.

To getting to, to maximize some potential, like gyms offer now with all the, with community and all the training and all the reps, all those moves you put into the gym. Those are reps. Like when you're primarily an outdoor climber, you don't get the same amount of reps and we don't get the same amount of reps.

You don't get that repetition. You don't have good practice. It takes quite a bit longer to become a better climber, but yeah, I reached those metrics and I just kept pushing the numbers up over the years. Yeah, to the point where I forgot that it was a goal, but then I realized I had actually exceeded  any of my wildest expectations of what I would have, wanted out of myself 20 years ago.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. As a spoiler for the listeners we're going to get into, I remember when Alan and I first met. I had dinner in person with his wife, Veronica, he had told me that he had sent his first  514A at 45 years old here in the Philippines called Jack Sparrow. We're going to get into that, but for me, that was an experience of immediately my brother turned to me after that dinner and asked me.

Is that something you'd ever want to do one day? And I was like, yeah,  so it's possible to send to send as hard as 514 at 45, but we'll definitely get into that. I am curious in those early days as a climber, who were some people you were looking up to? You mentioned John Long. 

Oh, that's just the author. Of course, there was stone masters. You read about all that, what's funny and I'll like organically loop this into the name of your podcast. Yeah. When I first walked into the buttermilks, man, I shit you not. I pull into the birthday boulder parking lot back then.

And here's my spoiler alert. I ended up living in Bishop and mammoth and being an East side resident for a little over a decade. But when I pull into the birthday boulder parking lot,  I see an Asian woman,  big sunglasses, could be of Latin American descent, I couldn't figure it out from the distance, but then  I look at the top of the birthday boulder and  I see Chris Sharma's face, he's topping out, he's a teenager, I see Brett Lowell, I see their whole crew of people on that same trip I cross paths with Dave Graham for sure.

Like in it's just it's bishop was such a backwater unknown not unknown But just not a popular area that like when these really high end or pro climbers would just converge there It was really just them and I felt like the outsider not just because I wasn't a pro I was a rookie But I'm just like I am the only person here that you couldn't throw into the centerfold of rock and ice Like everything everyone else made sense, so so yeah, I like to everyone else.

Yeah I was just like obviously do not belong here. But but yeah, it was Julie de Jesus who was I ran into at the time And she's quirky and funny as hell, like really genuine and like we're friends to this day. Yeah, but julie Said to me like I don't know maybe just to help break the ice for me.

She was like, hey, you're Filipino I'm Filipino. She's like you want to now? I finally I can have my I can start my climbing club and I was like, what climbing club? she was like joy, and it's called rock and rice and  Right away. She's so funny. It was like such a character that even I will think The, you heard it from me and I still remember it this way.

Like my memories photographing for what a lot of people say. Even Chris Sharma catching on to just that fun energy behind all of it was like, Hey, I want to be Filipino too. And and I had actually learned that he went. To the Philippines with Julie because that was his first serious girlfriend.

Wow. So yeah, that's so yeah moving in the early days in Bishop Yeah, my climbing took me from West Virginia to the early days like it I was one of those I was one of those random first I apart from Julie as like Julie and then myself and this guy named norm who's half filipino we were the only filipinos.

We're the only non white people besides the native, like besides the Paiute population, or Hispanic, like Mexican folks that were there, we, as climbers, we were definitely the only Asian people living there for quite a while. So yeah, we, let's just say we stuck out a little. And then Julie left not long after I moved there, and then it was just like really me, and a crew of Japanese dudes, and like I would always get confused with, One of the other Japanese dudes.

He's his name was Al, I was Al. And I'm like, I swear I'm not Japanese. Whatever. People would be thanking me for bolting this place called Clark Canyon. And I'm like, dude, that wasn't me. I'm like, first of all, he's Japanese, and you should know the friggin difference. Yeah. Maybe they don't.

And what year was that? This is, we're talking California. Yeah, we're talking 2000  2000 2001, 2002, 2003. Wow. 2004, something like that. By five a five season period. Yeah, 2001 people were still confusing a filipino. I mean because granted there's this guy alan Who did a lot of major development?

I think he lives in the bay area now, but he bolted this place I'm, sure if anyone from california not even california anyone who's climbed in the east side knows clark canyon a lot of that was alan jeff this guy marshall. These are all asian dudes and they're all they're all japanese Wow, yeah, these guys were some of the earliest developers of clark canyon, which is a volcano.

It's basically like malibu creek I can't believe i'm gonna say this but probably not even probably as good not as good. Wow Yeah, I think malibu creek's freaking awesome, man. Yeah, it's great and it's given the proximity to a massive like urban area like la there's a thousand little volcanic towers to climb on the east side, but there's only one malibu creek, right?

So yeah, I gotta say I can't believe i'm gonna say but I think malibu creek's better than clark canyon Yeah, but you're saying they were yeah developers. Yeah, the early people like the early developers who spearheaded you can still look at it if you look at Mammoth Area Rock Climbs and you look at the original developers.

A lot of it was, I believe it was Alan Hirahara. That's awesome. Yeah. Do you remember if they were first gen or born in the States? I don't recall. I, but if, I always got the feeling that these were SoCal guys. Yeah. But, but anyone there's, I have a couple of friends who are actually from Mammoth.

Otherwise, it's like a mini version of L. A. Yeah. Nobody's from there. Just people move there. Yeah. You're actual Southern California, but my sister was an import. I was an import. Yeah. For sure. So it is. Yeah. That's really cool to, to hear about.

I am, as someone that has climbed in Bishop of Fairmount I am curious to hear what it was like in those days when you were climbing there back in 2001. Yeah, just to be clear I, so I went there in 2000 and when, before, before climbing websites before,  before the internet was really like the high powered functioning internet that we know of now,  we still I still got rock and ice and climbing in the mail, and back in the day, rock and ice did these old road trip issues.

And Bishop was one of the featured areas of of Rock A Nice Road Trip issue. And as I flipped through the pages and saw Oh man, this is all in one place. There's Owens River Gorge sport climbing coming from the New River Gorge. I'm like, oh another river gorge. It's gotta be awesome, right? And then I saw all the obviously all the bouldering and bish like in the Bishop and I'd spent some time in Waco tanks  In my earliest days climbing and just seeing all those pockets and jugs I'm like, oh that already speaks to me, you know then I see all those big granite eggs like on the other side of the interstate And I didn't even realize it then, but it's pretty amazing that like Interstate 395, which goes right through Bishop.

Yeah. It, on the West side,  all that shit is granite. On the East side, it's all volcanic tuff. And then it breaks down into different subsets of each rock type. There, there's at least three different kinds of volcanic tuff and Bishop going up to Mammoth. And  there's gotta be at least three different kinds of granite, like From the quartz manzanite you see it in, in the buttermilks to the alpine granite that you see  up into the Sierra, like at Rock Creek and Pine Creek, and then once you head into the valley, that's a whole nother glacially carved granite.

They're all so different. Yeah, my there was such a formative area for me to live in as a younger climber because I chased after everything. I didn't just stick to one place and exposing yourself to different rock types.  As consistently as possible is one of it's one of the ingredients of the secret sauce of just Developing really good footwork and comfort mentally on just different types of terrain.

You know what you can get away with  Based on how sharp, how polished, like just certain friction qualities you get from rock type to rock type. So that's one of the things I think I'm, I would never change about my earliest days of climbing is I,  it wasn't by design, but it's Oh, of course I want to climb in Yosemite and Tuolumne and all the stuff around Mammoth.

And I want to go to red rocks and I want to go to St. George and I want to go to J tree. And unknowingly, I was really rounding out my climbing game by just. trying,  stupidly probably, trying to stay to like my peak numbers, even though the style and the rock type changed. Because to this day, my one takeaway from climbing is just numbers, as much as we use them as a mathematical metric to like quantify things,  they mean.

They don't mean the first thing in climbing style means everything. Yes. It's a simple equation. If I can borrow from math is to just have style greater than numbers because it's the style. The style is like, how steep is it? What kind of rock is it? Steep granite climbs out a hell of a lot differently than steep, juggy volcanic now, doesn't it?

Yes.  So just because you're good at one style doesn't mean that you climb a number. I think that's one of the silliest statements and one of the silliest questions I've ever heard in climbing is like when someone either declares, I'm a  five 11 climber, or when someone's like, how hard do you climb my, I think that's a loaded question as well as like having loaded answers. 

Because if you say you're a 5'11 climber, then you better be able to bring your game if someone's here's a rack of cams, and there's an off width, or here's a bunch of quick draws, and here's 5'11 slab. Versus, oh, here's 5'11 overhanging big pockets and buckets, like in Malibu or something, or in Clark Canyon.

All of those are 5'11.  So yeah, like to this day I if I don't know what kind of climbing I'm doing, I'm always, that's my first question okay, we're bouldering. What's the rock type? What style is it? Yeah, we're same thing sport climbing track climbing. What's the rock type? What style is it? That's that's my first question that if the whole point of a question is to gain just ascertain some useful information Numbers mean jack shit.

Yeah. Yeah, so it's a style of style and rock type is everything first because then you can start asking real questions. Totally Yeah, I'm curious to entertain this thought some more so style over grades style over numbers and grades Yeah, and you mentioned that you were as a younger climber sort of Going after grades that you've done in different rock types.

Yeah, I guess  What was that experience for you and maybe more philosophically? Do you see grades as a way? Maybe this is a leading question. You can disagree  Do you see grades as a merely as a way for people to push themselves? Yeah, absolutely but pushing yourself can be done in a  efficient and smart way, or it can be done really stupidly.

For example, like some of my earliest climbing injuries were trying to hit  V7 to pull a number out of a hat at a brand new climbing area to me where I wasn't used to the way the rock actually climbed. And at that point,  if you just try to punch your way out of a situation and your climbing skill goes out the window, And if you decide to grab a marginally pock positive hold and just muscle fuck it below your shoulder without using any technique, that's where people get injured and  that's why for example, if I had never climbed if it's my first time climbing the Joes Valley, for example, and I spent, a whole winter climbing in  the Tablelands,  There is some crossover for sure, but there are enough nuanced differences where most climbers, at least I'll put my, I'll lump myself in that category of most climbers. 

You shouldn't really be chasing after a number.  You should be chasing after the quality rock, the good problems. If you ever see star ratings in a guide, that usually means a rock's really good. It's nobody's Oh yeah, like 513 or V9. Like we're going to get a high stars because of a number.

Bullshit. No one cares. Like nobody should care about that. How good is the rock? What's the rock quality like? So rock quality go for that. Cause nobody's got time for sharp, chossy, awful rock. Maybe we don't, I don't know, but I've seen plenty of people chase after a number, like to come back looking like they.

Fucking fought a saber toothed cat, it's like she's all shredded oh my god, like dude, what a choss pile It's if that wasn't v8 you wouldn't be doing it. Yeah, like whatever but but yeah, man, I think the numbers  They push us for sure and I systematically try to take down numbers when I was a beginner, but I saw it as a very linear path, which climbing is not like improvement is not linear at all.

You and I actually have very similar sport climbing non linear paths to  a broad sense of what I would call improvement. Like for you, for example, I believe your previous hardest red point before double or nothing was 12a. Yeah. I was the same thing. Just shift the numbers. I focused mainly on trad and bouldering.

I knew what I could do bouldering and I knew what I could do trad climbing. So I had to flip the mental switches over to, okay, let's apply this to sport climbing. My previous hardest sport climb red point before my highest all in the same year was I went from 12 b to 13 c  Yeah, damn, but it just it made Those numbers seem like they don't make sense, which they don't yeah But when I broke down the 13c sport climb that I did into boulder problems They were all well within my striking, within my, my, my wheelhouse of what I could do.

The style made sense. 45 degrees overhanging. The first entry boulder problem is probably V4 or V5 with dynamic moves to really good holds to a knee bar rest. Done. Like I should be able to do something like that in a handful of tries.  And then the middle crux, a style that I wasn't used to two foot crux.

It's probably around a V7 two foot crux. Which, stylistically, if you haven't spent a lot of time on tufas, it's pretty punishing. You have to build even, it's really, it's so nuanced, you have to even build a certain set of climbing skin to pull as hard and grab as hard as you want. Because when you are railing down on steep tufas It will mow  the base of your thumb and then that the crook, the curvier of your hand up because you were putting so much force on that first digit thumb and middle pinch power.

But yeah, so middle crux on that thing was, it's called art and sport. It was like V7 and then the outro boulder problem guarding the chains was like V3 slopers, which in my opinion location, it's like hard climbing at your relative, like hard climbing relative to the climber. It's like real estate.

It's like, where's the crux located? Cause when you're pumped stupid out of your mind, a V3 can feel like V5 or V6. Totally. And I have seen people  take the ramp to Puntzville. Like just pumped out of their minds and couldn't like, couldn't even see straight. And it didn't even matter if it was V3, it could have been V1 at that point.

They probably were still going to be like fighting tooth and nail just to clip a chain. So but yeah, so v5 v7 v3. Yeah with all like one good rest and then decent rest So I knew by bouldering standards I could do it  But here's where my biggest to be good 13 year 13 see the 13th. Yeah, what route was that art and sport in Tonsai? 

so Yeah, to be clear though, I, it was pretty stupid because I was on such a personal high horse of having achieved like a bucket list number at the time. That was in 2009. Huh. That I mistakenly  had assumed that  everything between, so everything from 12C to 13B should come easily. Yeah. That's looking at it from pure metrics and climbing grades and difficulty.

It's not fucking math. Because I can still to this day Fall on 10 d and on site 12 be in the same session Yeah, cuz the styles may not match like the styles may not be indicative of like the number, like it just recently that was a real example and when I was in Margalef in December and Or it could have been November.

Anyway last year as in Margalef and in the same day I completely got my ass handed to me on old school 10 D. Damn. And then in the afternoon I flashed one of the classic long 12 Bs. Wow. All in the same day. So you actually fell on a 10 D. Yeah. But you flashed a 12 B. And the thing is, I give zero shits.

Yeah. Cause that's, that doesn't mean I'm suddenly like, I don't believe in unsending, but but that doesn't mean, I don't climb by numbers and then judge myself on those numbers, if, and if anyone disagrees with this, I'll give you a healthy. If any plastic head out there who can crimp and just muscle fuck their way through tiny crimpers on 512 and V6 thinks that they've got it and they don't climb outside, oh man, just just find me and let's go to the old school moderates on glacially carved granite where you can actually see the doubt on your face as you're about to smear on nonsense Trying to climb up a fucking urinal yeah And like you tell me if suddenly your skills translate because it's it's a style thing Yeah, and for people like myself or people way better than me who've spent a lifetime on certain surfaces Like yeah, these things are gonna look hilariously easy when they do it But then your sphincter will be curiously tight and closed as you try, so anyway Yeah, so wait art in sport art and sport and before that you'd sent Like 12b.

A 12b. What was it? Do you remember? I don't even remember. It was probably on the east side. Gotcha. Yeah. Completely different style. Yeah, completely different. It's like vertical granite face climbing. Yeah. Yeah, it's something like. I spent a ton of time bouldering and track climbing.

Bouldering and track climbing was my focus. Yeah. Yeah. Gotcha. Gotcha. I'm curious. I have more questions about Tanze, but I guess back to Bishop.  Eastside in general, what were some of your  Favorite lines, problems, routes out there. Okay. One of the, one of the original professionals that I crossed paths with back then was a Japanese climber straight up from Japan, Japanese climber named Hitotaka Suzuki.

He was bold. He weighed about, I don't know, 85 pounds with all of his down gear on he, like shorter than my mom.  And But had this yeah I don't know, man. Like he had this focus to him and he's an old pro. He's, he did one of the earliest sense of this of hard 513 track climbing in the United States.

There's a crack climb up in I believe in Tahoe area called the grand illusion and it's 13 C  super overhanging,  just hard track climbing. And Hittitaka probably got, I don't know, somewhere in the first couple of cents, three, maybe, but he was also a boulder.  And lived in Bishop. Last I heard about Hidetaka, he retired from climbing altogether and now he windsurfs in Hawaii or something.

Nice. But Has one, guys. Yeah? Yeah. But, yeah, it's crazy, though, because he was a really bold climber, and we always he said, Hidetaka Suzuki. We called him Hideous Taco Suzuki, because this dude, this dude would would do some scary keep it together highball shit that, some stuff I still won't dare to even try.

But but, it's supposedly moderate, but what does a number even matter when you're afraid you're gonna die, right? But anyway, I watched him go through Bishop in my earliest days, and this is before there was a guidebook. There was a map. There's a folder of a bunch of maps, only Bisha, only butter, only the buttermilks and happy's got like the glossy map.

Everything else was like straight out of Nick Ryan's Xerox machine. And like even if a moderate, like anyone who spent time in the Sierra knows that wind can rip right through there. Yeah. Any significant wind when you're just trying to locate a problem. Yeah. And your maps would just all go blowing like across 395 and they were just gone.

But like I was in the Happy Boulders once and saw Hitataka and I couldn't believe his map. It was like a dork who like checked off all the words they looked up in the dictionary and it was like 75 percent checked You know I like watch him looking through his map and there are all those little Squares to check off if you've done it  that dude started at VB the basic and had checked off everything up to Eight or nine that I could see on his map.

Damn, but he really just like Systematically worked his way through the grades like it didn't even matter. He's I just haven't done that one I'm gonna do it. So I tried to do that  because hey the talk is doing it. I'm a new climber I'm like, if it works for him, this guy worked for me, right?

And yeah, so I you know, I don't know if I don't know how smart that was or if it was smart at all But I you know, there's a really strong chance in bishop if it's under If it's v6 or under probably  done it Cause I was just trying to check off all the little, I'm like, I wanted my maps to look like Hidetaka's maps. 

Yeah and then it's so back to oh, where am I? I'm on the boulders. I'll never forget the first time I did the Hulk. I'm, just so people know, I'm 5'4 with a plus 6. Damn. And I didn't know that, back then, we didn't measure anything. But I knew that if I had got high feet, I could close the distance between holds and do The big air quotes, like tall people, beta, no problem.

So yeah, first time I did the Hulk and that was a big one. Yeah, that every color you are classic. Just all the classics back then when these problems carried like a lot of weight when not a whole guy, there were very few people climbing double digits back then. So yeah, I would just try to take down all the all the things I could like in.

That I reasonably could on certain surfaces. What's crazy though is it took me maybe five years  for my granite climbing, my granite bouldering and bishop to, to even seek any, see any kind of equilibrium with my more gymnastic pocket climbing that you see in the Tamelands. But yeah, like on the, but on the on the, like on the granite side, of course, you've got I'll never forget the first time I did the Iron Man.

When I did King Tut, when I did Saigon, like, when up in the Druidstones yeah, there's some classics, anything on, everything on the Thunderwall, Old Eye, was my first V9 until someone downgraded it, I'll tell you it happens, right? Is it an 8 now? I, that, I think that's what they say I guess it was supposed to be, like, oh, yeah, a knee bar downgrade, I didn't use a knee bar, but hey, whatever and then Get Carter anyone wants to decode what I'm talking about here, but the ruckus yeah, Jedi mind tricks, like all these things back then, like that was my sweet spot where I just tried to take down as many, as many boulder problems as I could at my limit.

So yeah, those were the boulders that really stick out to me but my favorite all time boulder problem in on the East side, it's actually  at the tank boulder in May Lake Tuolumne. Wow. The center line on the tank.  Maybe to this day has some of the coolest moves I have ever done and I still remember all of my beta for it Wow, yeah, like and the, and I'm talking the footwork was just like, was insane.

Yeah. It's heel hook, toe down, transfer heel to toe. It's all these weird flag under, toe under, heels, transfer to toe, take that flag under, transfer to a heel. Every, all the feet do everything imaginable in just one compacted body length. And the rock is perfect and it's just like cavey crack thing.

And I'll show it to you sometime, but there's footage of it out there. Sweet. That's amazing. I just wrote that down. I feel like that'll be a centerline will probably be one that not a lot of people in my generation know a lot about. So that's, that'll be cool for folks like me who get after it.

I'm curious was also, was Julie Julie, again, the aforementioned Julie DeJesus who had. Coined this term rock and rice, which is the inspiration of this podcast We're working out some logistics to have her on the show as well. Was she also doing the map checking out? No, Julie. Julie is still and definitely was back then a very talented climber no spoilers because I'm sure people will figure it out when you interview her if you can get her to  Spray about herself.

But but yeah, I've seen her like I've watched her just walk up super hard trad lines in Yosemite. I've seen her sport climb super hard, and I have seen her absolutely just punch every boulder problem in the face and end up on top stuff that I had just aspired to do. She was a classic all arounder no, I've seen her do, she was one of those awesome all around climbers. 

Within all the disciplines she chased after I didn't see too many glaring weaknesses like she just was a really good climber Yeah, I just plain simple. Were there others like you both also chasing after all disciplines or was it a select few? I don't know. Like you mean Asians or just people in general?

Oh people in general. Oh, yeah There's there I call them. I call them Sierra warriors. I know people who've Done a bunch of backcountry skiing in a morning, like hard terrain and spent the rest of the day, either pumping iron in the gym or bouldering down to the buttermilks, like with a headlamp on, like trying hard.

Yeah, I know that there are people who I've seen do incredible things. And like I said, it's like the numbers are in a really inaccurate metric to to put any value judgment on what they're doing, but if you can, in a summer.  Sport climb 512, track climb 512, and boulder V8.

It's not a whole lot of people hitting all those numbers. And it's, when you're doing, it takes,  every discipline takes a certain amount of mastery, which, which implies that you're spending a certain amount of time, you're dedicating a certain amount of time to it. It's, I think it's really difficult to be a good, It takes years to be a really good all around climber.

Cause you have to it's a necessary part of the equation to give up  one of the disciplines. I'm so don't get me wrong. There's some freaking like some freaks in nature out there that are really good at doing it all. Yeah. They're called pros, but like for the rest of us that aren't pros, it's tough.

If I had to go like zipper up, just decorate a crack right now with my old school cams and nuts, like off the couch,  man, I might have to.  I'm definitely starting below 5'10 it's just been so long, and I've track climbed up to 5'12 it's just that I've been off, I've been off the horse for a long time.

And case in point, all my main focus now is just sport climbing. Being a developer, and being in a place where sport climbing is the name of the game. Yeah. And having a wife who doesn't boulder. And honestly, at my age I don't bounce like I used to. I just break when I get pads from distance.

So I'm not doing that. Yeah. Not that I can't I still hold my own bouldering, spent a winter bouldering and in Colorado on plastic and, I was still able to hit the, hit the high water mark. Doing V nines on plastic. And so like getting really close on the occasional 10 but yeah, and a lot of that isn't power based at all.

It's just movement and skill based at this point. Like I know how to pick my fights every boulder problem, every climb like presents, it's like a handpicked opponent in a fight. It's like this opponent may outmatch all of your skills. Doesn't matter what the grade is. You might get your ass kicked, or it's Oh, let me hand pick this.

What do I feel good at right now? Oh, two finger pockets. Yeah, sure. I'll try this V 9. I don't know much two finger pockets. It's, you gotta pick your battles wisely, because unless you're, like, a pro, most of us have a pretty obvious climbing weakness. Yeah, yeah, gotta pick your battles wisely. It's like the LeBron James approach, where, you know, as he gets older, his game evolves from less a physical to a mental.  Smart kind of game. I absolutely, man. Hey, an intelligent experience approach to any sport that relies squarely on fundamentals and for you listeners out there, fundamentals, like how you engage a foothold, how you get your weight over it, the order of operations when you're in phase, waiting that foot, trusting that rubber to bite in there, knowing how to, what it feels like for your foot to depress under your body weight and foot and ankle power and calf power, how that rubber fits that hold like a jigsaw puzzle piece, like knowing it down to that detail,  none of that is really strength based.

A lot of that, a lot of that is just  smart practice in a shitload of repetition. Putting in your, as Malcolm Gladwell would say, like your 10, 000 hours, practicing the right thing, the right way. Yeah. But yeah I think that's why a lot of older athletes who are just really smart and have a cerebral approach, like LeBron, Lynn Hill.

Chris Sharma, like you have these older climbers who do what they do well, their foundational toolkit is unchanged and it's like a knife, right? You have a multi tool. No one ever uses the toothpicks, the scissors, the wine bottle opener, like all those weird things. Oh, look at that cork. So look, I have three different knife sizes.

Hey, when it comes to a multi tool, the foundation is. The pliers and the blade on all you need everything else is just window dressing, right? That climbing is a lot like that. It's  what do you have? I've got this razor sharp edge that I'm going to use 90 percent of the time, and it has not lost any of its sharpness.

That's just that one thing. And for me, that's like the foundation of anyone's climbing early. It's like their footwork and how to really use their climbing shoe is as the tool that all these is. Climbing shoe designers intend them to be used as weapons, as tools in a certain way. And when you really know, like, how to use your feet in a certain way, that's where I truly believe you start to notice the difference.

You could blindfold me right now, have someone put  five different climbing shoe models on me, and I can tell you without a doubt. You can  plug up my ears, you can keep everything off and don't, and put the blinders on, don't let me look down. I'll tell you what climbing shoe I have on. Because they all, my foot has a certain timing that I like to rely on hitting a hold.

You can make them blank and I'll tell you what's a Mira, what's a Testarossa, what a Theory is. I'm that connected. At least for, like, how I like to use my shoes. Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Just a little pearl of pearl of wisdom. That's all.  Yeah. For the listeners, I, when first climbing with Val belaying him, I, the first thing I noticed was  he would not use, he would use as least of his hands as possible to go up the route.

At least with. Within the first two bolts. And the philosophy behind it was prioritizing attention to the feet, which is definitely something I think a lot of climbers, especially a lot of gym climbers can work on. That was definitely something I noticed for sure. You also, I also want to go to Tanzai but we had talked about this idea of mastery and you thought about it and you're like, Tim, I think. 

I think of Mastery as Kyrie Irving, his game, specifically his game albeit other things he really has the fundamentals  now. Tell us a little bit more about that. No, it's not even Kyrie Irving so much as it was I was just watching a video, and I'm like, that, exactly, like the guy's 10 years in the league, and he no longer does six wizard dribbles to break someone's ankles, and then do some insane 180 reverse layup while he's falling on his back.

That's not how he scores anymore for him. He's got Three go to moves and he's completely ambidextrous which makes it really hard for people to figure out what he's doing with his three moves, but It's it's a hezi either way  Which is not a good thing in climbing, by the way. When people break out the Hesi, I'm like, No.

If you're gonna go big, you shit or get off the pot. Don't double clutch, don't Hesi, you're just you're giving away power that you're going to need in like a few body lengths, anyway. But yeah, he just uses three foundational moves and then learns how to Manipulate everyone around him and like how much space he creates with his moves And he really is just the video I watch he only uses three three moves really and he just takes what's given to him and in climbing I feel like it's that parallel for me is  My foundational moves is like really knowing how to  okay There's too many like  in gym climbing it might make sense to go.

Yeah, you edge or you smear that  in outdoor climbing for me the key is Learning the art and the trust in the smed.  You smed more than you edge or smear outside. It's because there are no oftentimes there aren't true straight edges, especially on like long limestone, like super featured sport climbing. 

There's not there's real like granite style smear dimples or there's not those like laser cut edges. They're smedges. You're smearing onto what, or pre, premature edges. Yeah. With just some friction. And when you identify where all the smedges are, like, on the outside of a 3D thing, like a tufa or a stalactite, you typically smedge.

And you need, this is why climbing shoes don't have tread. They're meant to be rubber skeleton keys. You gotta, it's up to you to fit them into the little shapes on the rock. And your ability to read, to deeply read like what the rock's giving you. Like where all the little imperfections are.

And like how to engage the rubber on that. And and just from knowing  how it feels on your skin. Knowing what you can get away with is everything. Like when I'm looking at footholds, I am seeing all the micro ripples that I get to exploit as a foothold, as long as I place it. Set that rubber, and then shift my asshole on top of the foot.

Asshole's the center line of everyone's body. Draw a line from your butthole to the top of your head. That is you bisecting. You heard it here, folks. The asshole's the center of the line. Asshole, get the asshole over your foot. Not the left leg, not the right. Yeah, like everything stays in the box, like between the shoulders and like down to the center line.

The more engaged you get that part of your body over the primary foot that's anchoring a movement.  The more you're actually gonna engage that rubber onto that hold and the more stable you're gonna be. Yeah, so oftentimes like I don't pick a foothold based on quality. I pick it on quality of  position And you saw firsthand when you caught my fall on peanut butter and Oreo.

I Made the mistake I picked the better foothold that was out of position as opposed to the worst What I deemed to be the worst foothold that was in proper position and I paid the price took a big winger and Tim caught me Yeah, so yeah, and that's what I was kicking myself over not failing on the move.

It was failing fundamental  Yeah,  I was never gonna get my butthole over that foothold like out and out in Canada I needed to stay closer to like Japan. Yeah Philippines exactly. Yeah, that's funny. That's so peanut butter and Oreo is a 7 8 plus and egg, but us allegedly I just looked at the so the peanut butter itself which stops at the anchor right after that crux Yes on the crag they give that 70 plus.

Yes I put a question mark on my Instagram post because I'm like, Hey, adding four bolts of an arching traverse to a final redpoint crux? There's no way they gave that, that's going to get the same grade. So I just put a question mark on it. So anyway, just to be fair. I appreciate the humility.

That's, that, we both were working the route two days in Iqbaras. It's a beautiful route, the leftmost side of the cliff. And it's got three cruxes.  The first crux is a boulder crux from basically the first bolt onwards. Around cliff. Five or six or seven. I'm not sure. There's like a crimpy crux there that move that I was talking about is  There was a better foothold, but he needed he wanted to move big to a good right hold  But he picked the that good right foothold was like not the right foot that allowed him to go big So the position didn't make sense.

The position didn't make sense. No exactly so the day after he had picked the right foothold which was not as good hit the move more statically And then finished off the final crux, which is at the clips. Hey, that's a proud send. Thanks. I had a lot of gas in the tank left. I haven't just to be clear too.

I have not, as Tim can attest, you can count on one hand how many times I climb with you at this point. I'm not really climbing much these days. I've been injured for it's two and a half years at this point. So yeah, I know that's one of the big separators between real professional athletes and the rest of us is like when those people get injured.

They somehow get better and I hear this stuff of yeah, but they got the trainers, nutritionists and all this stuff. I'm like, yeah, but no, one's making them get on that balance ball with a rip to shreds ACL and like still endure the suck of that. Like it takes a certain amount of like  killer, like willpower to make yourself do that.

I don't got it. I just got to tell you straight up when I get injured, I get lazy and I'm like heal so I can work out the way I want to. Kyrie Klay Thompson, Kevin Durant, even Kobe. Imagine their PT teams. Mine is like, YouTube. That's my PT team. For sure but even after all that shit, even after all that shit that's embedded in plays and plays, even after all of that,  do you still have to go through the suck of going, Oh my god, my Achilles is blown, and I'm gonna do how many squats today?

One, how many assisted pistol squats? That shit re, getting strong in rehab? The price is pain. And I don't like, that's, I don't know if I have the currency, like of pain tolerance, if that's what the currency is on the other side of that. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely, I'm curious, we'll get to your sort of current day, like endeavors with Dhanal and route development, but I want to hear about maybe your early days as a sport climber or when you started to focus on sport climbing, what inspired you to do that and what was that like?

Oh, okay. So what inspired me actually was bouldering. There is this bouldering cave in Tonsai called the Temple. Long story short, I, my first trip to Tonsai, to Thailand, was around two and a half weeks after the big tsunami of 2004.  I was one of those weirdos that showed up anyway. I was supposed to show up. 

My original ticket was the day after that tsunami hit.  And obviously I just can't, I postponed my trip, but I went anyway. And I got obsessed with this. Bouldering cave got really lucky in the sense of the heck got of having the opportunity to develop it. So there was this multi-pitch right out, on the road, the back road in Sci called the Big Wave.

And clearly the developers like named it after the big tsunami they hit. So it's multi-pitch now. There's a lot more, there's a lot more to do up there as far as like multi fish lines. But I was there recently and some new stuff went up, but there's a big wave, beauty and the Beast, something else.

But what looked like a solid cliff. Going down the jungle above the road was actually a bunch of vines hiding a massive bouldering cave.  It's, in my opinion, one of the best bouldering caves in the world. And if anyone would question like, Oh, how could he say that? I am a guide in Waco Tanks. I spent years of my life there.

I've spent over a decade in Bishop and Mammoth and I bouldered in the famous priest draw of Flagstaff where it's mainly roof stuff that people go there for. I've been to a lot of places and I can tell you right now that the temple Boulder and cave in Thailand is one of the best I've ever seen.

It's incredible. Yeah, I did. I did. It's like one of the early probably the first okay Low start finishes up above the roof band like problems but anyway, the reason that turned into like sport climbing for me was I Unknowingly when you FA stuff on the funny one of the fun parts, maybe they drive people crazy or whatever But you don't have a number you don't have a grade, it's hard for you if you're Going after your personal limit, but I got obsessed with this line that I put up in the temple and It took me  five if not six months of my life It drove me to tears on three different occasions falling on the last hard move It is a 50 something foot pure roof problem Luckily the ground just trails a hallway so you can go for it But I didn't know how to add it up back then Like how to even slap a difficulty on it and I almost didn't care just doing it at all meant more than just a number but It was 50 feet long, which is actually longer than a lot of the sport climbs I did that season like down on the beach in tansai but  Let's just say It was like the first half of it was like v6 v7 and then it ends on  pretty solid v9 with the very last Boulder problem move on it being the hardest move on the entire thing and you got to do it Pumped out of your mind or you got to control the pump enough to give yourself like a fighting chance Because I got down to the end on these slopers with this huge throw to a letterbox slot like four feet behind you and  I Can't tell you how many times it's so hard to believe in yourself when like you try the same thing over and you're I'm like, I'm so pumped at the end of this thing I'm like, I couldn't you couldn't ask me to punch out of a wet paper bag right now Like I've got nothing, it's like staring up at this last move like I Bruce Lee could do a roundhouse, kick me into the air.

I probably still wouldn't reach the damn thing. I was like, it's not going to happen, but but yeah, I got obsessed with that. And then I realized right away that I unknowingly had trained pure power endurance. And then when I started sport climbing, after I sent it, I started on siting numbers far greater.

Like then I, I was like on siting 12 Bs. Wow. Yeah. Like in Tonsai. Yeah. Just holy shit. I didn't expect to I'm like, yeah, I guess the Beastmaster made me stronger and like epilogue to the story was to this day the grade has stood and I unknowingly may have established the first v10 voter problem in all of Thailand, which basically means all Southeast Asian So yeah, not that I was like going for that But like I realized in the years after that yeah, they're there anything that's double digits happened Definitely years after I did the Beastmaster.

Wow. So that's incredible. Yeah  What was the grade on Beastmaster?  V10. V10. Still is. Still a V10. Yeah. You can there's a couple of send videos people log in on 8a, and let's put it this way, not a single person has suggested less than V10. One person gave me a slasher of 1011. Wow. Dang.

Sorry, it's up to them. All I did was put it up, and I'm like, y'all can just, put it up, I named it, and everyone else can decide what the hell they think it is. Damn. That's crazy.  Anything else to say about Tonzai, your relationship with the place? Oh it's a really important place to me.

Climbing relationships in general that's outside of the Sierra. That's the next most formative area for me, for making me, in a lot of ways as a climber, like the climber that I became. And now I currently the climbing in the Philippines is  this later, long toothed stage of my climbing life is Like the latest okay, and on this place is actually shaping me as the climber that I am.

Yeah. Let's talk about that. So  you have been developing a crag out in Danau, which is in Cebu, one of the main islands in the Visayas. And man, it's such an awesome place. It's so cool. You started your efforts there 10 years ago. When did you first find out about potential there and just a little bit of the back story?

Tell us about that. Mid 90s when I was a climber. I came to the Philippines for Christmas or something in the late 90s.  Told my cousins what I was doing.  And immediately one of them told me that they had been raising roosters, fighting cocks. Up at this farm in Danau. A big thing in the Philippines, by the way.

Oh yeah, it's a whole weird industry and subculture. It's a full on blood sport. Anyway, but that's neither here nor there. But we talked about this place where they were raising roosters and then  Let everyone be fair, like fair warning here. If a non climber tells a climber who's enthusiastic that there's climbing nearby and they need to see it, you never know what you're going to see.

It's amazing what non climbers think we do. Somebody could bring you to a support column under a, like a bridge, like housing vagrants I don't know so yeah, climb this. It's Oh, I saw it in a video. But yeah, I saw Adam Andrew climbing on a bridge and I thought maybe you want to climb like over these.

Heroin needles? No but yeah it's amazing what like non climbers will show climbers. I've had climbers in the, like non climbers in the Philippines straight up, take me to a cliff side that's like thorns, dirt, vines, and like no rock to be found. I'm like, I think I see rock under that somewhere.

I'm like that's not what I do. Anyway, so my cousins told me about this place and I of course asked them, how big is it?  And that's a dumb question in case anyone wants to know like that's not a question How tall is it? How wide is it really is what it came down to and they said maybe 20 meters for All the u.

s. Folks out there that's around 66 feet or 10, 000 grapefruit. I don't know. Like we like to measure things in fruit. Yeah, at least for tumors. But but yeah, it works between both metric systems, right? Yeah. And then it was how wide is it? They're like 100 meters. Oh, it's like a football field, man.

It's actually 20 meters, 100, 20 meters tall, 100 meters wide. That is probably good. So I went there in 2014, strange set of circumstances, but went there and,  It turns out they were completely off. First of all, it looked like absolutely incredible climbing from the road and it's  more like averaging close to 40 meters tall and it's  two kilometers long which by non metric it's a mile and a quarter mile 1.

4 miles long of just unbelievable featured cliff band So went to check it out and did a really dumb thing didn't actually inspect the main cliff band proper. As if I'm like, some mineral inspector, I went up to a cliff close enough, cause no one had ever gone up to the cliff. And, no one like, made a habit of going up there, no trails is what I'm saying.

So I went up and checked out this other cliff, and I'm like, this is really cool rock. Clearly, the Big Cliff Band must be the same rock as this, so I ended up investing, with my partner at the time, into like thousands of dollars worth of vaults,  with the site unseen. Yeah. Yeah. Having Placing a bet right there.

And I had no idea. I was gambling so hard. We could have shown up and it could have been like the world's nastiest fucking choss pile. But It turned out to be some of the best climbing in all of Asia. And I, everyone would be like, everyone would be like, and don't get me wrong, accuse me of bias all day.

Of course I'm biased. It's my area. I developed it. But nobody has ever left an out who has climbed there and said yeah, he's full of it. He's just trying to get people to climb at this place. No, just by pure rock quality and the variety of what you get there. There's arrets, there's coroners, there's faces of every type of hold and some holds you've probably never seen before.

Some of them are vertical, some of them are overhanging a little bit, some of them are just really steep. There's, there's yellow streaks, black streaks, gray streaks, white streaks, like  porcelain walls  covered in perfect climbable features. I couldn't have gotten luckier for having been seeking a climbing area somewhere near my parents house.

And yeah, it turned out to be one of the best, definitely one of the best climbing areas, developed areas in the entire country. And having been to Thailand and recently and spent some time climbing in Southeast Asia, I'll say like just pure rock quality comparisons, I'd say it's head to head with every, with any place that anyone would consider to be world class in Asia.

Yes, for sure. Yeah. When you were starting to develop there, had you developed routes in other areas before or was this your first time doing it yourself? First time. I was a And you had bought, to be clear, tons of bolts. Yeah. You're going big. Oh, I'm going big. You're going big. And I was, and not mechanical expansion bolts, glue ins. 

Because I was like, in Thailand, they've had all these like expansion bolt failures. I don't know what the particular climate conditions are for metal up in the jungle up there. We're not coastal at all, but I'm like, I'm going to play it safe. I'm going with glue in. So had a connection in climb tech, which does, they still exist, but they only do like rope access, like heavy industrial rope access equipment, but they were the originators of the wave bolt, which was a piton style.

Glue in climbing bolt made out of 316 low carbon stainless steel and To this day, that's I'm really proud of this like I wanted to now to be like not really explicitly spoken But I wanted it to be a model crag I wanted the fixed hardware to be the best affordable quality meaning to say I couldn't afford titanium at that level But I could sure as hell afford 316 low carbon stainless glue inside I equipped it with that from the onset and made sure that all the trails and belay areas were really well maintained and constructed to stand the test of time. 

So people could just keep using them without the ground eroding. Yeah. I definitely succeeded in that, but as 10 years has passed and just looking and I'm finally going to, I do have some expansion bolts from 10 years ago that are in the rock, but they're very special ones. They're called legacy bolts and they're removable expansion bolts made by climb tech.

And I'm going to pop three of the original ones out that have been there for 10 years and I get to finally document like this is exactly what 304 stainless  does when exposed to this exposure, this kind of water streak. Yeah, I want it. Like people are always wondering, it's like this Easter egg that's finally going to hatch.

Like I get to actually show like what the metal degradation looked like, depending on. Oh, did this thing get a lot of sun? Is it in a place that was it near a plant where roots could have been chasing the water, the latent water in the holes? I get to, it's, Denau is basically my, my little science lab.

Yeah. And I get to, to finally It's, I'm gonna do it later in the season probably before April. But yeah, I get to pop out the expansions and then either  Fill the hole with glue, or reuse the hole and just pop glue in there. Pop, pop another waybolt in there. That's cool. But yeah, I'm psyched.

Anyway. Yeah, so that's, that's that's, Denow in a very the broad strokes of Denow for you. And the development's still going on to this day. It's probably gonna have a total of somewhere between 350 and 400 routes when it's all said and done.  Yeah. Yeah.  You showed me the bottom of the end of the current development and there's like still so much clip.

Yeah, there's and there's a bunch of cliff line. I haven't even Had a chance to look at yet. I've seen in the distance. I've seen the profiles I've seen how steep some of it looks how featured some of it looks I know  just from staring at these cliffs and looking at drone footage and looking at zoomed in footage for years now that a lot of the stuff waiting for me down the hill is it's steep, it's featured, and it's probably really good.

Yeah. That's awesome. Danao, for me, was the first crag in the Philippines I climbed at, and had found about it online. Eventually, that's how I came to know Al and his wife, Veronica. And man, I can't, I gotta say, it's  Every line is good. Like even the two star six B's are pretty dang solid. And it's so cool.

That's where I've sent my first eight a as well, going back to the past conversation about seeing your skills being tested on routes that you think you can achieve as opposed to, or style as opposed to grades. That was definitely a lesson. I walked away from. Danow walked away from Danow from, even though I'll be spending more time there in a bit, is yeah, whatever style you want to excel at or anti style you want to grow in, it's there for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. Yep. You nailed it for sure.  Tell me about keeping in mind maybe the sort of science lab metaphor about Danow. What were some experiments that maybe surprised you as you were developing out there? Combining AMGA SPI level one skills with  The goal to get over the cliff edge safely  Which it totally works, but it's still it's like the scare.

It's one of the scariest things I've ever done in climbing huh. Yeah, like when you wrap over the edge and and I'll complete truth be told this I didn't expect  I often, if I have to clean a sport route and spend a lot of time like bolting it, I get sick of it. And my desire to do the F.

A. really is more about me wanting to finish the work going. It should be me. I just spent six days cleaning this thing and getting the bolts in like just for the principle alone of who put the most labor in on this and whose bolts are those. I'm giving them to the public really in the end, but but I should do this.

Yeah, I never really got that possessive or psyched or motivated to F. A. stuff that I bolted. I often give F. A. s to other people because I'm like, I just want to climb it. Doing it first, it really gives zero shits. But the one thing I do care about  is wrapping over that edge.  And getting the first descent, which no one seems to care about or talk about, but from a pure human adventure, travel, explore the explorer mindset, when you're wrapping down on these faces, there aren't that many places on earth where you're probably the first person to ever be there to ever touch that.

And that's what happens when you wrap over the edge on these faces, it's and I'm assuming that works that way for most developers in these remote areas and that are just being developed is, yeah, sure generations of kids and adults and whatever, probably looked up there and look at that big cliff, but it's like going to the moon, you get to actually touch it and Yeah.

And occasionally you will run into snakes, you'll run into bats and weird creatures, cause it's Habitat. But yeah I'll never, it's never lost on me how thrilling it is to just like wrap over the edge and look for a climb. Look for a line, but know that everything you're touching is like you're the first person to ever actually be here and touch these things.

Yeah. Like that I think is like my favorite part about developing, to be honest. That must be such a cool feeling. Yeah, it's really cool. For sure. Just that enough, I was hearing you say that, is enough satisfying that in itself is enough of a satisfaction that you don't even need to FAA the route.

Exactly. Exactly. It's just a formality at the end in some ways. It's like the silly game we play, but I do care about Oh man, I really want to go down that first and just touch these holes, to see Yeah, like about make a balance between okay, I'm here to make a climb but this is actually really cool Yeah, I've never developed routes But I used to play a lot of Starcraft and I would actually spend a lot of time making maps so not the online  Competitive stuff.

I did the campaigns like the single player campaigns making maps It's just so fun because you get to design something and see how it turns out and then improve the design because it's like that didn't turn out the way I want it to. So I can only imagine how fun it is to actually do it on. 

Yeah. Yeah. And IRL.  So that, that, that's, so that, that's my big surprise about developing. It's not actually what I thought it was  like in no way am I ever going to have a video, oh, it's Al's sleeping lion video. It's you know what, I don't really care. Not that you need to be climbing on the cutting edge to make a film or anything, but Yeah, just my, my development stories if I had, if I was pressed to make a movie, it would be boring.

Yeah, be like, oh, yeah, look at this dude all psyched about getting the first descent and like touching all these things before anyone else, Yeah, and it's not like I'm like, it's not like I pat myself in the back for it anything But it's just like it's just cool if you're a kid I grew up in the with a Gigantic wooded backyard and just being able to go play in the woods and go explore and go look at stuff yeah, the chances are like, someone's already been there, but that there's Probably a hundred percent chance that no one's actually touched the faces that I'm wrapping down on which I just love so much yeah, I guess maybe a tie this to the podcast. 

How do you see that now?  Contextualized or within the broader Philippines climbing Ecosystem world like it's one of the many cracks out here. There's a lot of great climbing the Philippines Yeah, just tell me what your thoughts are. I Just, okay, let's see. There's a lot of different ways to answer that.

Danau, historically, has been, especially the mountains above Danau, it's historically been one of these places where tourists are warned not to go there. There's just there's generational let's just say, illegal industry up there. It's the number one illegal knockoff gun making capital of the world.

It's like an old blacksmith remnant from World War II. Passed down from fathers to sons and a lot of illegal firearms come out of there,  lots of pot farming lots of roosters. Not to say that's illegal, but it's like  guns, weed, and cocks, that's and karaoke, karaoke. Yeah. But it's I have a feeling that the climbing specific tourism  over time will change  how. 

People viewed Danau if they have any preconceived notions of it whatsoever or how they view it from a from the perspective of having a blank slate  There's so much climbing in Cebu. There's Cantabaco, which is like the original it's one of the original climbing areas in all of Cebu and it's where just know throwing all bias aside, I've had some of my greatest personal climbing achievements there.

By the numbers, I climb way better in Contabaco than I do at my own crag. But between there, Montserra and Danao, and like, all the the satellite areas Baog near Contabaco, there's so much good climbing in Cebu, and the way I see Danao's place in it shaping is  It's very remote, but it's also only an hour and change away from one of the biggest cities in Southeast Asia and the second biggest city in the Philippines after Manila. 

But you can have a very touristy urban experience and then disappear into the Danau mountains where I have accommodation and  be pretty remote all in the same day. The Philippines, I think just needs, has a lot of incredible rock.  I, looking at it as a big book, Danau, I see it as just being one pretty significant chapter added to the volumes of what Philippine climbing should be in, in the end, if I'm even there to see it but yeah, that's that's my that's how I see it.

There's so much rock in Danau. There's more rock in Danau as far as going two hours or less from the city. It's, if you can, anyone can Google it, go from Fuente Circle. Let's just call that. Or Ayala in Cebu. Map yourself to Cantabaco. Map yourself to Danao. They're within 10 minutes of each other.

Hour and a half, hour, or just under an hour and a half away from the city center. And, but my place is north, Cantabaco south. Cantabaco wasn't going to sustain Cebu climbing on its own. But I think Cantabaco In coordination with Danau and Montsorello, once the development really, Contabaco's pretty much developed, yeah, just to be clear.

Montsorello and Danau have a long way to go, but once that circuit, especially Danau, which can house by volume the most routes in Cebu, so far from what's developed, once those even reach 60 percent of their development potential I think Danau's, what,  In context for, just go back to your question for what it's going to mean like in the Philippines climbing and is it's accessibility because of the airport and it's amount of high quality route offerings in the end, plus that, plus Montserrat, plus count tobacco is going to make it a don't miss it.

If you, especially if you're climbing in Southeast Asia, just don't miss it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You heard it here. Don't miss it. I think I haven't experienced Cantabaco myself, but you will, I will pretty soon. I want to go to Jack Sparrow.  Yeah. Tell us about that whole experience. First of all, it was never a goal.

The mythical 514 glass ceiling for. Any non pro climber? Oh, I you don't hit that Like the donkey is not supposed to get the carrot at the end of the stick right supposed to chase it yeah any 514 at that point. I know like stylistically. It's ah style before numbers Yeah, but there's certain numbers I think we can all agree on like style or not not that many people are going to be climbing 515 Yeah, not that many people are gonna be climbing v14 Right v13 even yeah, but 514 was one of those numbers for me. It's yeah, even if it suits my style I'm, probably not gonna go that high. That was just that was one of the self imposed barriers I had on myself from just to put it in context when I started climbing tommy caldwell and chris sharma were teenagers boone speed mike call Scott franklin like glenn hill to name some of the earliest people out there Like man, maybe not my call.

It might be a Dale Goddard, like all these old school people, but these were the people trying to establish 514. When I was, I can name all the 514s in the United States when I started climbing in the first five years, there weren't that many of them. And a lot of them still needed to be calibrated. Is this really 514?

Or is it harder than 14a? Whatever. So it's ingrained in that mindset from this 29 year old climber. Like he's been climbing 29 years to think that 514 was an unattainable number. So when I was projecting in contabaco, taking a much needed mental break from denow three and a half straight months of climbing contabaco.

I ran out of climbs. I went through this time period where I spent around three and a half months away from climbing completely and just  got ahold of my nutrition and my. Body comp and I stopped climbing and did nothing but work out jump rope and lift weights Like I was some prize fighter training for a fight that was never gonna happen But that I like believe there's an opponent waiting for me somewhere Yeah climbing wise like the vague the ambiguity of like I don't know what I'm gonna climb But I know I will again one time, but I have no fire to go climbing anymore But I do have fire to Try to get something try to get my body and mind to a place where I'd never gotten it before times running out like I'm old and I was thought to myself.

Okay, like I'm 45. That's squarely a mid 40 year old It's fucking do or die and a lot of it just boils down to a choice. You can't fake motivation. You can't fake the psych to do it. I had it and at that point it's a choice I could have made. Do it or just don't do it and just be satisfied with always having to wonder what your potential was.

So I did it  and started just motoring through all the counterbacco lines. There's one I didn't do, because honestly I wasn't that inspired with it, but but yeah, I got to the point where all I was left with was Jack Sparrow, and  half of the, half the hurdle was just trying to not focus on what the number was.

And just to give people a background context on Jack Sparrow it's the first 14A in the Philippines. And it was repeated and confirmed by the all time great Yuji Hirayama and a pro named James Pearson. He those two, along with James Pearson's wife, Caroline, were in the Philippines doing a Sportiva North Face sponsored development trip for a week. 

And Yeah, so it's got, it's one of the hallowed pitches of the Philippines, or probably Southeast Asia,  if anyone knows, just regionally, how the climbs lay out any first 514 in the country that's established, like first 14A, it's, anyone who knows the climbing probably knows, and that's a significant pitch, so I ended up pouring a bunch of of myself into it, and yeah, and eventually against Against my mental will of not really believing I could do it Like just trying it enough to like getting to the to that scary point where you actually know you can do It's just a matter of like execution and not falling apart mentally at the worst time.

Yeah, I did it 17th red point try And I was oddly enough is like I've projected far lesser for way longer. Yeah. But but yeah, I I ended up  getting the carrot at the end of the stick. Yeah. To use the earlier metaphor. Yeah. Yeah. Oops. What's a donkey do now? Oh. I don't know what to do.

But yeah, but by no means that did I get satisfied with it? I  threw overuse injuries and staying at trying to keep at the peak. I was just stupid because like I don't make very smart choices sometimes but like I stayed at  Project level for maybe nine months that year and eventually an old right shoulder injury got re aggravated and that's what this is what happens when you're as old as I am.

This thing is still it stopped healing I'm gonna go seek actual professional medical help for my right shoulder now because it's been holding me back since december 2021  Yeah we i'm sure me and a lot of others Wish you the best with the recovery of that because we want to see we still want to see you climbing I want to see 14 at 50.

Hell. Yeah, I got i've got some targets. Oh, absolutely I know the same If I can fan that spark into a raging flame of just motivation again,  the best part is I know I can do it because I've already done it. Yeah, it's just, I'm, like, waiting for that window to let modern medicine do its wonders and then reignite the flame.

We gotta hit up LeBron James physical therapy. Ha! Any 14s on your list? Not really. When you're, like, in the sense that I don't in this goes with travel and food and like anything is like you can't have an opinion unless you chew it and put it in your mouth and it either fits your taste buds or you have to spit it out.

Right? There's no rules that say you got to swallow it. So I got to, I would need to sample  first before really knowing if there's any motivation in me to pour myself into it too, because when you're trying stuff truly at your personal limit, you got to pour. Not just a physical thing anymore.

You got to pour so much Of what's the intrinsic core of yourself like into it? You have to go through all the you're in the trenches for a while Just wondering if you're gonna find your way out and you have to accept that like success is not guaranteed whatsoever Yeah you know if I have to say there's something I have to sample. 

That's my new carrot at the end of the stick  It's probably a 14a  In the new river gorge that was put up when I first started climbing  It's the first 14a in the new called proper soul. I've talked to many people have done it I know the breakdown of it, but I am so  inexperienced with climbing at those high ends on that particular sandstone that I would need a lot of time and I would need to show up Physically and mentally as sharp as possible to even have a fighting chance at it Yeah But I know I want to get on it one day like i'm hoping I can get the shoulder Under control and that I can show up to the new in the fall and actually give myself a fighting chance to go boltable on it and see if I think A, if I am psyched on it, and B, if I think it's possible, and in a time frame that's reasonable.

Yeah. Yeah. Sounds like you're psyched on it. Oh, I've been psyched on this forever. That's like homecoming. But I can't know until I pull on. That I know is there might be a move that disagrees with an injury. There might be a move that absolutely just shuts me down. Yeah. But half the battle, and like half of having the will to step up to it is  To see if it's even possible for you or not.

Yeah, like it's a hard thing to do to like to Have these high expectations and to show up and get on something where you know There is a possibility that it might not actually be possible for you  Dreams crushed you never know. So so yeah, I can't know am I do I want to get on that? See only that's the only 14 I can think of where I'm like that means something to me.

Yeah, that was established the year like within this the first year and a half that I started climbing And it was speculated to be the first of its grade in in the new. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Speculate to be the first. And then it ended up being the first 14th new. That's amazing. It's everyone's rite of passage who, who tries to climb that grade on the East Coast.

Yeah. His proper soul. Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. I'm,  I want to go back to Jack Sparrow, thinking about how this podcast is meant to feature.  You've given me a bit of the history of it. I'm curious if I can read a few paragraphs you've written to me about that. Are you cool with that? Yeah, go for it. Cool.

So Jack Sparrow bolted by my close friend, Aldwin Ibanez from Manila. It's a four bolt extension to the most popular. 13AB  in the Philippines, White Flower, which is bolted by Mackie. After Aldwyn, a close friend of yours bolted it. It was clear that it was the next level for the Philippines and a prize project.

The question became, who would be the first to take it down? Carlo Chong, or Carlo Chong. He actually is from CBO. Really? Yeah, I learned He's from the guy in the Oro. I just met him I met him with all the Sabu climbers on their first Hansai trip. Huh. So I just assumed he was from Cebu, but he's from CDO.

That's crazy. Carlo, Chio, or Miel Pahadi, a true Cebu versus Manila climber battle ensued. I'm just going to read the whole thing. Cause it reads like a amazing sci fi novel. Carlo eventually did it first, having the distinct advantage of being local and doing day trips. Miel did it shortly afterwards.

Third ascent was Dennis Diaz. He gave it a slash grade of 13D14A,  even though he was far behind Carlo and Miel in sending it. His slash downgrade ruffled some feathers. Jack Sparrow went unclimbed for four or five years after Dennis did it. But then visiting pros came in, in 2015, the Japanese legend and all time great Yuji Hirayama and British all around climbing pro who was mentioned earlier, I'm just gonna add that as my own commentary, you mentioned earlier.

He helped bolted. Some lines here that were sponsored by that Sportiva trip? Sportiva? Sportiva trip? James Pearson. Both did quick ascents of Jack Sparrow and confirmed the 14A grade. In 2018, a young Cebu prodigy, shoutouts. And friend, Paul Susson, surprised everyone when he did the 6th Ascent. He really surprised everyone? 

He was young and no one was expecting it. Yeah, that's crazy. Even he wasn't expecting it. He told me that.  Yeah, that's crazy. Pets, right? Pets, yeah. Pets. Paul told me he went in with no expectations after working at a shitload and just blacked out and did it. Al was ascent number seven in June of 2021. Fun fact, Paul was my Blair on my Red Point in 2022.

Paul's brothers, JJ and Joshua Suson sent it back to back in the summer. What a fucking family. Yeah. The Suan boys are crushers man. Crazy. Yes, the Suan Boys were the rare Comp train kids from Taboo. And it shows all three are beasts and exceptional cls. So there you go. Jack Sparrow has seen 9 cent people try it every year.

Most scenes I know. I know who is projecting it. It's the usual suspects trying to put it away. The boulder problem guarding the answers is a real low percentage mind fuck. And it's easy to have a clean run and walk away empty handed. Jack Sparrow is looking for a 10th Ascensionist dot. That's pretty good writing, man.

I gotta say. Oh, Appreciate that. That's awesome. You asked me for my take on it, and that was it. There's no edits, I just blasted it off.  Yeah, do you have anything to add to what you wrote? No, it's location. If Jack Sparrow were flipped upside down And if that crux were right off the deck, it's not 14a.

Yeah, absolutely not I would say that crux is about a v8 and but it's a v8 with a very low percentage last crux move I came ripping out of that move for one reason or another god like definitely more than a dozen times And the hardest part about sending it at the end was stepping back up to the plate and knowing what was probably waiting for me was a spectacular failure at the last step point.

Yeah, so  it's  my takeaway from that as far as besides any personal satisfaction of climbing a number is getting myself to push.  Far past my mental  barriers, like the guardrails that I had already set up and to know that I still had a lot left in the tank after what I really thought was my extinction point of getting my mental and physical to cooperate and try to achieve something. 

In the end, my dig deep on that showed me at almost three decades in is  I am not as strong physically as I was back in the day. But way better climber than I ever was in the first 25 years of climbing.  But yeah right now my, my, my mental edge and ability to dig  plus my, just  my second nature, like intuitive use of just how to use my, how to position my body, how to use a climbing shoe. 

Oh it's extended my climbing life in a lot of ways. Like I either, there are a lot of different ways to try and send hard at your limit. And Yeah, once I get this shoulder under control I'm ready to bust out the the tricks and get mentally mean and nasty and try to get my way up something again.

That's, I'm going to deem impossible for me. I hope you get to get on that 14A at the new. Yeah, there's proper salt. That's why I need more chapters to be written.  Awesome. I guess my last two sort of big picture topics are Veronica and just like some future facing stuff. Tell us first off I should say I've had the pleasure to not just like be mentored by you and also just learn about Danao, but also work with your wife who runs Global Climbing Initiative as the executive director is helping out both Cebu Rock Climbing Community and Ila Climbing on some.

Some organizational development work, which I've had the fortune to, to be a part of. And yeah, just curious, like how you guys met and your story there. Oh, I met Veronica we met each other randomly. Yeah. Just like there, there was no, I did not see her in pixels before person. I was just like this.

Nope. Nah, no swiping. Nah, I don't even know how to do that. But no, I was climbing in Columbus in 2019. And it was completely random that that we even crossed paths at all. Just, like my wife is a, she is, as far as character heart intellect goes, is an absolute superhero. She's just walk around with a cape on what was supposed to be a Yale accelerator grad school program.

It's she was like handpicked by John Kerry for a scholarship to the Jackson school of business. What should have. Been a launchpad for her into a career in politics in DC or at the World Bank or at the UN or You name it like being part of a presidential cabinet, like she's that kind of brain that kind of intellect She got inspired on a climbing trip  to take all of that to allocate all of those yellow resources in the accelerator program to start the first and only to found the first and only global climbing nonprofit And given that I was developing the Philippines and just doing this weird, as a Western, as a Westerner Filipino, who's a dual citizen, it's weird.

I was like in a place that was definitely very nascent, but I was trying to develop it by some Western standard about my own standard, how I saw climbing through like the eyes of someone who had been to most places in the United States for climbing and then done some international trips. But  we met, I found out what she was doing.

And then we. We actually didn't like, yeah, I met her that one time we went climbing together, just kept in touch professionally and then and then a couple of years later, reconnected and and there you go. Long story short, let's turn to the last pages. Like we ended up married. Yeah, so a lot of my work that I do and I like is like from the climate development and a lot of what she does focusing on. 

All the aspects of climbing that have nothing to do with climbing. Which turns out that climbing's actually not that big of a percentage of the picture. It's when you look at how the whole climbing ecosystem works she is a master of  making complicated logistics easy and palatable and understandable for many people on multiple levels.

And and I'm just I, it's probably the greatest fortune of my life that not only that we crossed paths, that, hey, that we ended up getting married. That's what I'll say. She's on the ground now, will be a citizen of this country, because I'm a dual citizen, and it's a right extended to her.

That's so sick. But, the Filipino climbing communities here are so  fortunate, and I've tried to like, let them know, they'll know over time, as time will show. with authentic and intentioned engagement and buy in is she's one of, she's probably the greatest brain in climbing non profit work and people are going to have on the ground access to her for a substantial portion of each year because we plan on basing out of the Philippines for as long as four months a year so a third of our year here in the Philippines while I'm continuing to grow Danao into something.

Yeah, she's really, from my experience, Adapted to the Philippines and just committed to her work here. It's just so cool to see it. The communities respect her. She's amazing. Her intentionality with everything being empowering people with the knowledge and not just the knowledge, but thus like the tools, whether they're tangible, intellectual or actual climbing tools, like  to succeed is, and just her reasons, like her, why of why she's doing it is.

It's it is truly a gift like in the climbing world It is a gift because this brain could have been weaponized for us intelligence work for military It could have been like crunching numbers at the world bank like this brain could have been put to so many other uses But the fact that she chose to apply her Substantial intellectual gifts into this realm and create something out of thin air Yeah And to actually apply it and see real systemic change so far for everything She has her that has her fingerprints on it is nothing for me.

Nothing short of just admirable and unreal Yeah, especially considering she's only done this in five years. Yeah, it's that's not a lot of time. Yeah, it's Yeah. Pretty crazy. And I think she has this really, she holds a vision, a really clear vision all the way down to like the logistics of what we're doing in the next day.

Like that sort of like fractal vision, like five year vision into the next minute is like her edge. It's incredible. Absolutely. Yeah. So it's not, she's wired. Yeah. As they say it's like winners like true, like motivators and drivers and winners.  If you want to look at it as a race, she doesn't even know she's in a race.

She just, because she's too far ahead. Yeah. She's just she just loves to run  intellectually. Yeah, and it's pretty amazing. Yeah.  It's it's cool to see a couple that respects each other too in their own ways. I think one of the things I think a lot about is not, this is not a healthy relationship couples podcast, but I'm also in a relationship as well.

And one thing I often think about is. How much respect do I have for my partner? How much respect do they have for me? Not in a hierarchical sense, but more in an admirable sense that you mentioned, and I see that a lot in the both of you. Yeah. Big time. You can't manufacture that. It's just real.

Yeah. Yeah. Super real. Yeah. So let's close things out. I, my last few questions were, we have 15 minutes until the two hour mark. This has been. Actually a really solid, incredible interview. I'm excited to edit this and  see how this shows up in the world. You only got to take one coffee. I guess future facing stuff.

What's one aspect of climbing culture you love and one aspect of climbing culture you'd change? Climbing culture that I love, honestly it's when the community authentically supports everyone in their. And their personal endeavors at the end of the day, it's not a team sport, but we sure as hell know what it's like to be at that  personal limit. 

And when everyone's supporting each other in that way, like that day, when everyone, like I wasn't even climbing and that was one of the best days I've had out at the crag. Yeah. I just, it just, in a long time, the energy was so good. You cannot make an artificial version of that and call it.

You got to capture that moment, but everyone was it's a beautiful sunset light. Everyone's trying this 7C that I F A'd  almost 10 years ago called Harry's Highway. And  there's a flash attempt, successful. There's two red point attempts. Everyone is just authentically just like giving their energy, putting their energy in the collective pot.

And that psych that day was As a climber, you live for that shit. So that's what I love about the community when they get together  and there's buy in for a common  macro scale goal, whether that's like cheering people on to try super hard or  building belay platforms in area four or getting together and coming up with like new and catalyzing ideas.

When people get together in the climbing community sense to like,  To give to each other, even if it's for someone's personal goal of trying to climb or whatever, like that's, I, and you could argue that this happens in any realm. But I specifically love to see  how I love to see that organically take shape and then  reach its peak and run its course, like in, in a climbing community sense.

So yeah, that's one thing I love about the climbing community is it's just, when you get to be a part of that.  Like I said, I wasn't even climbing that day. I was just there observing and watching my climbing babies my, my pitches just become the playing ground for people to push themselves and knowing personal accomplishments.

Yeah, and and knowing what they're going through because I remember working through all those moves when I was establishing it and just like pulling for them, Yeah, that's just that that's, I love that. I love that about the climbing community. I can't have enough of those days in my life.

Life's short. If you have days like that bottle them up and count them. Cause those are the days you'll remember. And climbing, I feel like gives that regularly compared to the mundaneness of what a lot of monotonous life can be. Yeah. My follow up to that is what is one aspect of climbing culture you would love to see evolved, pushed, changed?

And I'm going to speak about this from the perspective of of purely as a route developer is, like  when you have a, when you go to a gym, you probably know who the gym owner is, who the manager is, you're paying to be in there and of course, like those people get some respect on some level, whatever route developers are largely anonymous and it's a thankless job, it's a thankless undertaking, a job, this is a big undertaking.

And when I say thankless, I'm not saying that people don't express gratitude. I'm just saying that when you have never hung up on a static and tried to get hardware into a wall that everyone's going to use after you, that's going to say something about you, how you bolt it how conscientious you are about putting bolts in the right place for clipping and how to make it flow into movement.

I told you that treat clipping. Treat clipping and clipping stances as a, as with the same importance as you would as a move. Yeah, it's part of the beta. So to be able to bolt so that makes sense in movement that takes a lot of time, a lot of will, a lot of labor, and even money aside, of course, like the gear costs something, but skilled labor and everything that goes up there, until you've hung out and then gone through the ringer of Accidentally bashing your thumb, putting a bolt in, or like  going through snakes, bats the size of house cats, like just going through that grimy process of Oh, I didn't know that I disturbed an ant nest behind me, and now they're all crawling up my rigging pack, and now I'm covered in ant bites and welts, Things like that where,  when people are like, oh, thanks for bolting this, a lot of that is like a formality.

Oh, we got to thank you. But  in some ways, not that I think that not that I'm out for the praise or like the thanks or anything, but I find it, I find that  in modern day climbing evolution, gyms create climbers  that otherwise wouldn't be climbers, that it's a way easier and clear cut highway to becoming a climber.

And then when I started climbing I was just following someone with weed. But. The  gyms create climbers, even if 25 percent of the climbers want to go outside, they go outside and then the outdoors is basically a nature, like it's, it's what people treat it as like nature's gym and then they climb and they use fixed hardware.

If there's anything I would change, it's like a little bit more recognition and support from just the industry and communities overall for the people that are making these outdoor routes possible. And I don't really know what that looks like, but, I find, given the time, effort, and labor that Route Developers put in I would say we're all pretty underrepresented as far as industry support goes.

And by knowing that, if, insofar as we're part of this ecosystem, that we're part of this climber's coral reef, The reef might start at the big box gym and that's where all the fish and all the schools get together and swim and learn. And then they get brave enough to swim away from that reef and go to the next reef known as the bouldering area or the climbing sport, climbing sectors of the trad areas, like someone's putting in. 

Like that work, it could be a local climbing org, like making sure that the access is there. If you're going bouldering, it could be the local climbing org developing trails and like making the government like relationships that they need to make to like, or the private landowners to get to the cliffs and stuff.

But at the end of the day, I feel like. If you're going somewhere, clipping into pro,  like fixed pro, lowering off an anchor, like somebody's doing that for you. And I don't really know what the big picture of that looks like, but it's, and not to say I haven't even been doing it that long, man, I got friends who have been developing for 40 years, and I, and the first thing I did after my first year of developing was to write all of these people a DM, like going, Hey, look, I am so sorry if I was ever some spoiled little shithead who would complain about your ballplay.

Why don't you bolt this? Whatever. It's I honestly just didn't know any better and yeah, I just I would love to see in some way, shape or form, just like at the very least can you give route developers even like a limited amount of wholesale pricing on like their static ropes and like gear they need to try to keep themselves alive and equip everything so that like people can enjoy these routes like safely and yeah, because everything I do in Denial is out of pocket, which is fine. I'm like, I've never had to go fund me or a page going here's how to raise money for bolts. I just, I'm just doing it because I have the resources to do it.  At the end of the day, it wouldn't hurt to have some sort of industry support where it's like, Oh man, like I really need a new static.

This one's chewed to pieces. Oh man, this is, I got to wait for a Thanksgiving sale or something. Yeah, like whatever, granted, I'm a little deeper now than I was years ago. And I have a lot more industry connections where I think those barriers are less and less, but that's just an evolution of my own life circumstance.

But yeah, I just feel like I, when a developer sees another developer out there, it's Two fishermen out at a vast sea going, I see you, you see me. Awesome. There's not that many of us out there. Yeah, there's one there's one like  sub group of people that just seem to fall through the cracks.

It's like the Marty Lewis's of this world, the Matt Samet's of this world. If anyone doesn't know, Marty's basically the mayor of the Owens River Gorge. The guy's bolted, I don't know how many, it's a seven in ten chance if you're getting on a classic. That's a Marty Lewis route, like Matt Samet in Boulder, that guy's authored so many routes on the front range there, and yeah You just you got you have people like and I'm like pretty much nobody on the scene compared to these dudes but  at the end of the day, we're all like getting just Ragdolled up there on ya now trying to get the hardware in like 40s.

Yeah, like it's and yeah I would love to see younger people like genuinely seek some pathway to becoming route developers themselves because they, my common expression is like, youth is wasted on the young. And in this case, yeah, like I wouldn't mind having some of my crazy like man in his youth prime, like power and psych to go up there and do what I do right now.

I probably do a hell of a lot more. Yeah. Yeah. It's not like you have to make a life out of it, but yeah, just go out and equip some roots. Don't be afraid to be judged. Yeah. There are ways to correct your work if you didn't, if you don't feel like you did it the right way. Trust me. Yeah. Route development is hardly.

It's not a perfect practice and I've had to go redo a lot of my stuff. Yeah, going, I cannot stand to have this thing this way. I'm getting these bolts off, I'm gonna re bolt it. Or just lying, just can't be this way. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Man, that's awesome. Three more questions. Oh shit, here we go.

Here we go. Alright what advice would you give to your younger self? Take nutrition  and,  Health, physical and mental, more seriously. It wasn't until my mid forties that I actually aligned that trifecta.  And I did like I couldn't believe. And had I had any of that approach when I was younger?  I feel like I left a lot of  peak potential climbing on the metaphorical table.

Like I, like there's a lot of stuff I could have done that I just didn't do because my focuses were not in the right place. Like when you're, when your nutrition, physical health and mental health are all like calibrated and aligned  for me, speaking from my perspective, like if I could talk to my younger self, that's called Jack Sparrow. 

How many more  metaphorical Jack Sparrows could I have taken down? Through my third decade,  had I just made the choice it's not impossible. It's a matter of choosing. If you get one of those components down, they fall like dominoes. If you get your nutrition and your health under control, like that part of your health, you feel good.

Yeah, I've done it. Like I intermittent fast every day. Like when I was training, I was making the most ridiculous, just good health choices and these small eating windows to try to hit my macro calories. I was doing therapy, like I was, I had a therapist, like just trying to straighten out all the mental hurdles that I just never even tried to clear, and then, yeah, my physical health was peaked. My nutrition was peaked. My mental health was peaked. And I did, and I did I couldn't fucking believe it.  And yeah, I would have told that to my younger self take those take the, take that, that Holy Trinity of self awareness, like seriously. Yeah.

Yeah. That's a great piece of advice. I think. When you mentioned when those three things are aligned, we'll get to the questions.  It feels, you feel like nothing else. And when one of those things is out of whack, chances are it affects the two other things. Absolutely. It's all interconnected. I'm going through it right now.

This shoulder injury is driving me to my wits end. I don't want to, I don't want to push myself like in pain. So like the physical component of it, I'm like a far less peak condition as I was in like when I, in 2021. And. And yeah, and I go through the I often go through some dark mental trenches, knowing where I was and knowing where I am and figuring out how to stay buoyant and all of that and navigate my way, just like trying to catch that next authentic moment where I'm like, okay, this is it rededicating because the inspiration and the motivation is there.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. One of those components going out of whack and knock you out, but as I'm opting not  to climb Lich these days. And a lot of that is just going, I don't know, my shoulder doesn't really like it that much, and I'm just not that motivated it's because I had that taste.

I go outside to hang out with my friends now, to go hang out with recently with the Iliola community, and, it's more of a community thing, and if I climb on a route or two, that's fine. It's great, but, I'm still like, The climbing component of it all is just me going through the motions in a lot of ways, but being there with everyone and just hanging out like that's actually more motivating than climbing itself to me.

What is your advice to the Filipino climbing community?  Ah there is strength in numbers. You're better as a unit than you are as individuals. As long as there's real buy in on an idea, and if everyone gives  an  Arbitrary number. An hour of their best every week. They are way 

They are so much more than just the sum of the parts when everyone brings their authentic best in whatever they're talented at to the table. But the buy in and like the cohesion of the community needs to be that shit needs to be right. Like you have to have good interpersonal relations if you're going to have a common buy in because  for the communities here,  believe it or not, this is not for you.

This is for the next people coming up that are going to fill your shoes. You are setting the foundation for them to stand on  and they're going to add to that. And then the next people after that, like a generation or two from now, they get to stand on the work that's being put in now. So the better they can work as a unit  and set a foundation  that they're, that's their lasting legacy.

If it's really high functioning and just functional 30 years from now.  That's going to speak volumes about them in the end, no one's going to care what you climbed, what you did,  like what personal numbers you hit, they're going to care that Oh yeah, it was  this group who organized, like  just happens to be like through the pathway of a climbing leadership fund, like accelerating the local orgs through GCI  could have been anything, but  getting that sort of knowledge and power specifically cater to what your community needs are.

She got to take that and run with it. And it's not about you in the end. It's about what you're setting up for the people who are going to come after. Yeah. Like metaphorically speaking, it's a lot like the belay platforms. You may think you did it for you now, but guess what? In 90 years, people are still going to be using these things.

It's for people later. So if they have something to stand on and use to go climbing.  Yeah. Wow. I think that's a perfect note to end on. I'll  really deeply appreciate you making the time to do this. I think This conversation will have so much value to add to the community, the people you're willing to impact.

And it's just been fun learning from you as well. And just also climate. I hope this this conversation feels in the way you want it to show up in the world. So thank you so much. Oh, thank you, Tim. And thank you for honestly, the fact that so someone's always gotta be first. And the fact that you even dreamed up the concept of this podcast for this, like mushroom growth of like Filipino American climbers in the States. 

Yeah. Not to say that everyone's got to pay homage to their  ancestors in this context, so to speak, but it's pretty awesome that you started this and I feel  really privileged and honored to be someone that you chose as like your first guest to break it in. So that's pretty cool. Yeah. So I appreciate this, man.

Like it's cool. And it's been really fun. And.  And as far as engaging with you man, it's it's always top notch and I expect nothing less and true to form. Yeah, it works.  Awesome, man. Thank you so much. Yeah, man.

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