[laughs]

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Yeah, it’s been a little bit crazy but things are calming down so it’s nice.

 

Neely Quinn: That’s good. Before we get started – I have a ton of questions for you – but for anybody who doesn’t know who Kevin Jorgeson is, can you give us like a brief overview of you and your climbing?

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Sure. Well, my name is Kevin Jorgeson. I’m 30 years old right now. I’ve basically been climbing since I was born but I didn’t find rock climbing until age 10, when I went to the grand opening of my local climbing gym. I think my parents were pretty stoked at that point because I was on everything. Ladders, trees, fences, cupboards, you name it. I was breaking wrists falling out of trees at young ages, getting bit by dogs, I was kind of a handful as a little kid and then once I started climbing, actually, hospital visits and adventures in general actually went down because I had something to focus on. I had a community to tie into.

So, I started climbing around age 10 and I immediately got into the youth circuit. It was JCCA at the time and by 16 I was doing Nationals and international competitions and at about 18 I stopped doing comps and transitioned to climbing outdoors exclusively.

Then I got obsessed with highballs for a couple of years then I turned my attention to the Dawn Wall. That’s kind of like the short and sweet version.

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah. Alright, let’s back up for a second. Where did you grow up?

 

Kevin Jorgeson: I grew up in Santa Rosa, California, which is about an hour north of San Francisco.

 

Neely Quinn: Okay. So was there much climbing around there?

 

Kevin Jorgeson: You know, there is. It’s all on the coast, mostly. There’s lots of pockets of really good bouldering along the coast but what I like about Santa Rosa and where I live is that you have access to everything within about a half day’s drive. You know, I could be in Yosemite in a half day, I could be in Bishop in a full day, Tahoe, the coast, the ocean – I mean there’s so much variety right around here that I really like that. It would be easier to be closer to a specific thing. I could move closer to just climbing but then I would be further away from a lot of other things so I’ve learned to love this spot.

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah. Is that where you live now?

 

Kevin Jorgeson: It is, yeah. I moved back with my fiance last August. We found a place. Before that I was just full vagabond style.

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah, and congrats on getting engaged. You just recently got engaged.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: I did, about two weeks ago. Pretty excited.

 

Neely Quinn: Nice. [laughs] Yeah, that’s awesome. So you said that that’s one thing that you’re going to use to shut people up when they ask you, ‘What’s next?’ after the Dawn Wall.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Yeah. It’s funny. Not a day goes by or conversation goes by that someone doesn’t ask me, ‘What’s next?’ and I had a hard time answering it. I still do, so I just decided I might as well get engaged so I could buy myself some time before figuring out what’s next in my climbing.

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah, well…

 

Kevin Jorgeson: That’s just kidding. In all seriousness, this was a long time coming in itself so I couldn’t be happier.

 

Neely Quinn: Well, it’s an exciting day and it’s a huge year for you, so…

 

Kevin Jorgeson: It is.

 

Neely Quinn: You know, as a woman I wonder – well, as a person who is with a climber who sometimes like to do big climbing events, what was your fiance’s, or your girlfriend at the time, response to you being on the Dawn Wall and you having that project? Was she really supportive or was it hard for her?

 

Kevin Jorgeson: I mean, it’s a little bit of both, for sure. My attention to the Dawn Wall predates our relationship just like it predates Tommy’s relationship with Becca, you know? This thing lasted so long. We were like different people when we started working on this in 2009 and Tommy started even earlier, like in 2007. If you think about it, Tommy got divorced, met someone, got engaged, got married, had a kid, and then sent. That whole time he was still working on the Dawn Wall, you know?

 

Neely Quinn: [laughs] Yeah. He’s a total inspiration to us all in that regard, for sure.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: I know! I look up to him in that in a big way.

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah, you don’t have to give it all up.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: No, you really don’t. You really don’t. It’s a matter of priorities, too, and how you communicate those priorities to your partners, you know? My relationship with Jackie has always included the Dawn Wall and every October, it’s like my pilgrimage back to Yosemite to work on the wall, you know? It just so happens that this year was way more intense than all the other years because we went on this giant push and we hadn’t done that in the last two years. They were just projecting sessions so I would be on the ground pretty much every night.

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah, and then this time you’re not on the ground for three weeks. [laughs]

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Yeah, exactly, and it was just a super – I think, being a companion to Tommy and I on the wall, it’s a lot like trying to watch free soloing in person, you know? It’s really hard to watch. It was probably easier for Tommy and I to go through than for our significant others or families or close friends to witness that battle. You know?

 

Neely Quinn: Tell me more about that. What do you mean?

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Well, we’re up there in the moment. There’s nowhere else we’d rather be than tackling this project but as much support as our companions want to give us, we’re still 1,500 feet up a big wall in a very private battle with this lifelong – not this lifelong but this, in a lot of ways, our lifelong experience with climbing is leading up to this experience on the Dawn Wall. It’s this really epic culmination and, you know, this really intense experience and there’s not much anyone can do for us except be there for us from a distance. I think that was just really hard.

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah, well I mean it kind of got really hard for the whole country and world, in ways. We were all watching you and waiting and anticipating and being nervous for you.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Yeah, that was crazy, the whole way that that played out. [laughs]

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah, it played out. [laughs] Do you want to talk about that? Like, how did it get so big? How did you guys do this? I mean, climbing is – my grandma knows your name and I’m not exaggerating.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: That’s crazy. That is so crazy.

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: We never could have anticipated, planned, orchestrated, any of this stuff. Going up there, climbing, sharing this story the same way that we’d shared it on social media in all the previous years, there was nothing different to our approach. We like sharing the story because we know that it inspires our core community that has supported us throughout the years and it’s fun for us to share it in that way, but on January 2nd, I remember I got – at the time I had Twitter notifications enabled on my phone. I quickly turned that off but one of the notifications that came through was ‘@newyorktimessports is now following you.’ I was like, ‘Uh-oh,’ then a second later this message comes through from a guy named John Branch and he’s a Pulitzer Prize winning writer, sports writer. He wanted to do an interview.

Tommy and I, at this point, we’re a week into the push, things are going great, we got a rest day the next day, this is kind of novel. Like, our core climbing community is following along but we’re like, ‘Hey, that’s kind of cool. This guy wants to – he’s interested in what we’re doing. It’s kind of flattering,’ so we harmlessly take this phone interview on a rest day from our portaledge.

 

Neely Quinn: Nice.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Well, they ended up putting the story on the front page of the Sunday Times and running it online and for whatever reason, it took off. You know, we went and met with all of the editors at the New York Times in New York City a couple months after the climb and we talked about it. You know, to be honest, there wasn’t an outstanding quality per se about the story that made us know that it was going to explode the way that it did. All we know is that we put it on there and it just got traction, you know? People were really interested in the story so of course they wanted to do a follow-up and another one and another one.

I really think that that was just the spark. I think that that New York Times story was the spark and I think there were a lot of intangible elements to it that made it interesting at the time. You know, Tommy and I were really isolated from a lot of the headline news around the world at the time but in retrospect, there was all this terrorism going on in Paris and in other parts of the world and there was just – it was an especially rugged time of bad news. I think this was kind of a sliver of positivity of human interest in between all of this bad news, and maybe that contributed to it in some way. It’s kind of impossible to analyze and break down but, for whatever reason…

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah, I wonder if the writer of the story had this intense interest in climbing and he was like, ‘Please! You’ve got to put this on the front page,’ or something.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: No, no, he didn’t. He – the editor – asked him if he had been following us. It’s not like John Branch was like, ‘I see this thing happening and I want to write about it.’ He was told to go check this out and then the weekend editor of the Times was doing the layout and decided to put it on the front page. That’s pretty much how it happened. It seems very haphazard but they saw that it performed well digitally the day before and they just decided to run it and from there NPR wanted an interview. At that point, our inboxes were flooded with requests, at which point we kind of had a little powwow on the wall and decided to just shut down all outgoing communication except our social media channels, you know? We wouldn’t respond to any inquiries, we would just forward them down to other people to handle and respond to and we would post to Instagram and that was it.

We would rock climb and share a picture a day and just stay focused on the climb.

 

Neely Quinn: That is interesting. Like, you’re up there trying to do the hardest thing of your life and you also have this huge, other, exciting thing happening in the background.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Yeah, it was really intense and I don’t think we really had any idea how many people were following along at the time, you know? A) we were trying not to pay attention to it but B) we just had so much to focus on. It was like the battle of my life on pitch 15 and all of a sudden, the New York Times is writing about the condition of my finger tips. I’m like, ‘What is happening?’ [laughs]

 

Neely Quinn: [laughs] That’s really funny.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Why does the New York Times care about my right index finger?

 

Neely Quinn: That’s great. [laughs] Speaking of the conditions of your fingertips, let’s talk about pitch 15. Let’s talk about the climb. I’m sure people really want to know, you know, how that was for you, how you got prepared for this, all of those things. Do you want to talk about the climbing part of it?

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Wherever you want to start is fine by me.

 

Neely Quinn: Okay, I am interested in – I mean, you guys worked on this for a lot of years and I kind of want to go back. What made you want to do this? What made you want to switch from what you were doing to doing big walls with Tommy?

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Totally. It’s a good question and I think it’s one that a lot of people don’t understand the motivation behind. The backstory is from 2007 to 2009, I was solely focused on finding and establishing the biggest, most beautiful boulder problems that I could find. That, inherently, involves quite a bit of risk and with each new first ascent it got a little more bold and a little more bold. A little more risky, a little more out there, and that effort culminated with Ambrosia in Bishop, in January of 2009.

I did it – I remember it was January 9th and I did it in the morning, at like 9:00 in the morning. I had this distinctive feeling sitting on top of Ambrosia that morning that I’d gotten away with it. You know, like you do something a little sketchy and you’re in control and you’re psyched but then there’s times when you do something a little sketchy and you’re like, ‘Got away with that one!’

I had the distinct feeling that there was a line and I crossed it and I got away with it. I felt that to continue pushing highballs, I was going to start moving into the free soloing realm and that was an idea that I was not comfortable with. I didn’t want to do that, so in a way I felt that I had pushed or satiated my appetite for highballs. I pushed it as far as I was willing to push it without becoming a soloist and I was really looking for something new, because I kind of felt like, ‘Well, I can start soloing or I can try something new.’

 

Neely Quinn: I’m going to interrupt you really quick. Can you just describe what Ambrosia is for anybody who doesn’t know?

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Oh, totally. It’s the biggest, most beautiful boulder in Bishop, if I may say so myself. It’s the Grandpa Peabody boulder. It’s 55 feet tall. It’s the first thing you see when you roll up to the Buttermilks in Bishop and Ambrosia takes the tallest face, right up the middle. No messing around, just gently overhanging V11 into 5.12 on amazing granite. It was a line that I really found by accident.

I was looking to go repeat a climb called Transporter Room, which was basically the original highball boulder problem of the Buttermilks. It’s also on the Grandpa Peabody boulder but I threw my rope down the wrong face and rappelling down that face I thought I was on Transporter Room but really I was on an old Tommy Herbert 5.14 top rope project that he never completed. I was like, ‘Wow, this is crazy. This isn’t 5.12. What is this?’ I talked to Wills Young, the guidebook author in Bishop, and he told me that this was an old top rope project from the 80s. It’s never been climbed before. I was like, ‘Wow.’

This was early 2008 maybe even late 2007 and I didn’t really take the project very seriously at first and over the years, I started to make it more of a distinct goal of mine until late 2008. I decided to go to England for six weeks and climb really sketchy trad routes on the Grit Stone as training and then got off the plane from England and basically drove to Bishop with the goal of doing Ambrosia.

 

Neely Quinn: After England you’re like, ‘This is easy. I’m not going to die.’

 

Kevin Jorgeson: I was definitely in that questing mindset of casting off and putting it all on the line.

 

Neely Quinn: So it’s 55 feet tall. How is that not – excuse me for not knowing about highballs, but how is that not just considered a free solo in itself?

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Well, it really is in my mind. You know, a lot of people commented on this really blurs or crosses the line between highball and solo and there was a lot of discussion about where this lands and to me, I think it’s just like the definition of highball. The same goes for that line between the two, between highball and soloing, it’s a very personal thing about how you approach it. Do you consider a fall from the top an option or not? If not, in your head, you’re soloing and if you’ve got an out-clause, you’re highballing. If falling is an option then you’re bouldering still and if it’s absolutely not an option then you’re soloing. It’s a mental switch that every climber gets to switch for themselves.

Ambrosia is all three. It’s a nails-hard boulder problem at the bottom, it’s got a highball V7 sequence in the middle that you could totally fall off of, and then it’s got a free soloing aspect at the top that you really shouldn’t fall off of.

 

Neely Quinn: So you decided after that that you didn’t want to go any higher? You didn’t want to go any harder? Like, where was the line for you where you said that you didn’t want to start free soloing?

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Basically, I didn’t want to go any higher. I thought about maybe, I could definitely climb harder than this on a shorter boulder and that could be interesting, but the motivation behind Ambrosia that justified the risk was that it was a big, beautiful line and that it had never been done before. It required personal growth over the course of years to become comfortable with that climb.

When I was looking for something new, you know, in that phase of post-send depression and not knowing what’s next, this climbing film Progression came out which featured Ambrosia but it also featured this futuristic big wall project from Tommy. The closing scene of his segment is this sunset and it’s his voice saying, “When I look at this next generation of climbers doing things on the sport climbs and big walls that I could never conceive of, if they could apply that kind of talent to the big walls, that’s what it would take to free climb this thing. Even if I can’t climb this I want to plant the seed for the next generation to come and inspire us all.” It kind of felt like the gauntlet. He’s like, ‘Hey. You guys want to know what’s next? Here it is! Come and get it!’

Maybe I took it a little more literally than most but, you know me – pebble wrestler with no big wall experience – picked up the phone and called Tommy frickin’ Caldwell and asked him if he needed a climbing partner. The most unqualified candidate imaginable and total shock, he said yes.

 

Neely Quinn: Sorry for the interruption here but I need to take a moment to let you know that FrictionLabs and TrainingBeta have teamed up. FrictionLabs is giving you an awesome discount, or a few of them, actually.

If you go over to www.frictionlabs.com/trainingbeta you’ll find what they’re offering to you there so that you can try out their chalk and hopefully be as happy of a customer as I have been. Their chalk is made with more magnesium carbonate than any other chalk brand out there, and magnesium carbonate is the stuff that makes your hands sticky and dry and feel good while you’re climbing. It also is what makes the chalk a little bit more expensive but, in my opinion, it’s totally worth it. It’s completely worth it for me to not have to chalk up as much, for me to feel more secure on holds because my hands aren’t sweating off, when I start a climb with chalk covering my hands evenly a lot of times now I come down and the chalk is still all over my hands. It’s pretty amazing stuff.

Once again, if you just go to www.frictionlabs.com/trainingbeta you’ll find the discounts that they’re giving you guys, exclusively. I hope you enjoy it and now we’ll go back to the interview. Thanks.

 

Neely Quinn: I mean, had you ever climbed in Yosemite before on a big wall?

 

Kevin Jorgeson: A little bit. I had been going to Yosemite since I was 16 but almost exclusively to go bouldering. I had done Leaning Tower and I had done Half Dome twice but I had never spent any time on El Cap. Never climbed El Cap so pretty minimal experience. I was definitely a rookie.

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah, I heard you say in one interview that it was a sharp learning curve for you or something along those lines, with rope management and everything that you have to do up there.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Totally. I think I have this, I don’t know, I guess it’s a trend of just – I don’t really ease into things. I just go right into it. I didn’t get into big wall free climbing by starting with Half Dome and then Freerider and then Golden Gate and then Corazon and then Zodiac then Magic Mushroom and then Dawn Wall. I was like, ‘Never climbed a big wall? Whatever. It’s fine. Just try the hardest one!’

 

Neely Quinn: [laughs] That was one of my questions, too, while you were there projecting the Dawn Wall were you ever like, ‘Let’s just go do something easier today.’ Did you guys ever go do something else?

 

Kevin Jorgeson: No. Literally, Tommy and I only ever tied in together on the Dawn Wall.

 

Neely Quinn: Oh my god.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: I don’t think we’ve ever climbed a different route together in Yosemite. We’ve gone bouldering together but I’m trying to think if that’s true. I think it is. I think every time we’ve been tied into the same rope it’s been on the Dawn Wall.

 

Neely Quinn: You guys aren’t even going to know each other anywhere else.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: [laughs] Yeah, it’s crazy.

 

Neely Quinn: So, back to pitch 15. You want to talk about that?

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Sure, yeah.

 

Neely Quinn: What was it like for you? How hard was it for you? How much harder than anything else you’ve ever done, if at all?

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Well, were [unclear] by a day or two. We had just done pitch 14, which is 9a/.14d. It’s really hard. It’s the hardest pitch on the route. I think it is harder than pitch 15 even though pitch 15 took me longer.

We were rolling pretty high. Motivation was really high, momentum was really high, at this point on the climb everyday that we went climbing we did what we had to do and everyday had an agenda. ‘Alright, today we’ve got to do 13 and 14,’ or, ‘Today we’ve got to do 10,’ or whatever it may be but then pitch 15 came along and it was like I just hit a wall. I think the short and sweet of it was I just wasn’t prepared for pitch 15. I hadn’t put as much time into the redpoint process into pitch 15 as I needed to, which if I could go back in time I would try to spend more time on it but there’s a lot of pitches to rehearse as well. You’re trying to memorize the sequence on 20 nails-hard pitches so really I went through, basically, the whole redpoint process of a sport climb while on the wall, over the course of seven days, battling conditions, battling skin, battling sequences and fatigue and all that stuff.

 

Neely Quinn: I have a couple questions for you. So pitch 14 was .14d. How hard was pitch 15 again?

 

Kevin Jorgeson: It’s also .14d.

 

Neely Quinn: Had you climbed – I cannot find, maybe I’m not very good at Googling but I can’t find a proper resume for you online for your climbing. Had you done a .14d before?

 

Kevin Jorgeson: No. I skipped .14b and .14c.

 

Neely Quinn: [laughs] Oh my god.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Yeah, so again, that whole jumping into the deep end. I was like, ‘Ahh.’ Maybe I should have trained by climbing other 9a’s,’ but I just trained on the Dawn Wall.

 

Neely Quinn: I mean, that’s a lot of faith you had in yourself. That’s a lot of faith Tommy had in you.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Yeah, I suppose so looking back on it. The first .14b I’d ever done would have been pitch 12.

 

Neely Quinn: Like, the day before.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: The day before, yeah. The burly thing in my head, standing at the base on December 13th, was that realistically I wasn’t really that close to climbing the Dawn Wall, you know? I hadn’t redpointed pitch 12, which was .14b, pitch 14, pitch 15, pitch 16, or 17, 18, 19, 20, you know? So there’s, like, five .13d’s, a .14b, a .14c, and two .14d’s that I had never redpointed before that I was going to have to redpoint on the go and they would all be the hardest pitches I’ve ever done before.

It kind of felt like a longshot but I didn’t really have anything to lose, either. We were kind of out of time rehearsal-wise and weather window-wise. It was like Tommy was ready, I was as ready as I was going to be, so it was just kind of like you get put in that moment of pressure where here’s your opportunity to do pitch 12, you know? This is where you got stuck in 2010 and you had to bail because you couldn’t send this pitch. What are you going to do?

Luckily, I sent pitch 12 after a couple of tries and that really opened up the momentum moving forward.

 

Neely Quinn: I’m assuming you weren’t fingerboarding up there. What – it had to have been something that just clicked in your head or maybe it was just how many times you had practiced these things but, like, what happened up there? How did you do it? It seems like what you did was a miracle.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Yeah, yeah it is kind of. In the last week in the season, prior to the push, a number of really key pieces of the puzzle fell into place for me. If those didn’t fall into place I don’t think I would have climbed the Dawn Wall. One of them was the crux stemming sequence on pitch 12. I don’t bend the same way that Tommy does. I can’t do the crux the same way that he does the crux and that’s what shut me down in 2010 on pitch 12. I just couldn’t get my foot up that high so the last day of climbing on pitch 12 of the season prior to the push I found a new way to do that sequence. I just made up my own beta and it was a total breakthrough.

Even though I hadn’t redpointed it, I felt like if the conditions were good and the moment was right, I had a good chance. I actually felt pretty confident going into pitch 12. Pitch 14, I fell off the last move of about a month before the push so I kind of had that confidence but still that little bit of doubt because I still fell off the last move. You know, almost doesn’t count and it’s a really finicky pitch. It’s dead vertical, a 60-foot sideways traverse from right to left, the foot holds are horrendous so your feet can pop at any moment and they often do, which is a really frustrating reason to fall. Even if you’re feeling great and climbing really precise, sometimes your foot just pops, you know?

Going into pitch 14, that was one of the more uncertain pitches. With each successive attempt where Tommy and my feet would slip, at least for me, that frustration and doubt creeps in because we probably spent – I know for myself I probably spent 40 or 50 days working on pitch 14 alone. A lot of days. 40 or 50 days over four or five years so that’s a lot of muscle memory with the sequence and when you work on something for that many days your body begins to expect when to fall, you know? I was battling that expectation of, ‘I’m supposed to fall here. If I don’t fall here I usually slip here,’ and so on and so forth. To get into that perfect moment of focus, where you don’t let the prior history of expectation, of slipping here or there, cloud the experience and you just climb it the way you know you can climb it, it’s a really special moment and I had that. It just/everything clicked.

The first time I got through the first crux of pitch 14 – there are three. Pitch 14 has three boulder problems in a row with a rest in between each one. The first boulder problem is the hardest. The first time I got through that boulder problem, I sent the pitch and it was like my third or fourth try of the night. It was like 7:00 and I swung back over, Tommy tied in, and then he sent it. We were eating dinner at like 8:00. It was our earliest night and it was our hardest pitch. We were like, ‘Wow! This is awesome!’

 

Neely Quinn: So you kind of gained some confidence from that, too.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Totally. Totally. But there was something that I wasn’t really aware of that was going to give me trouble on pitch 15 and that was the fact that I climbed pitch 14 and every pitch prior to that with two taped fingers because on day two I split both my index and my middle finger on my right hand. On pitch 14 I was kind of thinking about it but trying not to. I was trying to tap into Tommy’s optimism that, ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter. It’s no big deal. You just deal.’ That worked on pitch 14 so I kind of had that same approach for pitch 15 but the crux hold is such that you only have three fingers on a razor blade with your right hand and you need all the friction you can get. With the tape, it just kind of gave me fits. No matter how hard I wanted to do that sequence the tape wasn’t really allowing it so it became a battle of skin condition and planning the attempts for the perfect moment, in between splits.

 

Neely Quinn: So you kind of had to wait it out so you could have your finger untaped and not bloody?

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Yeah, exactly. Day one I tried it four times and I didn’t do it. Both of my fingers were taped and going back down to the portaledge that night, my mentality was still pretty optimistic. I was like, ‘Hey, it’s the freakin’ Dawn Wall. It’s supposed to put up a fight. What would it be if we just climbed every pitch on our first day of trying? It’s only appropriate. I’ll try again tomorrow. No big deal.’

The plan the next day was to give it one attempt and if I didn’t do it with both my fingers still taped I would rest the entire day and the following day, so I tried it that morning, didn’t do it. It was very clear that it just wasn’t going to happen and then I started to invest in resting. I rested the rest of that day and all the next day and meanwhile I’m belaying Tommy as he continues to just bone crush pitch after pitch, like the most impressive climbing I have ever seen.

So then, my next climbing day comes along and this is kind of the moment. Conditions are getting good, I am able to unwrap the index finger on my right hand, and if I climb pitch 15 this day I’ll basically be caught up with Tommy, which would be awesome. We’d be back in the same spot and it’s all good. Well, four attempts later I don’t do it. At this point I kind of felt like maybe that was it because I didn’t know if I could rest two more days and then try again and go through that whole cycle again and meanwhile Tommy is getting higher and higher. He’s all the way up to Wino Tower. He’s through all the hardest pitches. He could be on top in a day if he wanted to or at most two days so it’s all coming down to the skin on my fingers and whether or not I can turn the disappointment, and kind of devastation of not sending at the end of a long night of attempts, and turn it around into genuine optimism and motivation and resolve for the next day of climbing.

It was more that mental seesaw that was exhausting, less so the dealing with the skin stuff or whether or not the weather was going to hold out. It was more that mental battle.

 

Neely Quinn: So what carried you through? Was there/how did you do that?

 

Kevin Jorgeson: I mean, there were a couple of things. It starts with Tommy being the best climbing partner you could ask for. When you think about it, Tommy, his success on the Dawn Wall at this stage is pretty much locked up. It’s guaranteed. He’s on Wino Tower and there’s one more 5.13 pitch between him and the top. He’s gonna send and I’m, meanwhile, a thousand feet below in the thick of the crux. Even if I do pitch 15 I have to stick the dyno, I have to do this corner above it that’s nails, a .14c. I’ve got to do all these face pitches that are really hard and Tommy really gave the/he kind of created this lighthearted atmosphere on the wall and it was a way more conscious effort on his part than I knew at the time because I was just in my own mental hell of battling with pitch 15.

He just tried to spend more time at camp cracking jokes and keeping it lighthearted. He said, “Look man. We’re having the time of our lives up here. I don’t care how long it takes you to do pitch 15, just rest as many days as you need, I’ll belay you as long as it takes, and then you’ll catch up and we’ll both top this thing out.”

 

Neely Quinn: No big deal.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: No big deal. That was huge, that was huge, because in addition to all the pressure that I was putting on myself I’m feeling the pressure of the years of commitment to the project leading up to this and wanting that to culminate in climbing this pitch, you know? That, and the story has now blown up so there’s all this pressure of attention that I’m having to ignore whether I like it or not.

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah, like journalists camped out at the top.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Totally. It was like it’s going to be the most public failure, ever. Everyone is watching. ‘Is he going to do pitch 15 or not?’ It was kind of hard to avoid. It was really hard but I remember, maybe it was my first rest day after the second or third round of failure on the pitch, and I was resolved to give it one more go. To give it two more rest days and then give it one more full day of attempts and if I didn’t do it I think that might have been it. Everything was kind of culminating in this kind of three day time window. Rest two days, climb the third day.

I looked on the forecast and that third day out was scheduled to be overcast. It hadn’t been overcast the entire push. It was the only overcast day and it was going to be windy so I knew the conditions were going to be good, meanwhile my middle finger is healing really well so I’m starting to feel these little bits of positivity creep in, you know? I don’t know how to describe it but there was this calm sense of – the best word I can think of to describe the feeling was just resolve. It wasn’t overconfidence, it wasn’t just pure optimism, it was like a calm resolve. Like, ‘I’m going to rest, I’m going to try again, and I’m going to do it,’ and I just kept visualizing that.

The day came and the conditions were amazing and I decided to kind of throw out my sequence at the crux and revert to a different foot sequence that I had devised earlier in the season, which was kind of a risky thing to do when you think about it. It was kind of like, I don’t know, if you’re an Olympic snowboarder and you’ve got your gold medal run in mind and you decide to totally change it at the last second and you haven’t tried that run in two months. It was kind of an intimidating decision to make but I had been studying all of this footage that I had asked the documentary crew to edit for me. I’m like, ‘Show me all my failed attempts from the last bolt that I clip to where I fall,’ and instead of visualizing success on those rest days I was actually watching the footage of all of these failures. I found this common denominator in why I was falling and decided that changing this foot sequence would probably help.

The day came and the conditions were amazing. My first attempt I didn’t do it but I came really, really close and the second try was just perfect, you know? The way that you imagine a redpoint – not imagine, but the way that you dream a redpoint feeling. Yes it’s hard, yes you’re pumped, but you feel solid. You’re not quaking your way through the crux sequence. You’re in control still, even though you’re right on the edge of what you’re capable of doing and that’s how the pitch felt. There wasn’t a move where I felt like I was about to tip backwards and fall off. It was all there and it all clicked and it was – I will remember the last two bolts of that pitch for the rest of my life, like it was yesterday. I can tell you every hand move, every foot move, the sensation of grabbing every single hold.

There’s an image I have – so you do the crux and I haven’t gotten through the crux. This is like my tenth attempt in seven days on this pitch. It’s like Hail Mary, you know? Get through the crux, you get a little rest, you clip a bolt, and you have to do a V7 boulder problem to get to the anchor now. It’s the kind of V7 that’s awkward. It’s not just like grab the holds and pull down, it’s the kind of thing where you have to put a ton of pressure into the footholds in order for them to stick and you have to grab this hold with your right hand.

Imagine reaching above your head and grabbing a sidepull but not with your fingers oriented vertically like you normally would, but imagine laying the side, the whole side, of your index finger against it and pushing against it. That’s what you do. You’re spread-eagle on the wall, totally compression-style, and you squeeze and you bring your right hand above your head and you just put the side of your index finger against this little flake and you do that in order to move your right foot up and then you flip the grip so that you’re actually grabbing it as a sidepull.

As I was flipping that grip I was looking at the tips of my fingers and seeing the blood creeping through the tape on my index finger. It turns out I had split my tip through the tape in five places while doing the crux so I’m having this ‘holy shit’ moment as I’m doing the final boulder problem because I’m seeing this blood just seeping through the tape. Your hand is right next to your face as you do this move and I’m trying to tune that out of my mind as I’m grabbing the last two jugs and traverse over to the anchor. Just instantly not caring. Like, ‘I don’t care. Whatever.’ I could have split all 10 fingers and I would have been happy and then just letting loose.

 

Neely Quinn: God, that’s so cool. That’s exactly how you want it to be. What an awesome story.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Yeah, it was intense and at that point there was this crazy updraft of wind the entire time. Brett Lowell was attached to this crazy rigging system we had where he was hanging 50 feet out from the wall and he was getting blown all over the place. The footage looks like he’s a drone moving in and out from the wall and side-to-side. He’s biting his finger trying not to scream because it’s a really crazy place to be hanging out. The wind is super loud in your ears, it’s blowing up your shirt and your pant legs. Wind is kind of an intense element to add to an already intense experience but…

 

Neely Quinn: It blew you up the wall.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: It really did. Clipping the chains and hanging on the end of the rope, that wind was just like the momentum had shifted and it was like a rising tide, that wind, that was going to carry me up the wall. There was no way I wasn’t going to climb the next pitches after breaking through that. I could hear Tommy yelling, I could hear Corey and Kyle and all the guys that were shooting, hooting and hollering at the same time I hear these echoes washing up the wall from the meadow and our’s were echoing back down and it was this pretty special moment, for sure. A moment of total breakthrough and kind of paradigm shift.

 

Neely Quinn: Sounds pretty blissful.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Yeah, it was. It really was.

 

Neely Quinn: So, I mean I don’t even know where to go from there but obviously you got to the top and you guys finished.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Yeah, that was the turning point for me. Tommy and I had very different arcs, story arcs, with this project. When Tommy started the push he was ready to send and everyday that he had a pitch to climb, he sent it. My battle really played out in those 19 days we were on the wall. When Tommy reached Wino Tower, that was kind of his summit. We’ve always dreamt about what it would feel like when we get Wino Tower and would have all the hard climbing below us. It’s a very symbolic point on the wall.

Tommy’s really emotional moments of reflection and celebration were on Wino Tower whereas mine, it’s just kind of my nature as how I approach climbing, is it’s not over till it’s over kind of approach. It literally wasn’t until I was belaying Tommy to the summit and kind of unfixing the haul bag so he could haul it up and taking down the anchor and starting to climb the last pitch that I relaxed into the fact that this is happening. We’re definitely, 100%, gonna climb the Dawn Wall.

My relief and celebration did happen on the summit and I think it’s just a difference in how we approach climbing. Tommy is the optimist part of our climbing partnership equation and I’m the detail analyst guy. We balance each other out really well and it wasn’t a planned thing, obviously. We’d climbed one day together before we teamed up on the Dawn Wall so we didn’t know each other. We didn’t know our personality strengths and weaknesses were as people and as climbers but they meshed together in a perfect way for the Dawn Wall and to that I can only attribute, like, magic or something, really. I have no idea.

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah, well it seems like you wouldn’t have spent so much time with him up there if it didn’t mesh. I wanted to ask you about that. I mean, I don’t want to get too personal but you have to wonder, I mean, even on two-day long trips, for me sometimes I get annoyed with my partner so was that ever an issue with you guys?

 

Kevin Jorgeson: No, it wasn’t. You know, early on – well, I’ll back up. I’ll say that with a five year, six year project, that relationship evolves naturally. Early on, I was much more an apprentice than a partner. Tommy’s role early on was to kind of take me under his wing and teach me this big wall stuff and help me get comfortable with the scope of this project. At the same time, kind of let my inexperience play out on the wall in a way that would help push the project along.

What I mean by that is that Tommy had 18 years of experience on El Cap prior to the Dawn Wall and forming his opinions of what was possible and impossible. I didn’t have that so if we got to/when I looked at the dyno for the first time, yeah, it looked crazy. It was eight and a half feet but I’m approaching it as a boulderer, you know? I’m not thinking that it’s impossible.

I have no preconception of what is possible or impossible on El Cap because I haven’t spent any time up there and I think that was a really key piece of the equation that I didn’t realize as a core reason for Tommy bringing me on the project. I think that was a real strength. It’s just that different, fresh, kind of uninformed perspective and it really took that because yeah, the Dawn Wall really is leaps and bounds harder than a lot of the other big wall free climbs and if you’re measuring what can be done based on what has been done, it’d be really easy to talk yourself out of it, out of the Dawn Wall. I think that was a really key piece.

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah. It sounds like you guys really both brought your own brand of optimism to it.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Totally. That relationship evolves, right? So it starts as an apprentice and then as I gained confidence and experience throughout the years we start to pull more equal weight and we start to rely on each other’s strengths and weaknesses in a more seamless way. That takes time to learn what those are and it takes patience and it takes you being gentle on yourself, too, with what your weaknesses are and being okay with those and letting your partner balance out those weaknesses, and not feel guilty for the weaknesses that you have and likewise, not being passive-aggressive for the strengths that you have and that the pieces that you have to carry because your partner doesn’t have that.

There’s all this mental cocktail that plays out on the wall as we figure out all of these things. I hate pitch six. I don’t want to lead pitch six. I find it awkward and intimidating and Tommy’s like, ‘Whatever. No big deal. I got pitch six,’ you know? I can relax into that and likewise, ‘Well, I’ll take pitch seven,’ or, ‘I’ll take pitch nine,’ or eight or 14 or the dyno pitch – whatever. There was so much to figure out on the wall that everyday was very task-oriented. It was a very professional approach to the matter because it was just such an undertaking.

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah, the biggest undertaking of them all. So since this is a training podcast and we have about 10 minutes left, I want to ask you if over the years of working these routes and figuring out what you needed to send them, when you weren’t on the Dawn Wall and you were home or wherever, did you do any specific training for it?

 

Kevin Jorgeson: I did some but my training has always been very unscientific and I typically don’t train at all, really. I just climb outside a bunch so leading up to the Dawn Wall I focused on finger strength. I kept it really simple. In previous years I took a more holistic approach to making my body really resilient by doing things like CrossFit and trail running and mixing bouldering with high intensity, power endurance workouts and stuff, and this year I just decided to focus on finger strength and overall strength.

Literally, I would go into the gym, I’d boulder for an hour or two, I’d do that Chris Webb Parsons hangboard workout – you know that one?

 

Neely Quinn: Yep.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: But I would throw in, like, 30 or 40 push-ups between each hang. I would just be hangboarding and doing bunches of push-ups and that was kind of my training leading up to the push this year. I don’t know – it worked for me. Looking back on it, I think my limitation on the Dawn Wall was more mental than physical. It was more getting comfortable and relaxed and confident on the pitches, and that’s something that only comes with time on the wall itself, you know?

I always felt like I could do all the moves to the route. We’d go up there and work it and I could do all these pitches in pieces but I’d get wigged out while leading them or I wasn’t confident enough or I’d use conditions as an excuse, or whatever. It was always like this mental weakness that needed to be resolved. It wasn’t a physical one.

 

Neely Quinn: So you felt like you had the fitness and the base to do this from maybe even the beginning and you maybe just needed to get your head around it?

 

Kevin Jorgeson: I guess. I guess you could simplify it that way but I mean, I don’t know. I could do all the moves but picturing it all getting linked together was always really intimidating. Even standing at the base on December 27th, tying in, I was like, ‘Shit. Am I going to be able to do pitch 12? Am I going to be able to do pitch 14?’ I think being put into that high pressure situation brought out the best in me and in my mental fortitude and motivation for seizing that moment and making it count, to be totally cliche.

All those other days of preparation just maybe lacked the stakes, like, the high stakes in highball where it’s a decision. Highballs aren’t physical, they’re mental. They’re not about can you do it, it’s are you willing to do it right now because when you decide to do it you do. They’re a mental switch.

In a lot of ways that’s kind of similar to the situation I was put into on the Dawn Wall where it was like well, this is your one shot. This is the push. Tommy is going to send this thing no matter what so you can either come back by yourself next year, which is unlikely, or just do it right now. It definitely brought out the best in me, for sure.

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah, so on that note – I’m just trying to figure out. It sounds like you have this laser focus when you have high stakes. That’s what I heard you say.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Yeah.

 

Neely Quinn: But I mean, okay, so you have this laser focus but what are you telling yourself, moment by moment when you’re – and I’ve talked to other people, like, I talked to Arno Ilgner, I talked to Hazel, about what is going on in your head when you have these high stakes moments. It seems to be the trend that you just have to stay in the moment and you have to just focus on your body and what you’re doing, moment by moment, and there’s nothing fancy about it. That’s just what you have to do. Do you think that that’s what happened with you?

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Yeah, I think that’s fair. I think it’s a matter of commitment and acceptance for the situation you’re in, too. You have to want to be there and I felt really privileged to be put in that position. I think it’s really rare when you’re put in a moment to succeed or fail on something that’s super meaningful to you. It’s often the case that there’s always tomorrow, you know? Like, ‘Oh, I can just come back,’ or, ‘I’ll just come back next weekend,’ or, ‘I’ll come back next season.’

Here’s the super special moment where there wasn’t a tomorrow. This was like our game seven of the World Series. This was our Super Bowl, you know? There isn’t a tomorrow. It’s like, ‘Here it is. You’re standing on the edge of the portaledge, chalked up, tied in, ready to go, on the hardest pitch of your life. What are you going to do about it?’

It’s a pretty rad moment to be in, you know? It’s a privilege, it’s exciting, it’s what you trained for, and when all the other excuses and distractions are taken away and you’re in that pure moment of pressure and opportunity, I think it brings the best out of an athlete, just like a gold medal run or a Super Bowl game or something like that. I think in climbing it’s really hard to find those moments because sending a pitch can be arbitrary, timing-wise, right? It’s like, ‘Oh, do I want to try it at 2:00 or do I want to try it at 5:00? Do I want to try it on Sunday or do I want to try it on Tuesday? Do I want to go bouldering this summer or next summer?’ On the Dawn Wall it’s like, ‘It’s the push.’

Because of the game we play, the rules that we put around big wall free climbing, it culminates in these really intense moments that are super special. It’s the closest thing to highball bouldering that I’ve found, where you have a little – with highball bouldering you find that you have a lot more control over when you choose to take the risk and choose to send, but the stakes are equally high. They happen to be purely physical with highball and it’s a lot more emotionally devastating to fail on your dream project on El Cap but the pressure is kind of the same.

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah, yeah, and you said that these kinds of situations bring out the best in athletes. Sometimes they do and sometimes they bring out the worst in athletes so I want to commend you, just officially, that you really did do something spectacular. I was impressed, personally, and I want to just congratulate you.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: I appreciate that. Thank you. You know, it’s what inspires me about Adam Ondra climbing. Here’s a guy who cares so much about climbing that every attempt I feel like he has that same sense of opportunity and pressure that I felt on pitch 15, or that I felt standing at the base of Ambrosia. I think it’s a special breed of athlete that cares that much, you know? In a sport that can be so leisurely and so voluntary when we choose to perform or the reasons that we may perform well at that moment, like, Adam seems to be able to turn that on voluntarily and it’s pretty amazing. I think that’s maybe one of the reasons why he’s so accomplished.

 

Neely Quinn: So speaking of Adam, I’m sure you’ve heard him say that he wants to try to do the Dawn Wall in a day.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Yeah.

 

Neely Quinn: How would you guys feel if he did that?

 

Kevin Jorgeson: I think that would be the most badass climb ever done.

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: I’ve thought about it a lot, like, ‘What would it be like to climb that thing in a day?’ I’m thinking about what time of day you’d start and what you would feel like by the time you got to pitch 12 or 14 and 15 and hucking the dyno and all the hard crimping on the face pitches above that and then all the dirty cracks and the offwidths and the wet stuff and the route finding, and it’s just such a big route.

I mean, if anyone could do it, he could do it. I think it’s – you know, the Dawn Wall isn’t the hardest pitches that have ever been done, right? I think what’s unique about it is that A) Tommy had the vision for it to begin with, which is incredible. That’s the majority of it right there but then he found an equally stubborn partner as himself and we just didn’t stop. We kept pushing year after year after year when people were probably pitying us as this point. They’re like, ‘God, are they ever going to do this thing? Gosh, they should just pick something they can do.’

I think if you can have that long term approach to a goal like climbing the Dawn Wall in a day then yeah, maybe you could do it one day but it’s a lot to figure out. It took us – we were refining beta, very specific sequences, up until the week before we did the push. Like, major changes to the beta, you know, which is crazy. You’d think after five years of working on the same pitches you’d have it sussed but that’s just how technical that terrain is.

 

Neely Quinn: He’s going to be calling you guys from the wall.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Totally, totally. I think it would be a lot easier if he had Tommy or I up there, telling him exactly how to do every sequence but if he was having to figure out all of those pitches and how to protect them and what the sequences were, that’s a couple year commitment, for sure.

 

Neely Quinn: We only have a few minutes left but I have to ask, how much has this changed your life and do you have any idea what’s next for you in terms of climbing? You don’t have to answer. You can – if you were here you could slap my face, but…

 

Kevin Jorgeson: No, no, it’s fine. Life feels a little bit back to normal now. What is it? It’s July so it’s been six and a half months or something since we topped out. Being home for the last week, it’s nice and calm. I don’t have to get on an airplane for at least another week and things are certainly different. There’s a certain reality that’s different than it was before but it’s all good stuff and I feel very grateful for the changes. It’s been a lot to adapt to, like learning how to get comfortable sharing this story in front of big audiences. That’s not something we ever anticipated but it’s something that we’re having to adapt to and all sorts of things like that.

It’s all good stuff and as far as what’s next, I just went on this week-long rafting trip through Dinosaur National Monument. I’ve been whitewater rafting since I was a kid so I love whitewater rafting. Two years ago I went down the Grand Canyon for 19 days and always looking for climbing, but now I’m thinking about actually using remote rivers as a way to discover and develop brand new climbing areas around the world.

We all use roads and trails to access new climbing areas but no one’s really using rivers to access new rock. You know, such is geology that wherever these rivers often cut amazing canyons through amazing pieces of granite or limestone or schist or sandstone, whatever it may be. I’m thinking about deep water soloing over rivers, discovering new boulder fields on the sides of rivers and stuff. It’s a fun way to combine whitewater rafting, which doesn’t suck. If you don’t find any boulders you’re still on an awesome river trip and this cool element of exploration where you never know what’s around the next bend and you can pull the raft over and run up the hill and explore these boulders or anchor the boat and deep water solo this cliff over the water. Whatever it may be.

I love doing things that are new and that require exploration and require processes. It’s what attracted me to highballs, it’s what attracted me to the Dawn Wall, and I think it’s what’s attracting me to this idea of using rivers to discover and develop new climbing. Yeah, I’m starting my research into what rivers might hold the most potential for this kind of thing because I was just on the Yampa River and I found some Joe’s Valley quality black sandstone, in a perfect grassy meadow. Like, ‘Woah, this is amazing!’ and some beautiful cliffs, right over the river. If I had more time on the trip I could have stopped and climbed more but if you design a trip around climbing explorations and objectives, I think you could have some pretty cool experiences.

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah. I don’t remember where they went but did you see Chris and Heather Weidner just did a similar thing?

 

Kevin Jorgeson: No.

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah, they went and put up new routes along a river trip, too.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Cool. I’ll have to look up that trip.

 

Neely Quinn: Yeah. It’s funny that you guys did it at the same time.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Yeah, yeah.

 

Neely Quinn: It’s the new thing, I guess.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Apparently. Man, I’m late to the party. Oh well.

 

Neely Quinn: Okay, I won’t get into details but I’m hoping this has made you and Tommy financially rich. If it hasn’t I’m going to be very disappointed. [laughs] Would you say that it’s been good for you in that way?

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Yeah, it’s definitely made things a little more comfortable, for sure, but just like with climbing I don’t take anything for granted so I’m trying to be careful and proactive at the same time so that I don’t passively let opportunity go by but yeah.

 

Neely Quinn: Awesome. Well, I think that’s it. I’ve picked your brain enough and you have told an exquisite, epic story and I loved it, so thank you.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Awesome. My pleasure.

 

Neely Quinn: Any final words? Anything?

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Just thanks for the interest and the interview. You did a great job.

 

Neely Quinn: Oh yeah, speaking of that, you said that you guys turned off all inquiries for interviews and so I feel pretty honored that you took this interview, so thanks.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: My pleasure.

 

Neely Quinn: Alright, well have a great day.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Alright.

 

Neely Quinn: See ya.

 

Kevin Jorgeson: Thanks.

 

Neely Quinn: Okay, thanks for listening to that interview with Kevin Jorgeson. Again, I’m your host, Neely Quinn. It was really cool to hear it firsthand. I don’t know about you but it was super cool. I watched him and read about it while it was happening and yeah – it’s something that’s historical for all of us so that was Kevin.

Let’s see – next week, I’ve had a few requests for me to to do a podcast episode on my own, just about nutrition, and I put a request out on Facebook for you guys to give me questions about nutrition. It’s going to be sort of a shorter podcast episode because I don’t want to bore you with just my voice for an hour. I’ll take about five or six questions on nutrition, as it relates to climbing, and we’ll go from there.

I also have an interview with Nathaniel Coleman coming up and I got Eva Lopez but she’s not going to do a spoken interview. I don’t think her English is super, super good so she’s going to do a written interview for us so that will be cool. Plenty of other good stuff coming up.

If you guys are still trying to improve your own climbing, always remember that we have climbing programs for you guys on www.trainingbeta.com. We have stuff for boulderers, we have stuff for route climbers, we have something for people who want endurance, specifically. Kris Hampton, ‘Odub’ in other words, wrote this program for us just for people who are trying to go from 5.9 to 5.10, or 5.10 to 5.11, or 5.11 to 5.12. Beyond that he thinks that you need more power endurance, more strength, more power, but strictly for endurance for routes we have a program that’s eight weeks long where he teaches you how to gain endurance in your forearms and also mental endurance. You get to know what your limits actually are as opposed to you making them up in you mind, which I think we do a lot. You can check that out. It’s the eight week endurance program by Kris Hampton and you can find that on TrainingBeta.

I think that’s all I’ve got for you guys so it’s Thursday, the weekend’s coming up, have fun out there and I’ll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening.

 

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