The biggest climbing areas often receive the most attention and effort - but what keeps our local crags moving? We sit down for a mid-season check-in and get-to-know-your-host show with Jake Reginato!

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Jake is a Shasta-area based developer, rebolter, and climbing steward - and, while he's certainly an accomplished developer and climber himself, establishing dozens of new lines with difficulties well into the 5.13 range, where he really shines is in his investment in his local region.

Here's a quote from MountainProject: "This crag hid under moss for a long time until Jake Reginato put in some time with a drill and brush to revive the area." Breadcrumbs like these can be found all over locals-only spots in Northern California. Instead of being put off by the occasionally overprotective environments found around him, Jake embraced it, putting in the hard work to improve and maintain these areas that the surrounding community loved so much.

Jake recently took this ideology to the next step, founding a new local climbing organization. The Shasta Climber's Coalition is working to create a new community - not one defined by the mere protection of its local climbing secrets, but instead by investment, collaboration, and responsibility.

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Show Links:

• Shasta LCO website: https://www.shastaclimbers.org/
• Access Fund - Accessing Private Land: https://d1w9vyym276tvm.cloudfront.net/assets/pdf/Climbing-on-Private-Land.pdf

How do we balance the preservation of old routes with the enablement of new ones? And who actually goes out there to do the work that needs to get done? Well, if you live in New Mexico, your answer might just be Anna Brown.

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Anna Brown, known to many by her Instagram moniker of @mediagirl, is a New Mexico-based climber, photographer, and steward, whose work has become deeply rooted in the Southwest climbing community. Many know her for her gallery of bad, old, and downright strange bolts found when rebolting around her local haunts. What’s even more impressive, however, is her dedication to preserving the routes and crags that define the region.

After encountering aging hardware on classic climbs around the Sandia Mountains a few years ago, Anna developed a passion for bolt replacement, and has since become one of New Mexico's leading rebolting advocates. Working both individually and within her role as a board member on her LCO, she has helped replace hundreds of aging bolts, anchors, and rappel stations, ensuring that climbers will continue to enjoy these places for generations to come.

Whether she's behind the camera, establishing new routes, getting her hands dirty with trail work, or hanging from a rope replacing old hardware, Anna has become a leading voice for stewardship, community action, and responsible route development—helping preserve both the history and future of climbing in New Mexico.

Climbing media is at an all-time high, and that includes media featuring route development, stewardship, and crag care. We talk about what considerations get made in the creation of that media, the response to it, and the ideal future state, with the absolute force in development and crag care that is Evan Wisheropp.

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For Evan, climbing has never just been about sending lines. After starting climbing over 20 years ago, Evan eventually found his calling: not solely in climbing routes, but in creating them. Since he began developing in 2014, Evan has cleaned, bolted, rebolted, and helped establish nearly 500 routes, investing tens of thousands of dollars and countless hours of his own time into developing and maintaining climbing across Northwest California.

His work has helped build entire climbing areas from the ground up, revive coastal crags through large-scale bolt replacement, and turn once-obscure cliffs into established climbing destinations. He's also the author of the nearly 400-page guidebook Redwood Burl, and the founder and president of the Northwest California Climbers Coalition, where his work in route development, access, and stewardship earned him national recognition from the Access Fund.

And Evan is no slouch as a climber either. He's established difficult first ascents, climbed up to 5.13, and is perhaps best known for his love of the brutal and unforgiving world of desert offwidths.

Outside of climbing, Evan is a professional photographer and filmmaker, using those skills to document the routes, areas, and climbing communities he's spent years helping build.

"Climbing is a lifestyle" is a phrase we hear constantly, but what does that lifestyle look like 20, 30, or 40 years from now? We talk to Todd Berlier, certified lifer, who is continuing to crush hard highballs and established neoclassics in his late 50s.

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Simply put, Todd is a lifer. Todd started climbing nearly 40 years ago, and was foundationally involved in the development and growth of one of the first climbing gyms in the country at Miami University in Ohio.

He’s spent significant time climbing around the country, including hotspots like the New River Gorge, Salt Lake area, and now, his current stomping grounds around Tahoe in California. With over 300 bouldering first ascents under his belt, and sends up to V11 and 5.14, Todd is no slouch as a climber either, and is still routinely climbing hard and scary boulder problems at the young age of 58.

Outside of climbing, Todd is a dedicated father and husband, caring veterinarian, talented musician, and involved member of his community.

Everyone has to get started somewhere, and that is no different in the world of climbing stewardship, where a mentor can be a huge boon to ensuring your early days aren't wasted. But how do you know if you've found a good mentor? And when should you pursue instruction rather than a mentorship? To find out, we sat down with Peter Thomas.

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Peter Thomas is a Colorado-based…Well, a lot of things. He’s a climber, developer, and crag steward. He’s the former anchor replacement coordinator for the Boulder Climber Community’s Anchor Replacement Program. He is personally responsible for the replacement of thousands of bolts, not just in the Front Range, but across large swaths of the American Southwest.

Peter has served both formally and informally as a mentor and instructor on bolting and rebolting to dozens of individuals, including with the Narrow Gauge Slabs mentorship program. (If you’d like to learn more, there’s a great American Alpine Club Podcast episode, as well as a short film from Jefferson County Open Space on YouTube). Established crag stewards will inevitably know his name, as he also builds and ships tools such as the YABR that have become standards in bolt replacement nationally.

In addition to all of that, he’s also a climbing guide, so you can hire him for your prospective Front Range adventures. That being said, if you wanted to pay to fly him out to Kalymnos to crag with you for a week, I’m sure he wouldn’t say no either.

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LINKS:

• American Alpine Club Podcast Episode - CONNECT: The Next Generation of Crag Developers

• Jefferson County Open Space Youtube Video - Beyond the Bolts: Proactively Developing a Sustainable Climbing Area

Why the heck does the world need another climbing podcast? And why should we be the ones to host it? We'll talk about that, and not much more, in our first episode of Born From Stone.