Phil Wortmann doesn’t look at outrageous projects like most people. It can’t be that he took too many hits to the head, because he stopped boxing early, and it’s not la la optimism either.

Still, for someone to make a 5.13 project on Pike’s Peak their first at the grade and to establish what is likely the Lower 48's hardest, longest and most sustained mixed climb requires a little something something. That something something is something Phil thinks others can develop too, by the way.

In this episode, we chat about:

• 🧊 The importance of long-term goals and how he approaches them
• 🧊 What went into projecting “Samsara” and “Drop the Mic”
• 🧊 Establishing The Ghetto, the hardest drytooling crag in Colorado outside of Ouray and Vail
• 🧊 Helping to preserve The Golden Book and Colorado Springs climbing history
• 🧊 Why gatekeeping grinds his gears

🧊 Resources and links:

To follow Phil’s latest exploits, he’s on Instagram @thewordmann.

Here is his account of projecting “Samsara” and here is the AAJ article about “Drop the Mic.”

📸: Cover photo by Scott Turpin.

Credits:

• Intro music by Hannah Noelle Enomoto (thanks, sis!).
• This episode was edited by Andrew Salomone of salomonesound.com.
• And of course, a big thanks to our sponsors, Aniiu  Gloves and Furnace Industries!

Become a member:

Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed the conversation and want to help us do many more episodes like this, please consider becoming a member.  

(For less than the price of a bougie beer per month!).

🗣️ Leave us a review!:

You can also help us out by subscribing to the podcast and leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice. Reviews are helpful for new listeners that come across the show, and a good rating means Spotify, Apple, and other platforms are more likely to recommend it to others. 

If JC Dubeau is known it’s somewhat as a dark horse. 

Search for JC online and you won’t find any trip reports or beta spraying, but as a soloist with a selfie stick he has surprisingly good photos on IG for someone who likes to keep a low profile. JC is also an older athlete who doesn’t train or project yet he will likely send yours if you let him. 💪

So who is this guy?

In this episode, we chat about:

• 🧊 How there’s old and there’s bold, but there’s no old-bold climbers
• 🧊 His five goes rule and other principles to climb by
• 🧊 Climbing without a rope more often than with 
• 🧊 Designing gear
• 🧊 And much more

🧊 Resources and links:
You can follow JC on Instagram — for often glorious fisheye photos — at @jcdubeau.

📸: Cover photo courtesy of JC.

Credits:

• Intro music by Hannah Noelle Enomoto (thanks, sis!).
• This episode was edited by Andrew Salomone of salomonesound.com.
• And of course, a big thanks to our sponsors, Aniiu  Gloves and Furnace Industries!

Become a member:

Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed the conversation and want to help us do many more episodes like this, please consider becoming a member.  

(For less than the price of a bougie beer per month!).

🗣️ Leave us a review!:

You can also help us out by subscribing to the podcast and leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice. Reviews are helpful for new listeners that come across the show, and a good rating means Spotify, Apple, and other platforms are more likely to recommend it to others. 

Enni Bertling has seen it all when it comes to climbing in Finland. When she started she was one of the few climbers in the country, then she helped form the Finnish Ice Climbing Team, and is now the Head of the Youth National Team, among other roles too numerous to list but which also includes routesetting, coaching, and occasionally competing when the mood strikes. 

Still, despite how it sounds, her path to a professional climbing career was anything but straightforward.

In this episode, we chat about:

• 🧊 Transitioning away from scientific research
• 🧊 Winning the first-ever World Cup medal for Finland
• 🧊 How she thinks about coaching and mentoring youth
• 🧊 What the climbing in Finland is like
• 🧊 What you do with only 1 hour of daylight in winter

🧊 Resources and links
As is a trend among many of our guests, Enni keeps a low social profile. But, if you’d like to follow her for occasional updates, her handle is @ennibertling.

Credits:

• Intro music by Hannah Noelle Enomoto (thanks, sis!).
• This episode was edited by Andrew Salomone of salomonesound.com.
• And of course, a big thanks to our sponsors, Aniiu  Gloves and Furnace Industries!

Become a member:

Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed the conversation and want to help us do many more episodes like this, please consider becoming a member.  

(For less than the price of a bougie beer per month!).

🗣️ Leave us a review!:

You can also help us out by subscribing to the podcast and leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice. Reviews are helpful for new listeners that come across the show, and a good rating means Spotify, Apple, and other platforms are more likely to recommend it to others. 

Pedro Guerra-Zúñiga has a fighting spirit — a spirit that especially likes to laugh. 

Growing up, Pedro expected to get cancer, at some point, probably in his 60s. Fate has a funny disposition, though, so when he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, Pedro decided to respond on his terms: with humor and a goal of making Team Canada. 

After all, you never know what can happen. 

In this episode, we chat about:

• 🧊 How showing up can be the most powerful thing you do
• 🧊 The impact of philosophy on his recovery
• 🧊 Why he likes drytooling so much, beyond being tendon friendly
  🧊 Training as a larger athlete

🧊 Resources and links
You can follow along with Pedro’s competition season via his Instagram (@peteclimbing). He shares a lot of updates, including tinkering with gear and different training techniques.

Credits:

• Intro music by Hannah Noelle Enomoto (thanks, sis!).
• This episode was edited by Andrew Salomone of salomonesound.com.
• And of course, a big thanks to our sponsors, Aniiu  Gloves and Furnace Industries!

Become a member:

Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed the conversation and want to help us do many more episodes like this, please consider becoming a member.  

(For less than the price of a bougie beer per month!).

🗣️ Leave us a review!:

You can also help us out by subscribing to the podcast and leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice. Reviews are helpful for new listeners that come across the show, and a good rating means Spotify, Apple, and other platforms are more likely to recommend it to others. 

Roger Strong made his catch king crab fishing so he could ski and climb the rest of the year. His life was forged by sea and steel, commercial fishing hardening him for both alpinism and captainship.

As he says, it was some of the best and worst times.

But to continue the metaphor, the metallurgy of life also requires tempering, annealing, and healing too. 

In this episode, we chat about:

• 🧊 Life and times of commercial crab fishing
• 🧊 Establishing mixed lines in Washington, including the first M8, M9, and M11
• 🧊 Why having a child was the best thing that ever happened to him
• 🧊 Learning to smell the moss

"Being part of that environment is as important, if not more important than the accomplishment — humans just put too much value on the summit, too much value on numbers. 

I don't know what the difference between 15 a, b, c, and d is, but that's for those people that can do that. And so is their ascent more important than my soloing 5.6, 5.7, 5.8? Maybe it is to them, but, it's the movement, it's the touching the stone, it's the swinging of the ice tool, looking for the perfect swing, looking for the perfect amount of footwork, and it's just this, I'm just always looking for."

Roger works for Black Diamond, America’s quintessential climbing company. For this episode, they are generously giving away:

• 🐉 A set of Hydras!

Only members of the podcast will be able to enter, luckily, you can become a member for FREE, which gives you access to special giveaways like this (and other goodies).

👉 To enter:

In this week's newsletter, we share a question which Roger answers in this week's episode.

Once you have the answer:

1. Follow @blackdiamond and @ice_ice_beta on Instagram
2. DM the answer to the question to @ice_ice_beta
3. Comment on Roger's episode post on our Instagram: “#manyheadedbeast” once you’ve sent in your answer

📣 Winners will be randomly selected from submissions that meet all the rules on Monday, February 10

You can follow Roger on Instagram, @roger_strong.

If you’d like to learn more about Roger’s accident, this is the video Fitz Cahall produced about his recovery.

📸: Cover photo courtesy of Roger.

Credits:

• Intro music by Hannah Noelle Enomoto (thanks, sis!).
• This episode was edited by Andrew Salomone of salomonesound.com.
• And of course, a big thanks to our sponsors, Aniiu  Gloves and Furnace Industries!

Become a member:

Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed the conversation and want to help us do many more episodes like this, please consider becoming a member.  

(For less than the price of a bougie beer per month!).

🗣️ Leave us a review!:

You can also help us out by subscribing to the podcast and leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice. Reviews are helpful for new listeners that come across the show, and a good rating means Spotify, Apple, and other platforms are more likely to recommend it to others. 

Does drytooling have a grading problem? Katie McKinstry Stylos is one of top drytoolers in the world, specializing in big roofs. In 2023, Katie sent A Line Above The Sky, becoming the fourth woman to climb D15. This past summer, she returned to project Parallel World (D16/D15+/other?), and she has some questions.

While Tomorrow's World is somewhat of a benchmark for grades in drytooling, compared to rock climbing, consensus is hard to come by. Factors such as DTS vs. Yaniro, tactics for manufacturing difficulty, the changing nature of routes, and, human variables, like ego, all play a part in grade discord. 

In this episode, we chat about:

• 🧊 The complexity of grading at the highest level of drytooling
• 🧊 How you don’t have to comp to crush (or need specialized tools)
• 🧊 Coming to climbing after a competitive horseback riding career
• 🧊 Balancing her roles as an artist, business owner, and climber
• 🧊 Developing new drytooling gloves with Aniiu

"There's so many factors in drytooling that can make it complicated. And so, for me, I really want to try to have this general idea of the hard grades around the world so I can give my opinion to help us kind of find a consensus on the grading. And I think, really, what makes the grades of drytooling pretty difficult to figure out is there's, even though we're a small sport, there's a pretty big divide."

To follow Katie on social, she’s @katie_stylos on Instagram. And to check out her artwork, you can head to hyalitedesigns.com.

You can read about her send of A Line Above The Sky here.

📸: Cover photo by Cooper Shuman.

Credits:

• Intro music by Hannah Noelle Enomoto (thanks, sis!).
• This episode was edited by Andrew Salomone of salomonesound.com.
• And of course, a big thanks to our sponsors, Aniiu  Gloves and Furnace Industries!

Become a member:

Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed the conversation and want to help us do many more episodes like this, please consider becoming a member.  

(For less than the price of a bougie beer per month!).

🗣️ Leave us a review!:

You can also help us out by subscribing to the podcast and leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice. Reviews are helpful for new listeners that come across the show, and a good rating means Spotify, Apple, and other platforms are more likely to recommend it to others. 

In Matthias Scherer’s words, Norway provides the true character of ice climbing. That is to say, you can always find adventure, from single pitch up to vertical kilometer ice flows.

Outside of popular destinations like Rjukan and Hemsedal, you will rarely find a line that has been picked out. Depending on where you go — from the 1,000-meter ice falls of Gudvangen to the 1,700 fjords that fracture the coastline, to the arctic ice of the far north — you are likely to have a first ascent-like experience, if not an actual FA.

And of course, there are plenty of beginner and intermediate-friendly areas too. Rjukan, for example, has 100s of easily accessible climbs.

This is Matthias’ second time on the podcast. If you recall, he joined us last year to talk about his home, Cogne, another epicenter of ice in Europe. This time around, in classic Matthias style, we discuss:

• 🧊 Why so many of his top 100 ice climbs are in Norway
• 🧊 The history of ice climbing in the country
• 🧊 Classic routes and areas
• 🧊 Logistics for planning your own trip
• 🧊 The upcoming ice festival in Rjukan, which runs from Thursday, February 6 to Monday, February 10.

“The human brain, I think, cannot get what Norway means for ice climbing. It's a little bit like if you look up to the sky in the night and you see all the stars; it's the same with Norway, it's impossible. Because 1,700 fjords, over 50,000 kilometers of coastline, and you can say in every fjord at least there's 10 to 15 ice climbs — so you can do the math by yourself."

Matthias has climbed over 1,000 frozen waterfalls, and you can see his top 100 list here. To follow along with his adventures, check him out on Instagram, @matthiasscherer or his website matthias-scherer.net.

Want to join for the Norrøna Ice Festival in Rjukan? It runs from February 6-10 and you can find all the details on the website.

To learn a bit more about Matthias, he did an interview on the Norrøna podcast.

Lastly, Matthias would like to thank his sponsors for supporting his adventures: Norrøna, Petzl, Scarpa, and Gloryfy.

📸: Cover photo by Tanja Schmitt.

Credits:

• Intro music by Hannah Noelle Enomoto (thanks, sis!).
• This episode was edited by Andrew Salomone of salomonesound.com.
• And of course, a big thanks to our sponsors, Aniiu  Gloves and Furnace Industries!

Become a member:

Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed the conversation and want to help us do many more episodes like this, please consider becoming a member.  

(For less than the price of a bougie beer per month!).

🗣️ Leave us a review!:

You can also help us out by subscribing to the podcast and leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice. Reviews are helpful for new listeners that come across the show, and a good rating means Spotify, Apple, and other platforms are more likely to recommend it to others. 

According to the American Alpine Club’s 2019 State of Climbing report, only 1% of surveyed climbers identified as Black.

Jordan Revis is trying to change that.

This past winter, Jordan helped lead the first-ever Black Intro to Ice Climbing workshop at the Mount Washington Valley Ice Fest and he is part of the DEI committee with the Western Massachusetts Climbers' Coalition, among other initiatives he’s involved with.

For Jordan, it’s a complicated position to be in and has led to a lot of self-reflection.

In this episode, we chat about:

• 🧊 What does representation really mean?
• 🧊 Concepts of identity and belonging
• 🧊 Managing anxiety on and off route
• 🧊 Balancing big goals with being kind to oneself

“Because of my lived experience, having the anxiety of it being different than somebody else's, now I'm like, why do I get anxiety over that when everyone else's lived experiences is different?"

Jordan is an AMGA SPI and Apprentice Rock Guide. If you’d like to hire Jordan for a guided day out, the easiest way is to get in touch via Instagram: @revissaywat.

You can also find him at this year’s Mount Washington Valley Ice Fest, which runs from January 31st to February 2nd.

Jordan is an ambassador for @arcteryxboston @cypherclimbing @aniiu_gloves and @barndoorhostel

Credits:

• Intro music by Hannah Noelle Enomoto (thanks, sis!).
• This episode was edited by Andrew Salomone of salomonesound.com.
• And of course, a big thanks to our sponsors, Aniiu  Gloves and Furnace Industries!

Become a member:

Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed the conversation and want to help us do many more episodes like this, please consider becoming a member.  

(For less than the price of a bougie beer per month!).

🗣️ Leave us a review!:

You can also help us out by subscribing to the podcast and leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice. Reviews are helpful for new listeners that come across the show, and a good rating means Spotify, Apple, and other platforms are more likely to recommend it to others. 

Who Do You Want to Be?

On the surface, it’s a simple question, but getting to the core is often a devious stumbling through masquerade — “Is this really what I want to be doing?”, “Is this me or who I used to be?”, “What’s next?”

Marcus Garcia is turning 50 this year and he’s lived a lot of lives in that time. These questions have been buzzing. 

In this episode, we chat about:

• 🧊 Starting anew and learning to let go
• 🧊 Understanding our energy demands and value
• 🧊 Creating and coaching the USA Youth Ice Climbing Team (and what it means to see so many of the athletes flourishing)
• 🧊 Some useful mindset techniques and exercises for other youth coaches
• 🧊 And Marcus reads some poetry too

“What letting go really means is not just letting it go, but letting it give the space it needs so you can process and understand the why you're feeling these things. So in a way, you have to grieve that old identity to make space for this new identity. And that is part of what letting go is, is making room for this new person you become.”

Marcus is a Rab athlete, and to support Marcus and this podcast, Rab is giving away a few items to listeners:

• Generator Alpine Jacket
• Ascendor Alpine Softshell Pants
• Latok Mountain GORE-TEX Pro Jacket

Only members of the podcast will be able to enter, luckily, you can become a member for free, which gives you access to special giveaways like this (and other goods).

👉 To enter:

In this week's newsletter, we share a question which Marcus answers in this week's episode.

Once you have the answer:

1. Follow @rab.equipment.na and @ice_ice_beta on Instagram
2. DM the answer to the question to @ice_ice_beta
3. Comment on the giveaway post on our Instagram: “#TheMountainPeople” once you’ve sent in your answer
4. Share the giveaway post to your story for an extra entry ⭐️
5. Winners will be randomly selected from submissions that meet all the rules on Monday, December 16! 📢

Marcus would like to thank his sponsors, Rab, Camp, Osprey, Lowa, and Sterling. They support him in regularly teaching climbing workshops and clinics, from the art of the offwidth to how to mix climb. The best place to see where Marcus will be and what he’s teaching is on his Instagram, @mgclimber1.

For Marcus’ opening poem, here is the post, and here is his latest video “Beyond the Climb”.

... 

📸: Cover photo courtesy of Marcus.

Credits:

• Intro music by Hannah Noelle Enomoto (thanks, sis!).
• This episode was edited by Andrew Salomone of salomonesound.com.
• And of course, a big thanks to our sponsors, Aniiu  Gloves and Furnace Industries!

Become a member:

Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed the conversation and want to help us do many more episodes like this, please consider becoming a member.  

(For less than the price of a bougie beer per month!).

🗣️ Leave us a review!:

You can also help us out by subscribing to the podcast and leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice. Reviews are helpful for new listeners that come across the show, and a good rating means Spotify, Apple, and other platforms are more likely to recommend it to others. 

This episode is part of the Meet the Maker series where we highlight an entrepreneur who is making specialty gear for ice climbers. If you’ve ever wanted to hear the story behind some of your favorite – and soon to be favorite – products, that’s what today’s conversation is about.

We’re doing this because we believe that thoughtfully-designed gear is more than the sum of its parts: they are crafted by folks who have decades of experience in the sport, are refined through countless iterations and testing, and brought to life with genuine passion to solve real problems. 

Said another way, these folks represent the heart and soul of product innovation.

Kyle Willis of High Mountain Gear, who creates specialized equipment for alpinists, guides, and climbers.

I mean specialized too, like 4 oz. ice hammocks or ski guide tarps — gear that most businesses run away from making. But not Kyle. That’s because he’s driven to fill gaps in the outdoor market — his product decision process always starts with the question, "Why doesn't this exist?"

Specific to ice climbers, Kyle is generously giving away a few crampon bags and a rare pink Ice Screw Cannon to listeners.

Here’s how to enter:

In the conversation, be on the lookout for the answer to the following question:

• 👉 Which climbing couple did Kyle work with to create the ice hammock? 

Once you have the answer to the question:

• Follow @highmountaingear and @ice_ice_beta on Instagram
• DM the answer to the question to @ice_ice_beta
• Comment on the giveaway post on our Instagram: “#whydoesntthisexist?” once you’ve sent in your answer
• Share the giveaway post to your story for an extra entry
• Winners will be randomly selected from submissions that meet all the rules on Monday, December 2!

Credits:

• Intro music by Hannah Noelle Enomoto (thanks, sis!).
• This episode was edited by Andrew Salomone of salomonesound.com.
• And of course, a big thanks to our sponsors, Aniiu  Gloves and Furnace Industries!

Become a member:

Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed the conversation and want to help us do many more episodes like this, please consider becoming a member.  

(For less than the price of a bougie beer per month!).

🗣️ Leave us a review!:

You can also help us out by subscribing to the podcast and leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice. Reviews are helpful for new listeners that come across the show, and a good rating means Spotify, Apple, and other platforms are more likely to recommend it to others.