The Art of Manliness - #498： Lessons in Persistence From Climber Tommy Caldwell

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:10.860 On El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, there was a wall that had never been climbed and some

00:00:15.660 said would never be climbed. It's called the Dawn Wall. But in 2015, Tommy Caldwell,

00:00:20.560 along with Kevin Jorgensen, became the first to free climb it. Today I speak to Tommy about what

00:00:24.580 led up to that historic climb, starting from how he got involved in rock climbing in his childhood.

00:00:28.760 We begin our conversation discussing the different types of rock climbing and why

00:00:31.980 people often misinterpret what free climbing means. We then dig into Tommy's climbing career,

00:00:36.800 including his early success in sport climbing, and the harrowing experience of being held hostage by

00:00:41.240 and escaping from rebels in Kyrgyzstan. We then discuss how Tommy responded to losing a finger,

00:00:45.980 those are important when you're a rock climber, and also getting divorced shortly thereafter, 0.99

00:00:49.700 and why he decided to climb the Dawn Wall. We begin our conversation discussing the years-long

00:00:54.140 process of preparing for the climb and the virtue of what Tommy calls elective suffering.

00:00:58.340 There are a lot of little potent lessons here on how to remain persistent and driven in the face

00:01:02.040 of setbacks that apply beyond rock climbing to every aspect of life. After the show's over,

00:01:06.600 check out our show notes at aom.is slash dawnwall.

00:01:19.500 Tommy Caldwell, welcome to the show.

00:01:22.080 Yeah, great to be here.

00:01:23.060 So you were one of the first ever, along with Kevin Jorgensen, to free climb the Dawn Wall of

00:01:29.620 El Capitan. We'll talk about what it means to free climb, because this is something I learned

00:01:34.100 about rock climbing, reading your book. There's all types of different types of climbing.

00:01:37.480 Before we get to that moment where you did this, let's talk about your backstory. When did you get

00:01:41.680 started with rock climbing, and when did you figure out this was going to be your thing for the rest of

00:01:46.660 your life?

00:01:47.660 Yeah. So, I mean, rock climbing was a family trade. My dad was a mountain guide. I was out

00:01:52.360 roped climbing from age three. So when I was young, it was just kind of like what we did. I was into it,

00:01:57.640 but I wasn't hugely passionate about it. I didn't know that it was going to be like a thing that

00:02:01.460 directed my life in any ways until I was a teenager. And I think part of the reason for that

00:02:08.020 was there was no other young climbers when I was young. I was like the only one. But when I was a

00:02:12.680 teenager, climbing gyms were starting to come around. There was a competition series that

00:02:16.840 started up. And so I suddenly had a community of friends through climbing. And it was something

00:02:24.080 that I was already kind of good at since I'd been doing it since I was three years old.

00:02:29.000 So you mentioned your father. He's been rock climbing back in the 70s and 80s. And I thought

00:02:33.140 this was interesting because in the 70s and 80s, rock climbing really wasn't a thing except for

00:02:39.140 like, you know, sort of fringe folk. What was the sport like back then when your dad was getting

00:02:43.980 started in it? I mean, if you're into the history of climbing, it was certainly a thing. Like there

00:02:48.700 was big, incredible climbs being done and sort of all the techniques were being pioneered. And so he was

00:02:55.660 kind of in with the forefront of that, like realizing that the biggest walls in the world could actually

00:03:02.360 be climbed. But you're right. It was very fringe. It was, you know, it was in an era where most

00:03:08.800 people didn't want to do risky things just in general. So rock climbingers were kind of out

00:03:12.900 there. And so my dad took it up. He loved it. He did it until my sister was born. But back then,

00:03:18.620 it was way more dangerous than it is now. You know, just the protection systems weren't what

00:03:22.800 they are now. And so when my sister was born, he actually quit. He took up bodybuilding instead

00:03:27.160 for a handful of years until climbing got safer again with the invention of sport climbing.

00:03:32.860 Well, yeah, I thought that was really interesting. It seemed like back then when it was first

00:03:36.280 getting started, there was like this sort of very risk-taking ethos. There was like a concern

00:03:41.140 about how you rock climbed, not necessarily if you made it to the top, but if you did it in a

00:03:45.440 certain way, right? Yeah. I mean, climbers were rebels for sure back then. They're counter-cultural.

00:03:50.740 They're kind of shutting mainstream society. And so in a world that told them not to take risks,

00:03:55.160 they wanted to take as much risk as possible.

00:03:57.480 And so you mentioned, so that sort of started changing with the invention of sport climbing.

00:04:02.620 So walk us through this for people who aren't familiar with the different types of rock

00:04:05.480 climbing. Cause I, I kind of got confused. Uh, you know, I found myself getting confused

00:04:09.720 and had to go back. So like there's sport climbing. It's like, what is sport climbing?

00:04:13.760 How is that different from other types of climbing? And like, what type of climbing do you do?

00:04:17.800 Right. So there's traditional rock climbing, which, you know, back in the fifties meant that you

00:04:24.240 took, took little bits of metal and you hammered them into cracks, much the way a carpenter would

00:04:31.320 pound in a nail and you attach carabiners. Carabiners were invented back then to these

00:04:37.080 bits of metal and then you climbed up. And so the evolution of that is what we now call traditional

00:04:42.660 climbing, which these days essentially means you're, you're mostly placing your own protection

00:04:47.820 in the natural features of the rock. And one of the reasons it was, it was so dangerous back then

00:04:53.120 is because it really was just like stuff that you'd go to the hardware store, go to the like

00:04:57.900 junkyard and scavenge and pound them into cracks. So it wasn't, it was hard to test it. It wasn't

00:05:02.900 all that solid. Nowadays we have all, you know, a whole quiver of really fancy, highly tested,

00:05:08.000 um, tools that we can use to make it a lot safer. But anyways, placing your own gear is

00:05:13.100 traditional rock climbing. Sport climbing is where the first ascensionist comes along and drills a line

00:05:19.940 of bolts up the route that stay there permanently. So what this allows is for falling to be

00:05:27.900 really an option. Like you can kind of fall whenever you want on most sport climbs and

00:05:32.780 you'll just sort of slowly come to a gentle stop at the end of the, of the end of your rope as your,

00:05:37.320 as your belayer is belaying you. And so it allows you to push the difficulty standards

00:05:42.040 really hard. That's yeah. That's sort of the simplistic difference of those two

00:05:47.300 aspects of the sport. Okay. And then like, what's like free climbing?

00:05:51.760 Yeah. So free climbing is a terrible term. First of all, we need,

00:05:54.280 right. We need to get the word free out of the whole scene, but I don't think that's going to

00:05:59.440 happen. But what free climbing means is essentially you are climbing the surface of the rock,

00:06:05.240 you know, grabbing the little edges, twisting your feet in the cracks, and that's how you make

00:06:09.780 forward progress. But you do have the ropes and the equipment there to catch you in case you fall.

00:06:14.400 And it did. And so free climbing is different from aid climbing, where when you're aid climbing,

00:06:18.460 you pound those bits of metal into the rock, or you, you know, these days you use cams or nuts or all the

00:06:22.820 fancy tools. And then you attach basically a series of, of leg loops or a little ladder,

00:06:29.100 nylon ladder to those pieces of gear, and you climb the ladder. So you're not really climbing

00:06:33.780 the surface of the rock. You're just, you're just using this very mechanical method to ascend the wall.

00:06:39.160 And the reason it's confusing is because most people think when they hear free, they think no

00:06:43.540 rope, you fall, you die. So that's free soloing. Okay. Yeah. So that's what confused like the

00:06:49.060 difference between free climbing and free soloing. Cause I, when I, yeah, when I hear free,

00:06:52.060 I'm thinking, Oh, there's no ropes at all, but there are ropes. You're kind of attaching yourself

00:06:56.620 as you make progress up the wall. Correct. Yeah. And free climbing you are, although free soloing

00:07:01.260 is a form of free climbing, but you just don't have the ropes when you're free soloing.

00:07:05.540 Okay. So, uh, you started doing sort of traditional rock climbing with your dad when he was doing it

00:07:10.780 in high school, you got into sport climbing, correct? Yeah. I got into sport climbing and then pretty

00:07:17.160 quickly into competition climbing. Cause it was, it was really the, like the gymnastic form

00:07:22.640 of climbing. It's like, you know, gymnastics is, you know, little, little body types, you know,

00:07:27.800 kind of scrawny, strong people are really good at sport climbing. That's kind of what I was big

00:07:32.000 adventure climbers or more traditional climbers have to have a lot of experience to do it safely.

00:07:36.200 And, you know, when I was, when I was a teenager, I just didn't have tons of experience.

00:07:39.800 All right. So competition climbing, this is another twist here. So like competition climbing,

00:07:43.500 like, what does that look like? Yeah. So competition climbing is essentially sport climbing

00:07:48.420 on an artificially built wall where they can control all the elements. They can make the route

00:07:53.640 harder and harder as you go higher. And so the way that the scoring works is usually the person who

00:07:59.360 makes it the highest is the winner. Okay. Gotcha. Yeah. And there's also bouldering by the way.

00:08:05.900 So bouldering is just on small rocks where you're not high enough generally to hurt yourself all that

00:08:10.960 badly when you fall. So you don't use ropes, but you just land on the ground. And there's also

00:08:14.560 bouldering competitions. So you were doing this all throughout high school. After high school,

00:08:19.920 what was life like for you? Did you decide to throw yourself deeper into rock climbing at this point?

00:08:24.520 Yeah. You know, I wasn't a very good student, I would say. And as I progressed through middle school

00:08:31.800 and high school, I found myself going on all these amazing trips at first with my dad. But then at some

00:08:37.380 point in high school, I started going on them alone and I was seeing the world and I was

00:08:40.740 meeting really cool people. And I was learning a lot. The classroom was never a great environment

00:08:46.540 for me to learn, but traveling the world was a really great environment. And so I got totally

00:08:51.420 addicted to it still within high school. I graduated early from my senior year of high school and went

00:08:56.520 to France for a month. And I also would go on big climbing trips like every summer vacation.

00:09:02.160 And so by the time it was time to go to college, I felt like I had found something better that suited

00:09:08.800 me better, you know, like the idea of going to college and which would make it so I had to stop

00:09:13.760 traveling. I had a lot of dread when I had that thought.

00:09:18.120 What did your mom think about this? I mean, I imagine your dad really encouraged this passion

00:09:23.200 of yours, but like, was your mom kind of like, yeah, I don't know about that. Was she like a typical mom?

00:09:27.340 Well, it was interesting. My father was an educator, he's a middle school teacher.

00:09:32.460 And so he kind of had, he could see it from both directions. Like he thought school was very

00:09:36.840 important, but I think both my mother and my father could look at me and see that, you know,

00:09:42.580 I had a chance to do well at this sport of climbing. And they also kind of admired the hand

00:09:48.880 to mouth existence that rock climbing, the full-time rock climbing was, they thought that was good for

00:09:53.840 you to go through. It's almost like going on a pilgrimage or something. Like, so for several

00:09:58.240 years, I lived on like $50 a month and traveled around and climbed. And you learn a lot about the

00:10:03.620 world when you do that. And so they were in support of that. They wanted me to live an impoverished

00:10:08.460 lifestyle for a while. And they, I don't think they ever dreamed that it would have turned into

00:10:12.920 what it is now. I thought they, they figured I'd go and travel around the world and climb for a few

00:10:16.720 years and then go back to college. But I never ended up doing that.

00:10:19.440 That, that didn't happen. Well, you also talk about after college, you know, you did a lot

00:10:23.960 of traveling. One of the places you went was France, right?

00:10:26.940 Yeah. I mean, I go to France almost every year still. So from the time I was in, you know,

00:10:32.920 just out of high school, or even before I graduated from, from high school until now I go to France,

00:10:36.660 you know, quite often.

00:10:37.640 So what's going on there in the rock climbing world in France?

00:10:40.320 So when I was younger, it was all about sport climbing. France was the center of the world for

00:10:44.700 sport climbers and the best physically strongest climbers were, were in France. And therefore the,

00:10:50.540 the, the way that the rock forms in France is these big overhanging limestone caves. And that's

00:10:56.060 incredibly gymnastic, fun way to climb. And if you want to become a good climber,

00:11:00.740 it's best to spend a lot of years building those kinds of strengths. So yeah, that's,

00:11:04.980 that's the reason I went to France now. And that's still the reason I go to France or back then.

00:11:09.180 And it's still the reason I go to France now is to kind of, it's like training.

00:11:12.020 Well, another thing you did experimented with while you were traveling Europe and traveling

00:11:16.280 the world after college was alpine. This is another type of climbing here. Alpine,

00:11:20.520 or is that, was it, was that, has that what you call alpinist alpining?

00:11:23.540 Yeah. Alpine climbing is basically climbing and on big mountains and, you know, snowy environments.

00:11:29.320 Okay. So that's when you, you probably see the guys with like the giant ax, the pickaxe thing.

00:11:33.780 Yeah. I mean, generally, I mean, it, it can encompass a lot of things depending on

00:11:38.460 sort of the style of alpine climbing you want to do. Like I generally stay away from the snow,

00:11:45.000 although I do. I, well, I say that with a bit of hesitation. Sometimes dealing with snow and

00:11:49.360 ice climbing is just a must to get to a lot of, to the tops of a lot of the mountains that I want

00:11:53.180 to climb. But generally I try and climb the sheer big rock walls, which means I usually have an ice

00:11:58.900 axe with me, but I'm not using it that much of the time.

00:12:01.520 All right. So in college, you're, you're making a living rock climbing. How do rock climbers

00:12:06.240 make money? Like are there, do they, do you win money at competitions? Is it sponsorships?

00:12:11.100 How, what, how does that work?

00:12:12.760 Yeah. In my college years, that's how it started. I would, since I had been climbing since age three,

00:12:17.980 I could make a little bit of money at competitions. But like I said, that amounted to on average $50 a

00:12:24.300 month. Like I'd usually spend most of my competition winnings going to the next competition.

00:12:28.180 And I was like good at that, but I wasn't that good at that. There was, there was another

00:12:32.320 gentleman, another friend of mine named Chris Sharma, who basically would win every competition

00:12:36.700 he entered back then. So he made a better living than I did. But pretty soon I started to acquire

00:12:44.000 a little bit of sponsorship. One of my first sponsors, 510, you know, the, the, the sponsorship

00:12:51.360 manager had come from, I think the tennis world. And she'd seen sponsorship of really young people

00:12:57.340 go kind of badly oftentimes. And so she was really concerned about making sure that I stayed

00:13:02.400 humble. And, but it really, it was, it was just like, at first it was just like getting

00:13:06.400 three pairs of free shoes a year. And then it's just sort of gotten better and better since

00:13:11.080 then as the sports grown. And yeah, now there's like legitimate climbing celebrities, which really

00:13:17.040 didn't, didn't exist before.

00:13:19.740 So you've been traveling the world after high school. In 2000, you decided to go climbing in

00:13:24.900 Kyrgyzstan. What, what was going on in Kyrgyzstan that made an attractive place to happen? And then 0.78

00:13:30.120 what happened to you while you were there?

00:13:31.900 By the time I was like 19 and 20, I was, I was starting sort of to transition out of sport climbing

00:13:38.040 and get into big wall free climbing. So climbing really big walls, you know, traditional climbing,

00:13:43.980 which is way more adventurous. And my favorite place to do that was Yosemite. But you always dream

00:13:49.760 about a place more exotic because Yosemite has some of the best big walls in the world,

00:13:53.840 but you know, it's right in the middle of Yosemite National Park in California. But there

00:13:58.800 was this place in Kyrgyzstan that had rock and walls similar to Yosemite. And it also had good

00:14:06.100 weather because there is big walls all over the world, but some of them are like in Pakistan at 0.88

00:14:10.760 their, their really high elevations or in Baffin Island. And you know, you got to go across fjords and

00:14:16.140 just deal with a lot more. Kyrgyzstan had great weather and big walls. And it was, and it was a place 0.99

00:14:22.200 that people had been going for probably a decade, but there was still a lot of first ascents to be

00:14:26.240 done. There was tons of terrain to explore. So that's kind of what drew us there, but really it

00:14:32.280 drew the other members of the team there. I was just like the tagalog boyfriend. My, my, my girlfriend 1.00

00:14:36.680 at the time, Beth Rodden was sponsored by the North Face and she got an opportunity to go on this trip.

00:14:42.060 And then she kind of convinced the North Face to invite me along as a rigger for, for ropes. So I could

00:14:47.440 put up ropes so the photographers could kind of get around and take photos to advertise the North

00:14:52.520 Face equipment. But then while you were there, you were climbing, you guys got helped, became

00:14:56.340 hostages of some rebels at the area. What was there a war going on? What was happening there?

00:15:00.480 Yeah. I mean, it turned into a war that year. We were, we're, we're climbing our first wall of the

00:15:05.760 trip. So we're climbing this like 2000 foot wall called the yellow wall. And these walls are big

00:15:09.760 enough that they take multiple days. So we're sleeping in our portal edges, which are like our hanging

00:15:13.920 clock cots, a thousand feet up the wall this one morning when a rebel insurgency called the

00:15:19.220 Islamic movement, Uzbekistan moved into the valley. And the political situation is, is a bit complicated,

00:15:24.340 but you know, in some ways it boils down to opium, opium trade. And then sometimes they try and

00:15:29.260 traffic the drugs over these remote high mountain valleys. Cause there's, there's, there's not much

00:15:33.940 in the way of border patrol back there. And, and that part of Kyrgyzstan is, is there's borders

00:15:40.360 everywhere? Like the borders of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan were both within like 30 miles of us.

00:15:45.940 And so it just so happened that they came through this valley that we're climbing in and they saw us

00:15:53.440 up on the wall and they came to the base of the wall with their long range assault rifle at first,

00:16:00.100 you know, kind of at dawn and they started shooting up at us and, you know, they're pretty good shots.

00:16:04.560 They were able to get bullets right between our two portal edges, which were about four feet apart.

00:16:08.640 So we knew we had to come down.

00:16:10.700 And then how long were you held hostage for?

00:16:13.720 Six very life-changing days that the whole situation elevated drastically. Like once we got

00:16:20.300 down, we were taken hostage. And then just a few hours later, the Kyrgyz military moved in the valley

00:16:26.200 and a full-on war broke out around us. Yeah, it was, it was intense in a way that I couldn't even

00:16:32.260 comprehend before, before going on that trip.

00:16:34.840 And how did you all escape?

00:16:37.000 The short answer is we ended up pushing our one remaining captor off a cliff and running to a

00:16:44.740 Kyrgyz military outpost, which was about six or eight miles down the valley. But obviously a lot of,

00:16:50.040 you know, a lot led up to that over six days. We, we, we, you know, we were starving. When,

00:16:56.560 when the Kyrgyz military showed up, we had to abandon all of our food and warm clothing

00:16:59.740 and run as captors of the Islamic movement in Uzbekistan and hide for those six days. And

00:17:07.080 we progressively got weaker and, you know, we're, we're pretty close to succumbing to hypothermia.

00:17:12.580 And so it got quite desperate and yeah. So, but our, our captors were almost worse off than we

00:17:18.340 were in a way because they had to abandon all their food and warm clothing and we're climbers and

00:17:21.940 this was really steep terrain. So we were kind of comfortable on the terrain in a way that they

00:17:25.620 weren't.

00:17:26.540 We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.

00:17:29.740 And now back to the show. And it's, I mean, how did this change your climbing career? This is

00:17:35.780 this like really traumatic experience.

00:17:37.580 I mean, it changed it in a lot of ways. Like I said, going on into the trip, I wasn't a well-known

00:17:42.300 climber. I was kind of just like tag alone long boyfriend. We got back from Kyrgyzstan and then Beth,

00:17:49.240 you know, my girlfriend at the time, we, we bonded very heavily. And we also were trying to find a way

00:17:55.520 to kind of cope with the trauma of what we had been through. So we, we climbed together and we

00:18:02.580 were fueled. And I would say me more than her possibly by this sort of like deeper, darker,

00:18:09.340 almost stronger force. Like climbing had been my kind of my safe place. It had been what had brought

00:18:14.580 me joy for my entire life. And so when I was in a place where I was feeling all mixed up in the world,

00:18:20.080 that's where I returned to, I went to El Cap, but sensations like fear and pain had been totally

00:18:25.340 reset. And I pretty quickly realized that if I can go big while climbing and not really have to worry

00:18:30.680 as much about fear and pain, I do way better. And so it went from this kind of devastation to

00:18:37.100 empowerment, to sort of curiosity about the limits of, of my chosen passion, which was,

00:18:44.480 which was big while climbing. And so I really jumpstarted this, this, this, I guess, I don't know,

00:18:49.500 I don't know, a career doesn't seem like the right word, but jumpstarted what my life is today.

00:18:53.880 Well, then what happened a few years later, you, this was devastating. You, you accidentally

00:18:57.260 sawed off your index finger because you were, you guys were building a house together.

00:19:00.940 Yeah. That was, that was only like a year or less than a year after Kyrgyzstan.

00:19:05.140 Yeah. And fingers are really important for a rock climber.

00:19:07.800 Yeah. So yeah, I mean, it was, it was at a time in my life when I, you know, the only,

00:19:13.760 the only real future that I knew was, was rock climbing and I was starting to make a living at

00:19:20.420 it. I was like, this, this is something that I could actually kind of support a lifestyle doing.

00:19:25.480 And then I'd sawed off a finger and just in a home remodeling accident, I was using a table saw and

00:19:29.860 not that experienced with using a table saw and ended up chopping it off. And yeah, like you said,

00:19:34.860 most, I think everybody in my community, except for maybe Beth and maybe my father were like,

00:19:40.180 he's done. Like climbing is so much about finger strength. And if you lose a finger, it's over.

00:19:45.000 But I had this pretty pivotal moment in the hospital. I was in the hospital for two,

00:19:50.700 two weeks. I went through three surgeries and they just didn't work. Like in the end,

00:19:56.180 the doctor came in and he sat down next to me and he said, Tommy, you know, we've tried everything we

00:20:02.400 can. Your finger, your finger is essentially dead. We're going to have to remove it permanently.

00:20:06.320 And you should start thinking out about what else you want to do in your life. Cause you're not going

00:20:11.160 to be able to be a professional climber anymore. The doctor was actually a climber himself.

00:20:16.380 And then he stood up and left. And I remember Beth looking at me and just being like, he has no

00:20:20.900 idea what he's talking about. And that was really, that was really the right thing. And so I don't

00:20:24.960 know. I don't know if it's just inherently built in to me, but when I have these big challenges or

00:20:29.760 these big setbacks, they just, they turn into fuel. And so Kyrgyzstan was that, but my finger in a way 0.86

00:20:35.100 was that too, you know, I wanted to prove the doctor wrong in a way. I wanted to prove to myself

00:20:39.340 that I still had it. And so I got way more scientific and serious about the ways that I

00:20:44.780 climbed and almost even more so than Kyrgyzstan. It was the biggest leap in, in sort of how good I

00:20:52.420 became as a climber. And did it take you a long time to get back on the wall? Like it was just like

00:20:57.920 a few weeks after the last surgery or did it take a little bit longer? I mean, I was climbing within

00:21:02.680 a week of the last surgery, but not well, but I think I had very low expectations, but so it was

00:21:09.060 really easy to exceed those expectations. So my first day climbing, I was like, Oh, I'm actually

00:21:13.580 kind of climbing. Okay. And then, you know, a month later I was, you know, getting kind of close to

00:21:20.040 being able to sport climb on as hard of routes as I had with all 10 fingers. And then six months later,

00:21:26.660 I was doing things that were harder than I had ever done. Yeah. It was a pretty powerful time in life.

00:21:31.680 And then a few years later, you had another setback, you know, you married Beth in that

00:21:35.820 time, but then your marriage ended. Did that affect your climbing? Did you kind of go into a

00:21:40.900 funk or was it one of those moments again where that became sort of fuel for your climbing?

00:21:45.080 Well, I mean, at first I certainly went to an, into a funk and all these setbacks went through

00:21:50.060 evolutions, but I think, yeah, I mean, essentially we had bonded really, really heavily through,

00:21:57.360 through Kyrgyzstan. And I think Beth needed to escape that, that very deep bonding. And so

00:22:02.600 she left me in a way that pretty, pretty heavily devastated me, but like I had learned through a

00:22:10.220 lifetime of kind of encountering these setbacks, I just, it just made me double down. It made me look

00:22:15.320 at, at the things that I sort of appreciate and enjoyed the most in the world. And really the main

00:22:22.700 thing that did is it started, it started, it made me try and find like the next big, huge thing that

00:22:31.960 would cause, that would necessitate, that I would have to change as a person to do like a climb that

00:22:38.440 I would have to become so much better and change as a person to do, because I wanted to get lost in

00:22:42.600 that process. And so that, that's, that was the infancy of the Dawn Wall.

00:22:46.740 The Dawn Wall. So tell us about the Dawn Wall. Why hadn't this part of the mountain never been

00:22:51.840 climbed before? So El Capitan for a lot of years was only climbed by aid. And then in the seventies,

00:23:00.720 a few people figured out ways to climb that climate free to build a free climate. And so then when I

00:23:09.080 started getting into climbing out on El Cap, that's what I was doing is I was free climbing all the

00:23:13.720 existing routes, but all the routes at that time went up these pretty obvious crack systems, like to

00:23:18.660 train climbers. I, you could look from afar and imagine that those walls could be climbed, but

00:23:23.620 there was this one aspect that just looked sheer and blank and it didn't look like there was really

00:23:29.800 anything in the way of crack systems. And since I'd spent so much time on the wall, probably more than

00:23:34.960 anybody at that time, I was maybe the one person that knew that on this rock that from afar looks

00:23:41.180 totally blank. Sometimes edges form. And if you train yourself just right, you can start to learn to

00:23:46.300 climb from one to the next. And so it just became this, this giant puzzle. I actually spent

00:23:50.680 almost a year swinging around and trying to piece together this huge puzzle and build the belief that

00:23:57.020 it was possible. So it took you a year to like, of that sort of investigation and preparation before

00:24:02.700 you actually started climbing or was it more than that? I mean, it was on and off for a year and I was

00:24:07.020 climbing on it. You know, you kind of, I mean, the holds that you grab are, are so tiny. You know,

00:24:12.040 a lot of them, you have to actually mark them with a little bit of chalk to even know that they're

00:24:15.860 there. They're almost too small to see with the naked eye very easily. So I was mapping out the

00:24:21.780 sequences and doing that by myself. I had kind of developed these rope soloing techniques to be able

00:24:27.360 to go up there and, you know, try the individual moves. And I knew that if I could do all the

00:24:31.580 individual moves, then the route was theoretically possible. And so after a year, I got to the point

00:24:36.800 where I was able, I found a path where I could do all the individual moves, but then piecing them

00:24:42.500 together for 3000 feet was, was the real daunting part. And how did you sync up with Kevin Jorgensen

00:24:49.400 to do this? So I actually gave up on the route. Like I pieced it together. I was like, this,

00:24:54.160 this is a route. Like somebody will climb this someday, but it's just, it's just ridiculously hard.

00:24:58.160 It's so, it's so above and beyond anything I've done before that I'm never going to be able to do it.

00:25:03.200 So I've worked on film projects kind of throughout my career. And the main filmer that I worked with,

00:25:09.340 Josh Lowell from Big Up Productions called me and he, he had, he kind of knew what I was seeking

00:25:14.560 on the Dawn Wall. And he said, okay, well, if you've given up on it, we should make a film about this

00:25:18.740 so we can put it out there to the next generation. Cause he felt pretty strongly like this was the

00:25:23.140 future. This would be, this would be a big deal in the future. So I went up with a crew of four people

00:25:28.760 and spent a week climbing on the individual sections, sleeping up on the wall with the crew

00:25:33.940 and making this film to kind of show off the beauty and, and sort of the wonder of that route.

00:25:40.480 And then they put out a video called progression. Yeah. They do a tour called the real rock tour.

00:25:45.660 And it's always like the cutting edge stuff that's going on in climbing. And that video showed up in

00:25:50.240 the real rock tour one year and Kevin saw the video. And at the end of that video, I'd kind of make the

00:25:55.780 call out. I was like, I don't, I don't know if I'm ever going to do this, but I wanted to put it out

00:25:59.320 there for the next generation. And Kevin was looking for something new. I think he's heard

00:26:04.040 that and he's like, well, I'm the next generation. So he called me up. And at first I kind of wrote

00:26:08.480 him off. Cause I was like, he's Kevin, Kevin had never climbed anything like that. He was a boulder,

00:26:13.300 which means, you know, he'd never, he rarely climbed more than about 30 feet off the ground.

00:26:18.220 But since he was such a good boulder, he could do the individual moves better than I could.

00:26:22.760 And so I agreed to kind of go up there and see how it went with him. And first I was just sort

00:26:27.660 of mentoring him, but I saw, you know, he, he inspired me to sort of join him back on the

00:26:32.540 project. And that started the, I guess, six years partnership that it, that it took to actually

00:26:40.000 get it done. Wow. And then, I mean, when you guys finally decided to make the ascent, like

00:26:44.300 how long did it take to go up the wall? 19 days. And we tried several times. I think we tried

00:26:49.020 three times to do ground up ascents because most of our time was just spent kind of aid

00:26:54.100 climbing around on the wall and trying the individual moves and piecing it all together

00:26:57.460 and figuring out how to live up on the side of a big wall and climb really hard for long

00:27:01.400 periods of time. And then once we get all the moves sort of wired into our brain and, and

00:27:06.920 our memory, then we would make these ground up attempts and we failed miserably twice.

00:27:11.160 And then our third time is the one that, that worked. We actually made it and it took 19

00:27:16.380 days.

00:27:17.180 And like, what do you, walks through the, like, how do you feel whenever you, you accomplish

00:27:21.340 it? Like, do you feel awesome? And then like, how long does that feeling last?

00:27:25.340 I mean, the, the feeling was all over the board. I mean, as we were climbing for those 19 days,

00:27:31.000 it was, it was very dramatic because I had managed to get through the hardest section of the

00:27:35.140 climb. And I got to a point where I knew success was pretty much inevitable. Like I could climb

00:27:41.080 to the top relatively easy, but Kevin was failing. And the way that you do these climbs is you break

00:27:45.940 them up into rope lengths or what we call pitches. And there was 32 consecutive pitches. And so to

00:27:51.780 constitute a successful ascent, you just have to climb each of those 32 pitches in a row. But if

00:27:57.420 you fall, you can, you can return back to the beginning of that pitch. You don't have to go all

00:28:00.920 the way to the ground. So about halfway up, Kevin started falling on one of the pitches and he cut his

00:28:05.720 fingers quite badly. And you got to remember grabbing onto these little, little tiny razor sharp edges.

00:28:10.420 So once you get little cuts in them, things tend to downward spiral. It was middle of winter. You

00:28:15.840 know, we realized that to, to climb this route, we had to climb when the, when the temperatures were

00:28:20.900 absolutely as cold as we could find, because your skin's a little bit harder. The rubber on your

00:28:25.000 shoes is a little bit harder. You don't sweat at all. So we ended up climbing it in the middle of

00:28:28.380 winter. But the problem is, is these big storms can roll in. So when Kevin was failing, we were,

00:28:34.320 you know, it felt, it felt quite urgent, I guess, because we're like, if a storm rolls in,

00:28:38.360 ice fall comes down the route and we have to basically run away and we'll fail again.

00:28:43.800 So yeah, it just turned into this dramatic thing. And then the news caught hold of it and it went

00:28:48.680 big in the New York times. And there was like all these news trucks in the valley. It was just very,

00:28:52.780 very surreal thing. And so I think I kind of knew that success for me personally could happen if I

00:29:00.400 decided not to wait for Kevin, like a week before we topped out. But luckily I did wait for Kevin.

00:29:07.220 And sort of the glory moment was on the last day, we were camped a few hundred feet from the top.

00:29:12.080 It was just me and Kevin. And then our one film, our friend, Brett Lowell, Josh's brother. And we

00:29:17.700 were just sitting there when the sun came up and, you know, we knew that we were going to make to the

00:29:21.220 top and it just felt incredible because it wasn't distracted. When we got to the top, it was, you know,

00:29:26.700 it was just kind of a circus. There was like 50 reporters there. And I just wanted to hang out with

00:29:30.920 my wife and my kids and yeah, and my life became very different very quickly after that.

00:29:36.920 And so what have you done after that point?

00:29:39.080 I mean, I've spent the last four years now, I guess it's been just over four years since we

00:29:44.480 climbed the Dawn Wall. I guess living this new life, I wrote a book, the movie, The Dawn Wall came

00:29:50.120 out not so long ago. It's like available on iTunes now. So taking all that video footage and putting it

00:29:56.060 together into a proper movie took three years. And I've been doing other climbing trips as well

00:30:01.180 in that time. But I would say I spent a lot more time kind of at the office, working on the computer,

00:30:07.320 doing interviews, doing film festivals, doing book events. You know, I travel.

00:30:12.060 So one thing I love from your book is you talk about this idea of elective suffering.

00:30:17.800 What do you mean by that? And why do you think choosing, why do you think people should elect to

00:30:21.680 suffer? I mean, I think that most people can relate to that because things that are valuable

00:30:29.860 don't come easy. And so if you find a way to find joy in the midst of suffering, that's a good thing.

00:30:37.460 But I guess elective suffering really speaks to creating hardship on purpose because you know

00:30:45.600 it's going to change you as a human being. And I feel like my story in its essence is about

00:30:51.280 unintended hardship. But really, since I figured out a way, I kind of got addicted to hardship in a way.

00:30:56.760 So it became elective suffering. Like climbing the Dawn Wall was incredibly hard work and it put us

00:31:02.020 through a lot. And so therefore, it created this life that was elevated, or at least I felt that way.

00:31:10.060 And so yeah, I'm still addicted to that. Like everybody's got these big dreams or these big goals.

00:31:15.160 And usually what keeps them from doing that is the suffering component. You know, it's just too

00:31:21.120 much work in the end. But if you can find a way to enjoy that process, to really truly enjoy that

00:31:26.900 process, that's kind of the elective suffering. So there are any like unclimbed walls still out

00:31:33.840 there in the world that you have your eye on or are they all being climbed? There are lots of really,

00:31:38.540 really amazing big walls. Most of them are in remote locations that require big expedition travel to go to.

00:31:45.160 Like this place that I've always wanted to go, I haven't made it there yet, Baffin Island. You

00:31:49.180 know, Baffin Island is like 100 Yosemite's. But there's, you know, you got to deal with

00:31:53.680 the Arctic environment and polar bears and ice breakup because a lot of them are kind of right

00:31:58.720 on the ocean. There's, you know, they're just remote and therefore, you know, more dangerous than

00:32:05.760 I guess I'm willing to accept right now because I'm a father. Like I wanted to, like I always

00:32:11.280 aspired to go more and more into that big adventure travel world. But I started noticing that all my

00:32:17.340 friends that were doing that were dying. And so for me, that just doesn't feel like an option. So

00:32:22.400 I keep finding myself going back to Yosemite because Yosemite has these big, really inspiring

00:32:26.600 roots. But the rock is so good. And I'm experienced enough that I don't feel like it's that dangerous.

00:32:32.920 It fulfills this need to sort of explore. I mean, these big, incredible objectives are

00:32:39.520 available in Yosemite. It's not new walls per se, but it's new roots on these walls.

00:32:44.420 And so I find myself, you know, continually going back there every year and finding new big roots

00:32:49.620 in Yosemite. Well, Tommy, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more

00:32:53.640 about what you do? I mean, they can pick up my book, The Push, you know, it's at most local bookstores,

00:33:00.060 but also Amazon is a good way to get that. Or you can see the Dawnwall movie, which won audience

00:33:07.880 choice at the South by Southwest Film Festival. It's been, it's gotten pretty big. The movie,

00:33:13.840 it's a really good, like 100, 100 minute snapshot of my entire life. And yeah, people absolutely love

00:33:21.520 it. So you can, you can get that on iTunes or, and I think, I think in a couple of weeks,

00:33:25.420 it's going to be on Netflix as well.

00:33:27.780 Fantastic. Well, Tommy Caldwell, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:33:29.660 All right. Thank you so much.

00:33:31.280 My guest today was Tommy Caldwell. He's the first person to free climb the Dawnwall

00:33:34.700 on Yosemite's El Capitan. And he's written about that experience in his book, The Push,

00:33:39.120 A Climber's Search for the Path. There's also a documentary about it. And you can also find

00:33:42.500 out more information about his work at his website, tommycaldwell.com. Also check out our show notes,

00:33:47.240 aom.is slash Dawnwall, where you can find links to resources, where you can delve deeper into this topic.

00:33:52.240 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AWIM podcast. Check out our website,

00:34:03.300 artofmanliness.com, where you find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles

00:34:07.080 rewritten over the years about how to be a better husband, better father, better all around man.

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00:34:22.960 thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Brett McKay. I remind you not

00:34:26.320 only to listen to the AWIM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - April 10, 2019

#498： Lessons in Persistence From Climber Tommy Caldwell

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