Founded in 1955 by two women who hid their gender behind initials, Summit was one of the first great American climbing magazines. In 2024, Michael Levy brought it back as Summit Journal. This is the story of a stubbornly independent editorial bet. © Courtesy of the Summit Journal Michael Levy does not wear suits often. Almost never, really. But in early fall 2023, he was heading into a meeting where he had no idea what to expect. So he dressed the part. The young climber-journalist had landed an appointment at one of New York’s most selective clubs: the Harvard Club. Buttoned up and slightly out of place, he was there to meet an 82-year-old man he had never seen before. Then David Swanson appeared. A former president of the Explorers Club, Swanson is a well-known figure in the American mountain world. They sat down in a wood-paneled room. Levy laid out his plan to revive the magazine. Swanson listened closely. Then he nodded and set one condition: if the magazine was not profitable within five years, the rights would go back to him. Deal. The Inheritor With a handshake, Michael Levy had taken responsibility for the legacy of one of the most iconic climbing magazines in the United States. Sixty-eight years of vertical stories, strange detours, and American climbing history were now on his shoulders. And yet, when Levy appears on a video call, he does not look crushed by history. Calling in from Colorado, where he grew up, the thirtysomething publisher smiles broadly beneath a cap. A little more than two years have passed since “his” Summit Journal first appeared. Since the February 2024 issue, with a climber hanging above the sea on the cover, things have been going, he says, “pretty well.” He has just sent the fifth issue to press. When we speak in February 2026, he has also just learned that Summit Journal has been nominated for a National Magazine Award in the category of Best Still and Animated Illustrations. It is one of the most prestigious honors in American magazine publishing, with results due in the coming weeks. “Awards don’t really matter to me,” he says, brushing it off. “But being recognized alongside The New York Times, The Verge, or The Atlantic still means something.” At the top of the stack is the February 2024 issue, the first after a 27-year hiatus © Courtesy of Summit Journal Nearly three years later, that handshake at the Harvard Club looks like a good deal. But the story of Summit did not begin with Michael Levy. It did not begin with David Swanson, either. It began in 1955, in the basement of a small brown house perched on a granite spur in Big Bear Lake, in California’s San Bernardino Mountains. That is where Jene Crenshaw and Helen Kilness stitched and stapled the first issues of America’s first monthly climbing magazine. The two women had met during World War II, while serving as radio operators in Georgia. After the armistice, they pooled their modest savings, bought a motorcycle, learned to ride it, and crossed the country together. Once they reached the West Coast, they launched Summit Magazine with a simple conviction: the United States needed a serious climbing magazine. And apparently, no one else was going to make one. To claim that space, though, the founders had to change their names. In a world completely dominated by men, Jene signed as “J.M. Crenshaw.” Helen became “H.V.J. Kilness.” From the beginning, the magazine had a distinctive spirit, one Levy now describes as an “egalitarian ethos.” “Royal Robbins, one of the great figures in North American climbing, was an editor there from 1964 to 1974,” he explains. “So you had his columns about the first ascents of El Capitan and Half Dome. But on the very next page, you might have a story from a mother writing about going climbing with her son.” That refusal of elitism, paired with a desire to speak to regular climbers, became one of the magazine’s most durable signatures. The print run eventually reached 10,000 copies. The founders did not want it to grow beyond that. Too much success, they feared, would cut into their climbing time. Sometimes they even skipped issues because they had gone climbing for several weeks. In 1989, Crenshaw and Kilness sold the magazine. Summit became Summit: The Mountain Journal, a large-format quarterly. That first revival ended in 1996. Then the magazine disappeared for 27 years. Money, Chris Sharma, and a Few Glasses of Whiskey A few years ago, Michael Levy had never heard that story. A fellow writer changed that. In a series of essays published in Alpinist, Katie Ives told the story of Jene and Helen, the “Summit House,” the initials, the motorcycle. At the time, Levy was a journalist and editor who had worked at Rock & Ice and Climbing before both titles were absorbed by Outside Magazine. “Back then, most climbers had never heard of Summit,” he says. “Katie kind of dusted it off. That’s what put it on my radar. And after that, the name, the brand, just stayed in the back of my mind forever.” Back issues of Summit from the summer of 1964 and May 1957 © courtesy of Summit Journal In 2023, Levy decided to act. Tracking down the owner of the rights took time. Jene’s niece, Paula Crenshaw, eventually gave him a phone number. “He might still be alive,” she told him. “He’s in his eighties.” Levy called David Swanson and gave him the pitch in two minutes. Not long after, the thirtysomething journalist found himself dressed up in a New York club room that smelled of old wood and Scotch. In reality, there would be several meetings between Levy and Swanson. Enough to settle the name, the logo, the rights to the legendary covers, and the purchase price. “Modest enough that I could do it with my savings and not ruin myself if the whole thing completely flopped,” Levy says, without giving the figure. The two men also agreed on a clause in the contract: if Summit Journal was not profitable within five years, the rights would return to Swanson. “Not because he wanted to do anything with it,” Levy says. “He just wanted to make sure that if I couldn’t make it work, the legacy of the magazine wouldn’t disappear.” “Summit Journal had been profitable from day one” Michael Levy in The New York Times Before the launch, Levy called Mike Rogge, the publisher of Mountain Gazette, another mountain magazine that had been brought back from the dead a few years earlier. Same path, same fight. Rogge became a mentor and pushed Levy to publish two issues a year instead of four, with one guiding principle repeated three times: “Quality, quality, quality.” “He told me, ‘If you believe in the quality of what you’re doing, other people will believe in it too,’” Levy says. Levy was already finding his own route, and gathering his own origin stories. In one editor’s note, he writes about climbing the south face of the Moose’s Tooth in Alaska the summer before relaunching Summit Journal. At a belay stance — the anchor where climbers stop between pitches — his mind was not entirely on the wall. He was thinking about the mountain of problems waiting for him back in New York: the website running late, the impossible logistics of subscriptions, all the things that still had to be solved. On the climb, he met a guy named Zach. Bad weather pinned them down for five days at base camp. They played cards, drank whiskey, and talked about their lives in the tent. Zachary Runyan was a web developer. He would become Summit Journal’s digital director. The Story Behind the Story For the launch, Levy bet everything on community. He reached out to every professional climber he had ever emailed over the years and told them about the project. “Like influencers,” he jokes, with a slightly embarrassed smile. Adam Ondra, Chris Sharma, Sasha DiGiulian: all of them shared the announcement. Within a month, Levy had reached the number of subscribers — a figure he will not disclose — that he needed to make the project viable. A few months later, he told The New York Times that Summit Journal had been “profitable from day one.” How? A smart preorder strategy and “a lot of luck.” But above all, Summit Journal has a very clear position. The magazine comes out twice a year, in a large format, on thick paper. No articles are published online. Everything is reserved for subscribers, who pay $60 a year. Advertising makes up barely 10 percent of the pages. Levy prefers to call his advertisers “brand partners”: companies rooted in the climbing community, investing because, as he puts it, “it’s good for the industry.” Today, revenue is split roughly evenly between subscriptions and advertising. Levy’s dream? “To run 100 percent on subscriptions.” Recent tariff increases reminded him why. One advertiser, whose business depended heavily on overseas production, pulled out. “That’s 10 percent of my annual revenue gone overnight,” he says. “Print is a little like vinyl. What’s old becomes new again. There’s an audience that appreciates objects you can hold in your hands and put on a shelf. It’s become a little countercultural” Michael Levy, Editor-in-Chief of Summit Journal The editorial budget for each issue runs between $40,000 and $50,000, a threshold Levy exceeds every time. “Because that’s what matters most to me,” he says. One long profile of French alpinist Benjamin Védrines cost more than $10,000 by itself. But the principle remains the same: editorial work has to be the first budget line. The team is still lean. Levy edits and publishes the magazine, with Randall Levensaler leading art direction, his friend Zach running digital, and two part-time collaborators helping out. “I’d love to bring all of them on full time,” he says. “We just need to grow a little more.” The goal is 10,000 subscribers. To get there, Levy keeps coming back to the same thing: editorial quality. And in his view, one way to protect that quality is to commit to print. That means stepping away from the internet. Summit Journal has a newsletter and an Instagram account, but Levy distrusts the web the way a climber distrusts a bad bolt — fixed protection you are supposed to trust, but really don’t want to fall on. “The internet is like drinking from a fire hose,” he says. “There’s too much. A lot of it is good, but you get lost in the noise.” His unhappy experiences at Rock & Ice and Climbing, both of which stopped publishing print editions, left a mark. “Print is a little like vinyl,” he says. “What’s old becomes new again. There’s an audience that appreciates objects you can hold in your hands and put on a shelf. It’s become a little countercultural.” Michael Levy, Editor-in-Chief of Summit Journal © Courtesy of Michael Levy With that inheritance on his back, Levy keeps looking for what he calls “the story behind the story.” When other outlets were chasing a major Himalayan first ascent, Summit Journal took time to find a different angle. The editors discovered that the portaledge used on the climb — a hanging platform climbers sleep on during big-wall ascents — had been designed by a craftsman who sewed it in his garage. The article did not retell the ascent. It told the story of that man. “I’m constantly asking how the magazine can be a vehicle for human stories, and for seeing the world from different angles,” Levy says. “That’s what keeps me up at night.” There are still a few steps left before Summit Journal reaches the summit it has set for itself. In an era when one piece of information drives out the next with a single swipe, one magazine is trying to pause the algorithmic feed, the attention crisis, and the three-second view. Will it work? Either way, “America’s first monthly climbing magazine” has become one of the longest and most stubborn answers to the chaos of modern publishing. And 70 years later, the story is still being written.

In the Cochamó Valley, in southern Chile, a small group of climbers and local residents spent 20 years fighting dams, roads, and hotel projects. In December 2025, they finalized the purchase of 803,000 acres of wild Patagonia for $63 million. This is the story of how it happened. © Austin Siadak It rains a lot in Cochamó. Rodrigo Condeza has known that since the first time he set foot in this valley in southern Chile more than 20 years ago. But the rain hardly matters next to what nature gave the place. Among a hundred other things: granite, forest, and 3,000-year-old alerces, South American conifers, that have never seen a parking lot. “I think that is the most beautiful place on earth,” he says over Zoom from his new home near a lake inside a Chilean nature reserve. He has been saying that for 20 years. At 52, he still says it with the tone of a man who has long since stopped apologizing for it. A River Runs Through It Cochamó Valley is often compared to Yosemite. It has the big walls, the meadows, the waterfalls, the river winding between pockets of dense forest. “I think it was Lonely Planet that, back in the ’90s, started talking about the ‘Yosemite of South America’,” Rodrigo says. He has always pushed back on the comparison, or at least on what people tend to do with it. “It’s having Yosemite 100 years ago. I will say that yeah, this is a really spectacular place like Yosemite, but what we want to do is a kind of the opposite.” For climbers, the valley is only reachable on foot, after a five-hour hike under a 45-pound pack, or on horseback with the help of arrieros, local horsemen who carry people and gear into the valley. Once there, the walls rise for hundreds of meters. The cracks are long, clean, and splitter — the kind of straight, continuous crack systems climbers dream about — cut into some of the cleanest granite on earth. The first climbers to put up routes there in the 1990s had to hack their way through the jungle before they could even touch the rock. Even today, topos — hand-drawn route maps and notes — still circulate folded inside glass jars left at the base of climbs for the next party. The place has its rituals. It also has its guardians. “For Rodrigo Condeza, loving a place is not enough to protect it. You have to be ready to fight” Rodrigo Condeza, leader of the campaign to preserve Cochamó In 2003, Rodrigo Condeza left Puerto Montt, a large port city in southern Chile about 60 miles from Cochamó, and moved to the valley with his family. A trained mountain guide, he started a company offering trekking, sea kayaking, and horseback trips. He bought 10 acres deep in the valley, even farther in than La Junta, the heart of the climbing area. A stream crossed his land. Naturally, he applied for the water rights. They were denied. And the answer caught him off guard. “They told me the stream had already been planned,” Rodrigo says. Meaning: it belonged to someone else. When the new landowner started digging, he got a shock. Following the water and how it was supposed to be used, he discovered a massive project: seven hydroelectric plants built in a chain, miles of high-voltage power lines to supply copper mines, all connected to industrial energy networks less than 60 miles away. “When you go to Cochamó, it feels really remote, because it’s a remote place. No road, no anything. We are 100 kilometers from Puerto Montt, which is a big city, and from there you can connect with power lines to the mining, to the big cities, to the capital, to all these industries. The industry of forestry is pretty close also to where we are. So that’s why it has been so much pressure into this wild territory, because we’re really close.” After that discovery, Rodrigo could not pretend he had not seen it. “When something is not fair, a different energy is inside of me. So then I can recognize that. Myself, this quiet guy that likes to talk a lot and friendly, he becomes a fighter. And it’s irrational. It’s irrational. So I will do everything that needs to be done.” The Cochamó Valley © Rodrigo Manns Paradise for Sale Rodrigo Condeza soon met Daniel Seeliger, an American climber who had been living in the valley since 2004 with his wife, Silvina, and who had opened the first campground in La Junta. Together, with neighbors, local tourism operators, and landowners, they founded an NGO, the first of four that would emerge over the years. The fight began to take shape. Locals held roughly 50 meetings with elected officials, associations, and regional tourism offices. Every presentation ended with the same final slide: an image of Cochamó Valley dried out, with a sign planted at a crossroads. “Which path do we choose? Tourism or hydropower? Yosemite or Hetch Hetchy?” Hetch Hetchy, a valley inside Yosemite, was flooded to supply San Francisco with water and became a symbol of wild places sacrificed in the name of development. When the legal routes ran out, Rodrigo and his allies went as far as buying six mining concessions at $1,200 each to physically block potential dam sites. “An incomparable piece of environmental art to be treasured just as a Picasso or Monet painting would be” The description of Cochamó in the Christie's auction catalog After three years of fighting, in 2009, Chile’s president at the time, Michelle Bachelet, declared the Cochamó watershed the country’s first hydrological reserve. The hydroelectric project was dead. “When I knew the decree was real, I cried.” The victory was real. It was also temporary. Since 2007, an investor named Roberto Hagemann had been quietly buying pieces of the valley, parcel by parcel. He had made his fortune in mining and real estate. He saw in the land a rare opportunity: assembling, in one contiguous property, a patchwork of parcels scattered among more than 200 families, a deal so complex that no one else had wanted to attempt it. Hagemann spent 15 years of his life on it. Once the property was consolidated, his plan was to build roads into the valley, hotels by the lake, and gondolas for an international clientele willing to pay top dollar to see Patagonia from a café terrace. © Valentina Thenoux and Austin Sadiak Rodrigo and his partners opposed each new attempt. Puelo Patagonia, another NGO the guide founded with friends in 2013, eventually defeated Hagemann before Chile’s Supreme Court in 2017. Blocked at every turn, unable to secure the necessary permits, Hagemann changed tactics. And the pivot was wild. In 2018, he hired Christie’s, the famous auction house, to sell the property for $150 million. In Christie’s catalog, the property sat between a seaside villa and an English manor. Cochamó Valley was described as “An incomparable piece of environmental art to be treasured just as a Picasso or Monet painting would be.” No buyer came forward, but the listing traveled around the world. It landed in conservationists’ inboxes, in conversations among climbers who knew the valley, and in the newsletters of philanthropic foundations. In 2022, after securing the final titles for the entire property, Hagemann found himself in a strange position. He legally owned 803,000 acres. But he could not develop them, and he could not find a buyer at the price he wanted. Rodrigo saw an opening. The idea was simple, and almost absurd: what if they bought it themselves? Hippies, The New York Times, and a Catfight Contacting Hagemann after 10 years of conflict was a risky bet. A lawyer arranged the first meeting. By Rodrigo Condeza’s own account, the first two meetings were “a cat fight.” Then, slowly, something shifted. Hagemann was stuck. He owned a place he could neither develop nor sell for the price he expected. Puelo Patagonia needed the land protected by a seller willing to negotiate, rather than see it fall into the hands of a stranger. “Deep down in our souls, we both knew we needed each other,” Rodrigo says. Hagemann’s son, a climber who knew the walls of Cochamó well, reportedly also encouraged his father to sell to the conservationists. “The New York Times made this article and said, you know, a bunch of hippies bought the Chilean Yosemite. And it was kind of true. We are workers, professionals, but we had no business doing this” Rodrigo Condeza, leader of the campaign to preserve Cochamó The NGO offered $50 million. Hagemann wanted $100 million. They negotiated for a year. The final agreement landed at $63 million. There is something uncomfortable about the idea that the only way to remove a wild place from the logic of the market is to pay full price for it, using the very tools that threatened to exploit it. Rodrigo knows that. “The New York Times made this article and said, you know, a bunch of hippies bought the Chilean Yosemite. And it was kind of true. We are workers, professionals, but we had no business doing this.” What they did have was nerve. Because when the “hippies” signed, they did not have the money. What followed was part word of mouth, part relentless work. The Freyja Foundation, the Wyss Foundation, The Nature Conservancy, and Patagonia joined the coalition, named Conserva Pucheguín. “It’s like, you know, the wolf — when you make a call, more wolves will come. I think it’s something like that. We made a call and after one and a half year we had the money.” The transaction closed in December 2025. The property is now in the hands of NGOs. Le film que Patagonia a consacré à l'histoire de la préservation de Cochamó After traveling the world to close the funding gap, Rodrigo Condeza is not planning to rest. He has another plan: place 80 percent of the protected territory under national park status, with the remaining 20 percent managed by the local community. Because even after a historic victory, he is not fooling himself. Chile spends $2 per hectare on its national parks, compared with $30 in Costa Rica and $50 in the United States. And the rise of the radical right in Chilean politics — José Antonio Kast, a far-right figure, won Chile’s presidential election in December 2025 — is a reminder that conservation victories are never permanently carved in stone. For Rodrigo, legal protection alone cannot carry the whole burden. “It’s not enough to have a land under a national park, under the government. It’s not enough. It’s something that we are learning in this moment of the history of humans.” For Rodrigo Condeza, loving a place is not enough to protect it. You have to be ready to fight. He started climbing again in Cochamó two years ago. His children, now 13 and 15, pulled him back onto the rock. Since returning to climbing, he says he understands again, “in his body,” what the valley does to the people who arrive there, and why some of them never leave quite the same. Now that the place belongs to the people of the valley, the guide can let himself hold on to one dream: that a hundred years from now, future generations will still see rain falling on a lush wild valley, not on parking lots.

Every week, former soldiers who lost a leg or an arm on the front line come to a stylish climbing gym in Kyiv and work their way up routes. Since 2022, the war is believed to have caused nearly 120,000 amputations, according to some estimates. A report from Ukraine. © Pierre Terraz for Vertige Media Under the stunned eyes of able-bodied climbers, Dima lowers proudly on an auto-belay, a device that catches and lowers a climber without a human belayer. It does not happen every day, but today the joy is all over his face: he has just finished his first route since the attack that changed his life. Once he unclips, he collapses onto a crash pad and throws both arms into the air. A Giant on Steel Feet Dima is 32. He lost both legs on April 1, 2024. Not in a motorcycle crash or from an autoimmune disease, but in a violent kamikaze drone strike — one of those TNT-packed aircraft that can fly up to 150 km/h, about 93 mph, and slam into a target by surprise before exploding. His story is tragically similar to those of tens of thousands of Ukrainians since Russia launched its full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022. On the front, these killer drones have become one of the main dangers for infantry on foot. According to official Ukrainian military data, casualties attributed to drones rose from less than 10 percent in 2022 to nearly 80 percent last year. “That day, I had just been deployed to Pokrovsk, in the Donbas. Our mission was simple: neutralize an enemy position, then get back to the trench in our vehicle. On the way back, I remember our guys yelling at us over the walkie-talkies to speed up, then the sudden buzz of a drone, and then everything went black,” Dima says, sitting in his wheelchair. The rest of the story was told to him later by the six men in his unit. Right after the strike, his teammates managed to get out of the burning vehicle unharmed. Dima was the only one badly wounded. Without thinking, they pulled him from his seat and saw that his legs were shredded. They rushed to put on four emergency tourniquets to stop the bleeding. It was not enough. “I like it because I reconnect with my body. I’ve tried several sports since my amputation: skiing, wakeboarding, even kayaking. But climbing is the only one where I don’t want to quit” Félix, a former Ukrainian soldier Only after long minutes at a “stabilization point” — a kind of makeshift field hospital near the front line — did a doctor decide to transfer him to a surgical unit in the Dnipro metro area, in east-central Ukraine, where both of his legs were amputated to save his life. After months of recovery, 69 surgeries, and just as many doubts, he now makes the trip to this Kyiv gym twice a week to get his head right. On the left, Félix watches Dima doing pull-ups. On the right, Dima in the locker room of the climbing gym in Kyiv © Pierre Terraz for Vertige Media “Before the war and my accident, sport was my whole life. I started weight training when I was 16. They called me Arnold Schwarzenegger,” he says, showing off a little as he knocks out pull-ups on a bar, hands dusted with chalk. For all his giant presence, the stuffed panda clipped to his prosthetic leg makes everyone smile. Climbing with only his arms, which load up fast with lactic acid, increases the strain on his muscles by about 50 percent. “My extensors are stiff, and I get tired faster. The hardest thing is listening to my body and not pushing too hard. Another tricky part is learning how to manage where I put my weight. That’s where I’m going to improve this year,” the former soldier says. Superhumans, Land Mines, and a Second Wind Every week, six to eight participants, all amputees who have lost a leg or an arm, come to climb the gym’s walls. The classes, which have been running for nearly a year, are organized by Second Wind, a Ukrainian nonprofit that offers indoor and outdoor activities for veterans. Hikes in the Carpathians, mountaineering in Nepal, bouldering, roped climbing — the group keeps building inclusive projects around amputees. On Friday, April 24, Vertige Media met several participants in Kyiv, including Dima. On one side of the ultramodern gym, able-bodied climbers work slab routes — low-angle climbs that demand balance and precision — and film themselves in the steep overhangs. On the other side, men wearing prosthetics aim for the tops of routes. More slowly, but with more determination. As the music shifts between European-style electro and Ukrainian rap, Felix, another participant, adjusts the prosthetic on his injured leg. More introverted than Dima, the 29-year-old is still deeply marked by the accident that happened 11 months ago. That morning, Felix had set out on a reconnaissance patrol in the village of Shcherbynivka. When he lit a cigarette, his foot brushed a land mine. His leg was blown apart. He blacked out immediately. Leaning against one of the gym walls, he remembers that traumatic day. “They operated on me right away in a house on the front line. It was very hard. It was cold, and there wasn’t much equipment. I stayed less than a day before being transferred to the Superhumans Center in Lviv, where I started rehab,” he says, tears in his eyes. It was in the halls of that state-of-the-art trauma center, largely funded by American foundations and located near the Polish border, that he first heard about Second Wind. As soon as his custom prosthetic was ready, he decided to move back to Kyiv and start climbing. “I like it because I reconnect with my body. I’ve tried several sports since my amputation: skiing, wakeboarding, even kayaking. But climbing is the only one where I don’t want to quit,” Felix says as he puts on a harness. Félix on the overhang in the Kiev hall © Pierre Terraz for Vertige Media “Come on, let’s move, man. Saddle up!” Alina Bielakova calls out, clipping a carabiner to his harness. With care and energy, she gives Felix advice on where to place his prosthetic, how far to reach, and when to rest when she senses his confidence slipping. Placing an artificial foot well, without the sensation of touch and with distance hard to judge, is almost impossibly difficult. So for nearly two hours, as she does every week, the 33-year-old climber throws herself fully into her role as coach. After starting her career in design, she discovered climbing in 2020 in a worn-out gym in Kharkiv, in eastern Ukraine. Today, her hometown is constantly bombarded by the Russian army and lives to the rhythm of air-raid alerts. Climbing gave her a second breath. “It was climbing or death. The first time, I was so happy that I told myself I wanted to do this for the rest of my life” Alina, a climbing coach in Kyiv “It was climbing or death. The first time, I was so happy that I told myself I wanted to do this for the rest of my life,” she says, smiling as she scrolls through photos of her first competitions on her iPhone. Between Reels of French climber Oriane Bertone, there are clips of Alina tearing through boulders from Kyiv to Lviv, then Poland and Italy. Unlike men, who are no longer allowed to leave Ukraine because of the general mobilization, women can still travel abroad. She improved quickly and stood out, reaching V7 in bouldering, or Font 7A+, and 5.13b in sport climbing, the U.S. equivalent of French 8a. “In other countries, they’re ahead of us. Some climbers live from climbing. Here, you need another job on the side,” she says, determined. To keep climbing as much as possible, she got hired at this Kyiv gym. Her contagious good mood quickly made her the obvious choice to coach these former soldiers. Dima climbing, belayed by Alina © Pierre Terraz for Vertige Media “At first, I was nervous,” she says with a smile. “During the first classes, I was afraid I’d say the wrong thing. They all have different stories, different traumas. Look at Dima — he’s so strong. We had a good laugh when he was surprised that someone as small as me could climb such hard boulders. We became friends. These guys are family to me now.” Sitting on the mat, her students listen closely as she talks. That kind of intimate openness is still fairly rare in Ukraine, so they take advantage of the curious journalists in the room to hear Alina unpack what she feels. They all owe her a lot. Every session, she is everywhere at once, running herself down, taking the work seriously. “I was injured myself three years ago. Not near death, of course, but it makes you think. I had an open knee fracture after a rock hit me outside. For months, I learned to climb on one leg. In a way, I experienced a version of their disability, and that helps me guide them,” she says. At the same time, one of her students, Erman, a lean 37-year-old, is fighting his way up an impressive overhang on lead, climbing with the rope and clipping protection as he goes. Rope clenched between his teeth, he has had a prosthetic on his right leg for two years. A former soldier, he also stepped on a land mine in the brutal Donbas region. Alina Bieliakova cuts the interview short to cheer him on, filming his effort in 4K so she can break it down with him afterward. After a brutal section, the former serviceman manages to flash the route — sending it on his first try. Above the Horror Back on the crash pad, he modestly says the performance comes from his long life as an athlete. A former cyclist and standout swimmer, he could not imagine giving up his competitive streak after the accident. Quite the opposite. “I come every week. I want to get better than Alina. That’s my number-one goal,” the new climber says from his six-foot frame, needling her a little. “I’m kidding. More seriously, the adrenaline does me a world of good. Now I’m waiting for the NGO’s summer trips outside. Bouldering is great, but I need air.” Second Wind is planning mountain trips for August 2026, a prospect that has these veterans excited. After completing their service in the armed forces, they can once again cross Ukraine’s borders. “The destination hasn’t been set yet. My dream would be for all of us to go climbing together in Turkey,” Alina Bieliakova says, visibly moved, as she coils her ropes. Ukraine releases almost no information about the number of soldiers wounded at the front, for both strategic and psychological reasons. In 2026, President Volodymyr Zelensky put the figure at nearly 400,000 wounded. According to the National Health Service, about 120,000 amputations have been performed since the war began four years ago. The conflict has also forced millions of people to flee their homes, inside and outside Ukraine, making it the largest war in Europe since World War II. But sometimes, out of all that horror, extraordinary stories still emerge. In 2025, two former members of Ukrainian intelligence, both amputees, inspired the internet by climbing several Himalayan peaks back-to-back. Proof, maybe, that aiming for the summit can still land you somewhere in the clouds.

One very convenient line tends to blind people the moment climbing is asked to look at its darker corners. Behind “just climb” lies a fiction: the idea that a sport can somehow float outside the real world. (cc) Mark McGregor / Unsplash It comes back again and again, usually as soon as climbing is forced to stop admiring itself in the mirror: “We’re just here to climb, not to get political.” On the surface, the line sounds reasonable. At first, it even sounds kind of appealing: the wish for a simple sport, a practice that works like a refuge, a boulder problem—the short, ropeless climb itself—as a break from everything else. It is a seductive idea. It is also very useful. Because behind the call to “just climb” there is often something else: the desire to keep enjoying a sport without having to look at what, inside that sport, also produces exclusion, silence, domination, or violence. No Climbing Is an Island The desire is understandable. No one walks into a climbing gym to think about federation failures, sexual violence, conflicts of interest, market forces, power dynamics, or the image strategies of institutions and companies. People come looking for a line to figure out, a body to test, a community that feels reassuring, a kind of fatigue that makes more sense than everyday exhaustion. They come to climb, fall, laugh, and try again. They come for that almost childlike promise: here, at least, things are simple. But things are never simple. Climbing is not an island. It is not a moral safe zone protected by chalk, thick mats, and endless talk about “community.” It is a sport, which means it is also a social space. There are clubs, gyms, federations, coaches, national teams, minors, contracts, selections, funding streams, brands, investors, economic interests, careers that begin early, and dependencies that form quickly. There are places where people learn, places where people perform, places where people wait to be chosen. And wherever there is authority, access, recognition, or money, there is also the possibility of abuse. There is something strange about watching certain players in the climbing world talk endlessly about accessibility, inclusion, community, openness—and then get annoyed the moment a media outlet takes those words seriously. Saying that is not “politicizing” climbing. It is simply refusing to describe it as a feel-good story for adults in climbing shoes. In these discussions, the word “political” often works like a scarecrow. It appears as soon as a subject becomes uncomfortable enough that it can no longer be filed away as a harmless anecdote. Talking about sexual violence? Political. Questioning federation governance? Political. Asking about sportswashing? Political. Investigating working conditions in climbing gyms? Political. Showing that the accessibility promised by some market players sometimes stops at the door of social reality? Political again. After a while, the word no longer describes an ideology. It describes everything people would rather not see. It is a very effective way to move the problem somewhere else. We stop discussing the facts. We start discussing whether anyone has the right to talk about them. That is exactly where “just climb” becomes a convenient fiction. Not because climbing for pleasure is somehow suspect—thankfully, climbing is still that too—but because the phrase turns the comfort of the bystander into a general principle. You can “just climb” when the gym still feels like a refuge. When the club remains welcoming. When the coach stays in their lane. When the institution responds. When your body has not been exposed, threatened, dismissed, or made vulnerable by the very people who were supposed to support you. For those who are harmed, climbing is no longer a break from the world. Sometimes it becomes the place where the problem lives. “Climbing would be better off if [we] jumped off a bridge.” Excerpt from a conversation with one of the managers of a network of climbing gyms When the Varnish Cracks That is what our investigation last December made clear through the testimony of a climber from the French national team, who denounced a sexual assault and the way the FFME handled her case. It is also what recent cases have shown, in radically different contexts, in Indonesia, where eight athletes reported sexual harassment and physical violence involving their head coach, and in the United States, where a USA Climbing staff member was arrested in a case involving child sexual abuse material. The facts are not the same. The legal procedures are not the same either. But they all damage the same illusion: the idea that climbing can assume it is naturally healthy simply because it tells itself it is free. There is something strange about watching certain players in the climbing world talk endlessly about accessibility, inclusion, community, openness—and then get annoyed the moment a media outlet takes those words seriously. As long as accessibility remains a brand promise, a line in a manifesto, a hiring argument, or a pretty value posted on Instagram, everything is fine. But the moment someone asks who can actually enter, stay, speak, report, be believed, and be protected, the conversation suddenly becomes too heavy, too negative, too political. Sometimes the varnish cracks wide open. A manager from one of the major climbing gym chains in Paris once told us that “climbing would be better off if [we] jumped off a bridge.” The line matters less for its violence than for what it reveals: in an industry that loves to talk about kindness, some people only tolerate critical speech when it asks nothing of them. But making climbing accessible to everyone is not just about opening more gyms, simplifying memberships, or producing soft-lit images of happy beginners. It also means making sure no one has to stay silent in order to remain part of the group. That is where the word “protect” stops being administrative language. To protect people is not to wait for the courts to say everything before taking reports seriously. It is not to confuse legal caution with moral paralysis. It is not to set the presumption of innocence against the immediate safety of the people involved. To protect people is to build a space where performance does not come before vulnerability, where an institution’s reputation is not worth more than an athlete’s account, and where keeping the system running does not become the quiet argument for leaving everything untouched. Looking these subjects in the face is not politicizing our sport. It is making sure the sport remains usable for everyone. Not just for those who can afford not to see anything. Not just for evening climbers, comfortable witnesses, and companies that love climbing’s values as long as those values stay vague enough to demand nothing. Not just for people who want the sport to be a refuge for them, while accepting that it stops being one for others. For everyone. Maybe that is what some people call “political”: the moment we take seriously the words they had been using as decoration. Accessibility. Community. Trust. Freedom. And if climbing wants to keep telling that story about itself, then it has to accept that, from time to time, someone is going to check whether the story still holds up.

A study published in March 2026 has put a number, for the first time, on the economic impact of climbing in the Fontainebleau forest: between €23 million and €26 million in annual spending. A global destination, a local playground for the Paris region, a UNESCO biosphere reserve under pressure: according to the report’s authors, that money is still scattered across a kind of “foraging economy,” with no shared strategy and no real governance. (cc) Barthelemy de Mazenod / Unsplash The world capital of outdoor bouldering — climbing short, ropeless problems close to the ground — Fontainebleau has been the undisputed center of the discipline for more than a century. Each year, the forest generates between €23 million and €26 million in direct economic impact. The figure comes from a study published in March 2026 by Seine-et-Marne Attractivité and Essonne Tourisme, and it gives hard economic weight to a legendary area that sees between 1.1 million and 1.3 million climbing days per year. In the report’s terms, one climbing day means one individual day of practice: two people climbing for one day equals two climbing days. That massive traffic, driven by Fontainebleau’s global reputation, makes Bleau a singular case study: a bucket-list destination for climbers from all over the world, an everyday playground for tens of thousands of people in the Paris region, and a UNESCO biosphere reserve already under strain. A Well-Off Audience That the Region Hasn’t Fully Captured The €23 million to €26 million in annual spending breaks down across lodging at 28%, grocery and food shops at 24%, restaurants and bars at 16%, transportation at 16%, and climbing gear at 10%. The rest flows into the everyday local economy: physical therapists, village cafés, gas stations. “This is an upper-income professional clientele with fairly high spending power, but only part of that benefits the region because we do not offer all the services they need” Pascal Gouhoury, President of Seine-et-Marne Attractivité The report identifies three main groups of climbers. About 74,000 tourists come each year, 75% to 80% of them from abroad, and stay an average of nine to 10 nights in the area. Some 400,000 day-trippers from the Paris region come for the day, often by RER, the regional rail system, or by carpool. Roughly 7,000 local climbers log as many as 50 sessions a year. It is also a largely upper-income, professional audience, as Pascal Gouhoury, president of Seine-et-Marne Attractivité, told Le Nouvel Économiste: “This is an upper-income professional clientele with fairly high spending power, but only part of that benefits the region because we do not offer all the services they need.” According to the report, average spending varies by profile: €32 per day for a tourist, €19.50 for a day-tripper, and €14.50 for a local climber. Those amounts may look modest. Multiplied by more than a million climbing days, they become serious money for the local economy. For comparison, a study on the economic weight of surfing in Nouvelle-Aquitaine — another mass outdoor sport — put average spending at €48 per surfer per day, 50% more than a climbing tourist spends in Fontainebleau. The gap points to the destination’s untapped economic potential. In the Fontainebleau-Milly-la-Forêt-Nemours triangle, which the report identifies as the “core area,” 28% of businesses say climbers are part of their customer base. In some sectors, climbers account for as much as 32% of annual revenue. Climbers come to Bleau naturally, without much promotion. Some stay three weeks, shop in small grocery stores, and eat in front of the boulders before climbing. In short, this is a quiet, diffuse economy feeding small businesses without making much noise. A Foraging Economy The survey, conducted from December 2024 to November 2025 among 3,779 climbers and 1,037 local businesses, shows that Fontainebleau’s pull comes from its historic reputation, amplified by noncommercial digital tools such as Boolder and bleau.info. No major institutional marketing campaigns. No big promotional budget. Fontainebleau runs on myth. That is exactly what the report calls an “economy of picking.” The destination has no collective strategy, no shared governance, and no clearly identified offer. Climbers arrive, spend money, and leave, without the region truly capturing the value of that flow. Gouhoury has floated possible paths forward: shuttles between lodging and climbing areas, on-site gear sales, physical therapy services, wellness activities. According to the report, climbing also acts as a valuable buffer against seasonality. Because it happens year-round, with peaks in spring and fall, it smooths out activity for small businesses beyond the summer season. But without more structure, that potential remains underused, spread across many businesses that do not always recognize climbing as a strategic market. The Forest Behind the Numbers Fontainebleau is a UNESCO biosphere reserve and part of the Gâtinais français Regional Natural Park. It is also taking the full hit of climate change: heat waves, rising wildfire risk, and soil erosion. According to the report, heavy visitation — from climbers, hikers, mountain bikers, and tourists — is weakening this unique ecosystem. The study identifies several pressure points: vehicle traffic, trash, human waste left on-site, trail erosion, and ecological disturbance. Environmental awareness varies widely. Local climbers tend to be more vigilant and often act as informal sentinels on the ground. Paris-area day-trippers are less sensitive. Foreign tourists are even less so. In recent months, several climbing influencers have crystallized those tensions. Prime, a French climber followed by hundreds of thousands of people, posted a video in November 2025 showing him climbing at night in Fontainebleau, shouting after each successful ascent and disturbing nocturnal wildlife. A French influencer, Jeanne Toinon, was called out for camping in a strictly prohibited area, even though bivouacking is tightly regulated in the Fontainebleau forest. These practices, widely shared on social media, have fed concerns that bad behavior is becoming normalized. According to the report, Fontainebleau generates €25 million a year through climbing, yet has no mechanism for reinvesting part of that wealth into protecting the site. Unlike Margalef, the Catalan village that introduced paid barriers to help fund cliff maintenance, Bleau remains entirely free and open, with no economic regulation. That raises a harder question: is Fontainebleau meant to become a climbers’ park like Yosemite, with cafés, lodges, restrooms, dense road networks, paved parking lots, and reservation-based traffic systems? The American model of a highly structured outdoor destination — heavy infrastructure, developed commercial services, and price-based regulation — does not sit easily in the French context of a state-owned forest classified by UNESCO. Nor does it fit neatly with the imagination of climbers attached to a free, open style of practice. The report ends with a cautious promise: “The challenge for 2026 will now be to begin, with all local stakeholders, the co-construction of a structuring action plan.” It is careful wording. It gives no specific timeline, no budget, and no clear political lead. Still, the numbers are there, backed by a year-long survey. The question now is whether those numbers will become a real lever for the region, or whether Fontainebleau will keep generating major money in the blind spot of public policy, as environmental tensions build and the millions continue to scatter. What happens next will depend on the ability of local players — elected officials, businesses, climbers’ associations, and forest managers — to build a shared model that fully acknowledges what Fontainebleau already is: a world capital of bouldering, a major economic destination, and a biosphere reserve that has to be protected.

Matthew Maddison, USA Climbing’s Speed Team Manager and Strength and Conditioning Coach, was arrested on April 28, 2026, in Utah. He faces 10 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor. The case has shaken a discipline still riding the momentum of its Olympic rise. Matthew Maddison © USA Climbing A grim case has landed at the center of American climbing. According to local outlets KSL, TownLift, and ABC4, Matthew Maddison, 37, USA Climbing’s Speed Team Manager and Strength and Conditioning Coach, was taken into custody following an investigation by the Utah Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. USA Climbing, the sport’s national governing body in the United States, immediately placed him on administrative suspension. The federation said that, at this stage, the alleged conduct appears unrelated to his USA Climbing duties. Still, the arrest of a national-level staff member raises an increasingly urgent question in elite sport: how to protect athletes from the very adults placed closest to them. Crimes and Charges The investigation reportedly began with a tip sent to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children through a social media platform. The report flagged the alleged upload of CSAM, or child sexual abuse material. In plain terms: criminal material involving children. An IP address and email account allegedly led investigators to Utah. During a search of Maddison’s home on April 28, 2026, investigators say they identified more than 30 suspected child sexual abuse files that had been uploaded or shared through the account in question. According to the police affidavit cited by KSL and TownLift, Maddison allegedly acknowledged that the account and email address belonged to him. The federation said that, at this stage, the alleged conduct appears unrelated to his USA Climbing duties Maddison now faces 10 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, a second-degree felony in Utah. If convicted, each count can carry a sentence of one to 15 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. Court documents also describe online exchanges in which he allegedly discussed abuse involving prepubescent children. ABC4 reported that investigators also noted Maddison worked directly with young athletes and regularly traveled internationally. At this stage, he is presumed innocent. Maddison was not a peripheral figure in American climbing. USA Climbing officially listed him as the speed climbing team manager and strength and conditioning coach. In February 2024, the federation said he led a national speed camp in Salt Lake City with 24 of the country’s top speed specialists, including athletes who had already qualified for the Paris 2024 Olympics, among them Emma Hunt, Piper Kelly, and Sam Watson. There is no available evidence connecting those athletes to the alleged conduct. Their names matter here only because they show Maddison’s position inside the upper ranks of American high-performance climbing. His role, documented by Tempus Magazine in July 2024, included managing schedules, travel, and national training plans. In a statement sent to local media, USA Climbing said it was “deeply troubled” by the allegations and had placed Maddison on unpaid administrative leave, while also saying it was cooperating with law enforcement. From France to Indonesia, Athlete Protection Under Pressure The case comes at a time when sports federations are under growing scrutiny over athlete safety. It also echoes several recent cases covered by Vertige Media. In France, on December 14, 2025, a member of the French national climbing team sent an email to all FFME members alleging that she had been sexually assaulted by another member of the national team. The facts are different, but both cases raise the same institutional question: how do federations respond when the people involved sit inside the highest levels of the sport? Another recent case, this time in Indonesia, points to the same issue. In late January 2026, eight athletes from Indonesia’s national training center reportedly contacted federation president Yenny Wahid to report alleged sexual harassment and physical violence involving head coach Hendra Basir. The Indonesian climbing federation then placed him under provisional suspension. According to local media reports, that interim measure barred him from leading training sessions, entering the facilities, and communicating with athletes while the case was being reviewed. USA Climbing, the sport’s national governing body in the United States, immediately placed him on administrative suspension In the United States, USA Climbing relies on policies designed to govern interactions between adults and minor athletes. The federation also says its employees undergo background checks. But in a policy updated in October 2025, USA Climbing also notes that a background check with no disqualifying findings is not a “certification of safety.” It is a small but important line, and it quietly points to the limits of administrative safeguards. These three cases are not the same. But each one puts sports institutions on the same narrow ledge: how do you protect complainants and other athletes without prejudging the outcome of a legal or disciplinary process? For now, the institutional responses all circle the same core issue: the role of immediate protection in environments built around performance, selection, and dependence on coaches and staff. As Olympic climbing continues to professionalize, the Maddison case is a reminder that an institution’s maturity is not measured only by its ability to produce medals. It is also measured by its ability to prevent harm, respond to risk, and protect athletes. The next stage in the case against Matthew Maddison will now unfold in Utah’s courts.

The strongest climbers often claim the right to decide the grade. But are they actually right? Between philosophy of perception, collective intelligence, and beef carcasses, a few well-tested ideas suggest that the climbing crowd may be more reliable than the elite. Grades are not aristocratic. They are democratic. Here is why. (cc) Frederick Shaws / Unsplash A while back, a new route had just gone up at my gym. As usual, everyone could try it before the grade was announced. I sent it — climbed it cleanly, without falling — but it felt harder than it had looked from the ground. I had to fight all the way to the anchor. Trying to be careful, I suggested 5.11c, maybe 5.11d — roughly 6c+/7a in French grades. That triggered a small storm of sharp comments: “Why not call it 5.12b while you’re at it?” The grade was set at 5.11b. End of discussion. Holds and Biases That little episode captures the tension between two ways of thinking about grades. The first is basically aristocratic. It assumes that the “right” grade should reflect the simplest possible method, and therefore the lowest reasonable proposal. But the stronger you are, the easier the climb will feel. So the strongest climbers end up setting the grade for everyone else. Across from that is a more democratic model. It starts from a much simpler premise: everyone gets a say, regardless of ability, and the grade should settle around the average of those opinions. That means the final grade may be higher than what the strongest climbers think. Of course, you will often hear strong climbers defend the first approach. That makes sense. They are protecting their turf. As for me, I lean toward the democratic model. Partly because I am not one of them, and I have no desire to be steamrolled by the strongest people in the room. But mostly because there are serious arguments against the aristocratic view. Start with the word itself. Aristocracy means rule by “the best.” But as a friend once reminded me, a climber can be very strong and still be almost impressively stupid. So it is not clear why physical ability should give their opinion any extra weight. The obvious reply is that getting strong takes time. It means climbing a lot, encountering different styles, and building experience. So maybe the strong climber — or more accurately, the experienced climber — can claim a special status. The strong climber is not just physically strong. They are a better climber because they have climbed more. It is entirely possible that stronger and more experienced climbers perceive holds as bigger than they actually are Which brings me to my second point. In Phenomenology of Perception, Maurice Merleau-Ponty argues that our perceptions are not neutral reflections of the objects around us. They are shaped by our bodies, our histories, our experience, and everything we have learned to do. And because perception comes first, it affects our ideas and judgments about the world. This idea, often discussed in English as “embodied perception,” sits at the center of a 2014 study by Rob Gray, published in the International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology and cited in an excellent video by Kris Hampton, the American climber, coach, and content creator. Gray argues that what we perceive is not a faithful picture of “what is out there,” but rather a reflection of our ability to act on the objects around us. In sports, that means experts and less advanced athletes may literally perceive the same objects differently. To show this, Gray draws on several experiments. In one example, golfers perceive the hole as larger or smaller depending on their own ability. Kris Hampton's video Grades: A Fool's Trap There is no reason to believe climbers are magically exempt from these biases. On the contrary, as Hampton points out, it is entirely possible that stronger and more experienced climbers perceive holds as bigger than they actually are. For them, the difficulty shrinks in proportion. So we have to let go of the idea that the strongest climbers are automatically better at grading. Their strength and experience may actually push them to underestimate the difficulty. The same is true in the other direction. Beginners and weaker climbers will tend to overestimate it. In short, no one has a clean, objective ability to judge the difficulty of a movement, whether we are talking about hitting a golf drive or climbing 5.10a. “Basically, the routesetter proposes a grade. They do not grade it. After that, the whole group of climbers determines the grade. So it is the community that gives the grade” A climber interviewed So much for the aristocratic model. The strongest climbers are not “better” simply because they are strong. Their voices do not get special treatment. Does that mean we should prefer a democratic grade, where every voice counts equally? Maybe. But then we have to accept that Gary, two months into climbing and three 5.10a sends to his name, is just as relevant as Claudine, whose tick list is packed with 5.12b routes. Rejecting the aristocratic model means admitting that beginners and bad climbers get the same say as the best and strongest climbers. Is that really reasonable? Grade-A Beef In one passage of Politics, Aristotle argues that the opinion of an uninformed crowd can be better than the opinion of the best person in that crowd. Bring together a large number of people with different views, let them speak freely, and you will hear all kinds of opinions. Among them, the best answer is more likely to appear than it would be if you asked only one or two specialists. The crowd increases the odds of finding the right answer because it multiplies the number of answers. A kind of collective intelligence emerges from all that individual ignorance. Sir Francis Galton confirmed this by accident at the end of the 19th century. Galton, an English aristocrat who wanted to prove that crowds were stupid and that power should be given to “the best,” came up with a small experiment. At a country fair, he asked people to estimate the weight of an ox carcass. Among the 787 guesses he kept, some were more ridiculous than others. But against all expectations, and much to our aristocrat’s disappointment, the crowd’s average estimate was accurate to within a pound. The expert butchers were farther off. With grades, as with beef, we might conclude that the crowd’s opinion is actually the better one. The average of the beginners, the strong climbers, the tall, the short, the young, the old, the disabled climbers, everyone — assuming each person gives the most honest and independent opinion possible — is more reliable than the view of the strong climbers, the experienced climbers, the 5.13 and 5.14 climbers, and everyone else who claims to be “better” and reserves for themselves one very specific power: the power to “call the grade,” the way others claim the right to “lay down the law.” Because grading is power. It is a tool of control, a way for a few people to impose their opinion and judgment on everyone else. That is why grading cannot be an individual act. As one climber told me recently, “Basically, the routesetter proposes a grade. They do not grade it. After that, the whole group of climbers determines the grade. So it is the community that gives the grade.” In that sense, grading looks a lot like voting. Each person proposes, just as each person votes. But the grade itself is like the election. It belongs to the group, based on all the opinions expressed. Grading is the sovereign act of the whole community. It cannot be seized by a minority on the grounds of special competence, because the group as a whole is always better than even its best individuals. So the next time you wonder how hard the thing you just climbed really was, give your most honest opinion without letting yourself be influenced by everyone else. Then compare it with as many other opinions as possible. Because the sum of your judgments will be far more reliable than the word of the best climber in the world. And in doing so, you will have fulfilled your duty as a climber-citizen.

In every climbing gym, there is a quiet figure asked to create movement, desire, progress, and meaning, while calmly absorbing the frustrations of the people who will consume that work. This is one routesetter’s imagined inner monologue. Blocbuster Courbevoie © Vertige Media It is 7:12 a.m., and if I’m being completely honest, I already hate you. Not you personally. I haven’t met you yet. I hate the person you will become by 7 p.m. I hate your little comments in advance. Your mat-side expertise. Your firm opinions about what “works” and what “doesn’t.” Your very modern ability to turn a failed boulder problem — a short climbing sequence set low over pads — into a conceptual crisis. Your refusal to consider that, if you can’t do a move, it may not be proof that French routesetting has collapsed as an idea. I get to the gym before you, obviously. That is one of the few perks of the job: a few minutes in a room that is still empty, before the great parade of self-appointed judges walks in. The volumes are still asleep. The holds still have that temporary neutrality they lose the second a human being starts projecting hip-position neuroses onto them. My back already hurts a little. We strip. We sort. We clean. We screw things in. We unscrew them. We hesitate. We start over. Routesetting is a strange kind of cooking: part construction work, part choreography, part controlled sadism, part customer service you can already see coming. You have to think about the move, the read, the progression, different bodies, different levels, the gym’s identity, the need for fresh sets, the boredom of strong climbers, the fear of beginners. In short, you have to govern. A setter complaining about a problem he just set is basically research and development A routesetter is the gym’s unofficial minister of internal affairs. Like it or not, the setter manages traffic, tension, complaints, and the borders of what people can tolerate. We draw mental lanes. We distribute hope by color. We organize frustration so it stays useful. We design small crises you can come out of stronger, or annoyed, but ideally not both for very long. Yes, we have to create difficulty. But mostly, we have to create meaning. And in gyms, meaning has become a fussy little commodity. Around 10 a.m., the first coworker tests a dyno — a jump move between holds. He falls. He tries again. He complains. Excellent sign. A setter complaining about a problem he just set is basically research and development. We refine it. We swap a foothold. We make the start a little less intense. We keep the ugly move in the middle, because there are limits to kindness. You arrive around noon. I recognize you immediately. First come the evaluators. The people who cannot climb a problem without immediately handing down a verdict. “That’s not a red.” Thank you, Brian. Truly. I was waiting for your opinion. I tried to convene an international committee, but you happened to be standing by the water fountain with questionable tape on your middle finger and floral shorts, so we’ll go with your expertise. Climbers’ relationship to grades is its own comic novel. You demand them like you are demanding truth, then treat them like a personal insult. If the grade is too soft, it insults your level. If it is too hard, it insults your intelligence. If it happens to match what you usually climb, suddenly the grading is “pretty fair.” Imagine that. You said you wanted a measurement. What you really wanted was a mirror. You turned 20 seconds of experience into IKEA assembly instructions A little later, the beta sprayer appears. The beta sprayer never climbs alone. She is always accompanied by her own voice, explaining — usually too fast and too loud — how to do the problem. Beta is climbing advice, the sequence or trick that helps unlock a move. She cannot imagine that a boulder problem might be a private search, an intimate little confrontation with one’s temporary uselessness. No. It must be narrated. “No, so actually here you have to commit with your left hand, then heel hook, then go for the crimp.” Thank you. You turned 20 seconds of experience into IKEA assembly instructions. The worst part is that she genuinely thinks she is helping. Then come the aesthetes, who almost always become restaurant critics. They are more refined, but just as exhausting. They want problems that are “coordination-based but not parkour,” “powerful but subtle,” “morpho for everyone” — meaning fair to every body type, which is a noble idea and an impossible demand. When they fail, they never say, “I didn’t like it.” They say, “I understand the intention, but…” That “but” is their kingdom. After that, anything can happen. “I feel like it lacks continuity.” “The finish move isn’t very interesting.” “There’s a break in the proposal.” A break in the proposal. Incredible. You sound like a grant-funded video art curator explaining an installation in Brooklyn. The problem is that a boulder, like any serious form, sometimes needs to be a little unfair to be memorable. Unfair in the sense that it does not apologize for existing. It forces you out of your lane. But many of you want to be pushed, as long as the push has already been approved by your habits. So you judge the set with the calm authority of people who risked nothing. You didn’t bolt anything on. You didn’t test anything. You didn’t stand behind anything. You didn’t hand it over to the public. You are just standing in front of a piece of resin, explaining that “the set is kind of uneven this week.” Maybe the problem is not that I hate climbers. Maybe the problem is that I know them too well I have not forgotten the missing brushers. Or rather, the people who should be brushing but have chosen another path. They climb a chalk-black problem, watch it turn back into a fossil bed of attempts, then walk away as if they have just passed through a public space maintained by no one. Not brushing is one of the cleanest little summaries of modern indoor climbing. You want a premium experience, but keeping that experience premium should always be someone else’s job. Preferably someone invisible. That is when you understand that routesetting is not just creative work. It is service work. You create the conditions for other people’s fun, then watch those people treat that fun like something they are owed. The routesetter is part author, part mover, part safety technician, part convenient container for everyone’s frustration. When the session goes well, nobody remembers your name. When it goes badly, everyone knows exactly who to blame. Obviously, I am exaggerating. You also make it very easy. Still, there are climbers who actually look. Climbers who can feel when a line is offering something. Climbers who understand the difference between a bad move and a demanding one. They exist. They are the only reason I have not retrained as a plumber or started raising goats. Because despite everything, routesetting remains one of the strangest and most beautiful jobs in this little vertical theater. You write sentences that other people read with their fingers, hips, and fear. You get to watch sudden breakthroughs, clean little flashes of joy. A well-set gym is not just a gym with new problems. It is a place where hundreds of people can work through a set of questions designed for them, without being designed exactly around them. By 7:30 p.m., the gym is full. I pretend to clean up. A teenage girl immediately finds the method that three muscular adults missed. A beginner sticks a move she had sworn was impossible and comes down wearing the kind of pure expression someone should patent. And I think, as I always do, that maybe the problem is not that I hate climbers. Maybe the problem is that I know them too well. So no, I do not quite hate you. Let’s say I find you exhausting with great precision. And that is exactly why I keep setting.

Former director of Westway, the UK’s largest climbing centre, and now a consultant for the sector, Jez Tapping has spent the past decade watching an industry that never stops reinventing itself. Between accelerated consolidation, forced professionalisation, and increasingly diversified business models, the UK climbing gym market is going through changes as profound as they are specific. It took a proper cup of tea to make sense of it all. A well-steeped conversation. Jez Tapping © Courtesy of Jez Tapping Vertige Media: How would you summarise the current state of indoor climbing in the UK? Jez Tapping : Last year, the sector saw a revenue drop of between 11 and 15%. This year, the first quarter has been solid, but we are clearly moving out of the expansion phase and into a maturation phase. That translates into a lot of mergers and acquisitions — larger structures buying up smaller ones. We’re also seeing increased professionalisation among independent operators: those passionate climbers who set up their own gyms now need to level up in key areas like HR and financial management. A climbing gym no longer runs itself. It’s a complex business that needs to be properly understood and managed. “In London, we went from 15 gyms before Covid to 34 today” Vertige Media : What concrete phenomena reflect this increasing complexity? Jez Tapping : The major phenomenon, to my mind, is the erosion of the middle segment. Gyms are now focusing on beginners on one side, and advanced climbers on the other. Average climbers — people like you and me — are a little forgotten. And then there’s another fundamental shift: the decoupling of footfall from revenue. Having more people through the door no longer automatically means making more money. Vertige Media : How do you explain the rapid economic growth, followed by the stagnation, of climbing gyms? Jez Tapping : The Olympics accelerated a dynamic that was already underway. But the arrival of capital accelerated everything. In London, we went from 15 gyms before Covid to 34 today. That growth came primarily from chains that already had financial resources. The Verlinvest fund acquired The Hangar in the UK and Boulders in Denmark, making it the world’s largest operator with over 40 sites. Without that, this expansion would have taken 15 to 20 years. Investors compressed it into five. Last year, several British chains were acquired by French or British groups. These consolidation moves are a sign of a market that is stabilising and restructuring. Vertige Media : Which business models truly work over the long term? Jez Tapping : The real revolution is the diversification of offerings — just like in the fitness sector over the past 25 years. We’re seeing very distinct positionings emerge: premium centres with high-end coaching and personalised services; community-oriented, convivial centres, where 90% of the market sits; and minimalist, low-price structures that are highly individualistic and rely on volume. Youth coaching has become central. At Westway, 50% of our revenue came from coaching, with 500 young people every week. It’s a strongly growing segment, especially in bouldering, where it was underexploited. In a context where household purchasing power is declining, adults are cutting back on their own leisure spending, but they continue to invest in their children’s activities. That’s a stable, resilient market. But be careful: memberships are no longer the main revenue line in most gyms. It’s now either junior coaching or new casual climbers. That makes the business model more fragile, more transitional, with fewer guaranteed recurring revenues. Vertige Media : You mentioned fitness. What lessons can climbing learn from that sector? Jez Tapping : The fitness industry has about a 40-year head start on climbing in terms of commercial structuring. Segmentation is crucial: premium versus low-cost, paid coaching, tailored programming. You need to clearly define your positioning. Are you a “third place” with a café and a sense of community? Or a minimalist venue focused purely on climbing? “The sector’s improvement over the next five years will come primarily from technology and intelligent use of data, not from new holds” The other major lesson is data. Five years ago, you had to wade through complicated spreadsheets just to know your average basket size or visits per member. Today, with the proliferation of customer management systems, that information is instantly accessible. These tools allow for decisions based on real data rather than intuition. The sector’s improvement over the next five years will come primarily from technology and intelligent use of data, not from new holds. Vertige Media : Have bouldering and auto-belays revolutionised accessibility? Jez Tapping : Absolutely. The big challenge for gyms is off-peak utilisation. Between 9am and 4pm on weekdays, the walls are underused. Bouldering has solved that problem for individual climbers. Auto-belays now allow rope walls to compete in that time slot, offering the same kind of autonomy. “Many operators set up their gym as a hobby, not as a structured business” Innovations like the Pro-grade lead auto-belay — which allows climbers to lead with an auto-belay device — show that there is a growing market. But return on investment remains a critical question given how expensive this equipment is. The biggest market for auto-belays today is what we call Clip & Climb: colourful, playful climbing structures for children. In the UK, it has become a real industry, with spaces entirely dedicated to this family audience. Vertige Media : What are the main medium-term challenges for the sector? Jez Tapping : The first challenge is professionalisation. Many operators set up their gym as a hobby, not as a structured business. This resistance to change is a real obstacle at a time when the market demands rigorous management. At the same time, we’re seeing rapid homogenisation: in five years, we’ve gone from a sector dominated by independents to one dominated by chains, with a real risk of standardisation. But the most critical challenge is operators not understanding their own revenue streams. Many don’t realise that the entry fee is no longer their main source of turnover. They keep making anecdotal decisions instead of relying on data. The membership churn rate in our gyms now mirrors that of traditional sports facilities — eight to ten months on average. You absolutely have to understand why people are leaving and invest heavily in acquisition and retention. It’s a matter of survival. “Climbing is far more embedded in French culture than in the UK” Vertige Media : Are we seeing unionisation among climbing gym staff, as in France or the US? Jez Tapping : Not really in the UK. The majority of employees — around 80% — are between 15 and 25 years old. It’s a very young sector, with few long-term careers, except in route setting or management. There’s no climbing-specific union because there simply aren’t enough people to justify one. I don’t see that dynamic emerging here in the next decade. Vertige Media : How do you look at the French market? Jez Tapping : What strikes me is that the French Federation is very well developed, and there are an enormous number of walls in schools and educational institutions. This culture of clubs and non-commercial practice gives the French commercial market enormous growth potential compared to ours. Climbing is far more embedded in French culture than in the UK. That creates a solid base of people who know and practise the sport from a young age. The challenge will be turning that base into a clientele for commercial centres without undermining the existing club culture. Vertige Media : What should climbing gym managers anticipate in 2026? Jez Tapping : There is now enough data, experience and precedent in our sector. Ten years ago, we were fumbling in the dark. Today, you need to go out and seek information from those who have that experience, while staying aware of everyone’s biases. But the fundamental advice is: define your business precisely. Don’t just say, “I’m going to set up a climbing gym.” Define who you’re building for, with what exact concept, and how you’re going to generate revenue sustainably. Which market segment are you targeting? What unique experience will you offer? How will you differentiate yourself? Without a clear direction and a strong identity, you won’t get investment and you won’t have a viable strategy in an increasingly competitive and segmented market. The era when you could just “build a wall and they will come” is definitively over.

A defining figure in world climbing and the first woman to send Action Directe, the legendary 5.14d in Germany, Mélissa Le Nevé has always carried both mystery and intensity. Behind the résumé is an athlete fiercely attached to freedom, someone who turned climbing into a way of understanding life and nature into her safest refuge. An unusually quiet encounter. Mélissa Le Nevé © Rémi Fabregue The Paris climbing gym is still mostly empty early in the day. Before the launch of the La Sportiva Climb World Tour, the front desk at Climb Up Porte d’Italie is filled with little more than a conversation between Caroline Ciavaldini, Mélissa Le Nevé, and a pair of bloggers dressed head to toe by the Italian gear brand. The handshake is polite, but Le Nevé is clearly guarded. It takes a little proof of good faith, and the promise that her words will be handled carefully, before she lets the wall down. A few moments later, she smiles at herself for it. As the interview begins, she admits: “I showed up very suspicious. I’m a bit of a wild animal. I need to be tamed.” From the Vosges to Bordeaux Asphalt To understand the Le Nevé puzzle, you have to go back to the beginning, near Gérardmer, in the Vosges. She describes it as a “little piece of paradise,” the place where she lived a dream childhood shaped by total freedom and a deep, physical connection to the outdoors. Then, just before she turned 10, that original balance broke. Her father, an engineer specializing in wood resistance, was transferred to Gironde. For the young girl, the landing was rough. “When I arrived in Bordeaux, I had a lot of trouble fitting in,” she says. “A big city, so different from Gérardmer... I had trouble integrating, understanding the codes.” “I was someone who had trouble breathing. I shook. I was afraid of a lot of things” Uprooted and introverted, she looked for a place to belong. The ocean called to her, but without the money to buy a surfboard or cover the back-and-forth trips, she put her name, almost by chance, on the waitlist for a climbing club in Cestas. A year later, when she got in, it felt like a revelation. “It really was love at first sight when I started climbing. I immediately felt like I was in the right place,” she remembers. More than a sport, climbing gave her mentors: young retirees who helped run the club, took her outside for the first time in Ariège, and passed on a deep love of nature. Mélissa Le Nevé © Rémi Fabregue Most of all, climbing became an unexpected antidote to the anxiety that was starting to take hold. “I was someone who had trouble breathing. I shook. I was afraid of a lot of things,” she says. Climbing gave her a safe ecosystem and a place to land. A lifeline for a young girl hungry for experience, who kept collecting passions: pole vault on Wednesdays with the woman who would become “her sister,” climber and vaulter Alizée Dufraisse, and a serious musical education that eventually led her to play Carmen as a solo clarinetist. Competition as a Mirror Against the cliché of the competitive machine, Mélissa Le Nevé entered competitions with an almost clinical interest in her own weak spots. Deeply prone to stress, she treated the circuit as a place to learn herself. “I put myself in those stress-management situations to try to understand who I was,” she says now. She draws an interesting parallel between being uprooted in Bordeaux and entering the competition world, seeing in both the same search for belonging. “Isn’t competition, in the end, a situation of integration?” she asks. “It’s being socially part of something moving in the same direction.” “And what if it’s the men who are scared?” The holds and the wall became tools for self-examination. “For me, climbing is a mirror,” she says. “It allowed me to get a little distance, to breathe better, to face certain fears, to manage certain emotions.” Every route became an inner dialogue, a way to break down her own blocks. The benefits reached far beyond results: competition simply taught her how to open up to the world, how to face other people’s eyes “without turning red as a tomato and stuttering.” Still, that private, healing search sometimes collided with the demands of high performance. After one competition where she had just won two silver medals, France’s national technical director asked her bluntly: “When are you going to win gold?” She learned to build a sealed-off bubble around herself. Performance would never be the point. It would be a tool. “There are rituals where young warriors go into the forest to meet all the power of nature,” she says. “That’s how I see it.” Climbing as a “Feminine Force” That careful reading of herself inevitably shapes the way Le Nevé sees the evolution of her sport. As the first woman to climb Action Directe, the mythic 5.14d that helped define modern sport climbing, she watches with fascination as a new generation narrows the gap with men in a way that feels almost unprecedented. But when the conversation turns to the sometimes awkward media treatment around women’s achievements, she steps out of the argument with a mischievous edge. “And what if it’s the men who are scared?” she says, amused. More than comparison for comparison’s sake, what excites her is the larger movement underneath. “I really see climbing as a feminine force moving forward and setting an example of parity. With several real role models, with strong personalities, it’s incredibly interesting,” she says. It is a whole generation breaking free and rewriting the codes of performance on rock, drawing strength from one another, proving there does not need to be one queen at the top, but many possible lines. “I like relationships that are deep, really connected” Training has played a major role, of course. But Le Nevé also believes the nature of climbing itself helps push the sport toward parity. Modern climbing has lowered the altar of pure muscle and put better movement in its place. “Because of gravity, I think we can be more or less equal,” she says. “There is movement, flexibility, decision-making, the mind, emotional management.” The Pull of Open Air Le Nevé left the competition circuit at the end of 2016 to focus on rock, and she has built a particularly rich private world far from the usual concerns of the climbing scene. She reads the psychoanalyst Carl Jung. For a while, she became fascinated by Eastern European literature, from Bulgakov to writers from the former Yugoslavia, because she was “fascinated by how so much suffering could create so many masterpieces.” “What makes me happy is seeing a bird fly” Ethnology studies and deeply formative trips to Malawi and Madagascar even led her, when she was younger, to consider becoming a foreign correspondent. But faced with the noise of the world and the scale of its social problems, the athlete eventually chose a kind of deliberate simplicity, with no trace of cynicism. “I feel like, as an ant, I’m not going to move the whole path forward,” she says. That realization allowed her to accept that her place in the world was, above all, to be happy in it, and to inspire others through her passion rather than through grand speeches. That choice pushes her to focus her energy on real human connection, and to avoid the empty comfort of social performance. Small talk is not her thing. “I like relationships that are deep, really connected. Superficiality is something I can handle now. I’m a frank and direct person. I try to be calm and choose my words.” It is a radical search for meaning, and it shapes her encounters in climbing as much as in everyday life. Now based near L’Argentière-la-Bessée, at the edge of the Écrins, she lives days that feel like her, without chaining herself to one fixed point on the map. In her own words, it becomes almost an aphorism: “I really am a free bird.” Mélissa Le Nevé © Rémi Fabregue Most of all, air has replaced rock in more ways than one. Since the pandemic, she has developed an all-consuming passion for paragliding. Asked what truly feeds her day to day, her answer bypasses both plastic holds and cliffs. “What makes me happy is seeing a bird fly. What I love is sitting down before I unfold my paraglider and watching the birds,” she says. Her eyes light up as she describes a flight over the Vercors. “I found myself face to face with a bearded vulture. It’s huge. I honestly think it was one of the most beautiful moments of my life. To fly, to have that chance.” The climber who was on alert in the first minutes has given way to a contemplative woman, relieved to have walked paths other than pure athletic performance. Still, even rare birds have to deal with the ordinary laws of time. The hour is getting late, and Mélissa Le Nevé has a train to catch. However much you want to keep the flight suspended, eventually, it is time to come back down to earth.

World Climbing has just crossed the symbolic milestone of one million euros in prize money for its 2026 season. A spectacular progression that raises as many questions as it answers. We posed them to Piero Redaubengo, Secretary General of the international federation, who reveals the behind-the-scenes of the decision, defends his model against private leagues, and outlines his vision for the future of competitive climbing. And watch out—a few revelations slip between the lines. Oriane Bertone, Janja Garnbret and Melissa Costanza © Nakajima/Timmerman/World Climbing. Vertige Media : Crossing the one million euro prize money mark is a symbolic milestone that many have celebrated. How was the decision made? Piero Rebaudengo : The decision was done in 2024, when we started a plan to increase the prize money in some competition, having the goal to increase all in 2026. It's a need, and it's also a way to stay in the market. We grew a lot and the growing is something that has to be measurable. And the prize money of the athletes is one of these pillars. Vertige Media : Which market are you talking about exactly? Piero Rebaudengo : In the market of the sport environment, the sport events environment, which weighs billions of euros. In 2020, close to the COVID, we started with a strategic plan which we call the 2028. On this strategic plan was a focus of competitions on events. And it was a clear statement saying that we have to increase the level of our events, increase the level of the visibility of our events. One is the prize money and the other one was to try to go to big cities. The other one is to increase the level of the setup of the competition. Personally, I am quite satisfied because we reached—we can do better, for sure—but if we turn around and turn back on the event of 2019 and 2020, the few we had, we are satisfied on the level of our organizers, on the level of the performance of the athletes, on the level of the perception of the public on our events. Vertige Media : What specific issue does this decision to increase prize money address? Piero Rebaudengo : The first goal, of course, is to give the athletes the possibility to compete and having the possibility to—I want to speak about work. Work is not a sport world, but being compensated with a reasonable, according to the value, amount of money. We also have to say something on the difference between some of our federations because some of our federations are providing cost of the athletes or the travel, accommodation and so on. Some do not do it and leave to the athletes the duty to pay by themselves and that is also something that we have to take care of. Piero Redaubengo writing the future © World Climbing Vertige Media : Many athletes still cannot make a living solely from competition climbing. In Germany, for example, climbers launched a crowdfunding appeal in 2025 to finance their travel. How does this increase change that reality? Piero Rebaudengo : It's a reality we know. But beyond the prize money, we must also establish concrete services for the athletes. "We are not a sport who has a queue out of our door. But the most interesting item is that the door is open, is not closed" Vertige Media : Precisely, will you establish mandatory minimum services at each event: guaranteed accommodation reimbursement, meals, physio on site, travel grants, etc.? Piero Rebaudengo : It's an objective, yes. We want to increase the level and the standard of our events, and that passes through better services for athletes. If we increase the standard and the level of the event, then for that we need an increasement of the organizers, and they will receive a new event, a better event that they can internally resell because they have some rights to cover some costs. Vertige Media : Let's talk funding. How is this increase concretely financed? Piero Rebaudengo : We increase the finances through media rights, through sponsorship rights, and through event rights. These are the three pillars of which we are working with. On media rights, we have more viewers. We cannot share any figures, but we are satisfied. They are satisfied (Eurosport/Discovery in Europe and Bilibili in China, editor's note) because one year ago, one year and a half ago, we negotiated another contract until the end of 2028 based on an increase of the revenues from our side. We are one of the few new sport that had an increase of the contract. Vertige Media : And on the sponsor side? Piero Rebaudengo : Both. We have more sponsors and the sponsors we have are putting more money. Up to now, we had endemic sponsors (belonging to the same sector as climbing, editor's note). We open to general sponsor and we are now negotiating with different sponsors. We are not a sport who has a queue out of our door, knocking on our door "how much you need or how much you want." But the most interesting item is that the door is open, is not closed. Vertige Media : Is this triptych—media rights, sponsors, local organizers—the model you want to keep for the future? Piero Rebaudengo : Up to now, we are planning to have at least until '28 the same model. And then being keen on the fact that the sport events environment is an evolution model. We cannot stay quiet. We have to think about how to propose maybe with some different discipline or same discipline with different model of proposal, which is the case of the four-lane speed, is the case of the team events, is the case of the boulder mix event. We are not stuck on the tradition. I mean, tradition is fundamental. It's the pillar of our sport. But trying to offer different models of events gives us the possibility to be more open. "One of our goals to organize a World Cup event in Paris. It's a pity that we cannot propose to Paris again climbing. We are working on it. And I think that it will happen sooner or later" Vertige Media : You mentioned "big cities." Can we imagine that in France, for example, a World Cup event would take place in Paris rather than Chamonix? Piero Rebaudengo : Yes, this is one of our goals. And we are very close to the French Federation to do it together because it's a mutual goal. It's also a goal after Paris Olympics. It's a pity that we cannot propose to Paris again climbing. And we are working on it. And I think that it will happen sooner or later. Vertige Media : Some organizers, like in Switzerland or Czech Republic, charge tickets. Is this a model you encourage? Piero Rebaudengo : It is a process we left to the organizer the freedom to do it. Some are doing and some are very satisfied on it. Personally, I agree. We have not to be in a hurry to do it, but we have not also to be shy on it. Vertige Media : Where does the prestige of a competitive sport come from, in your view? Piero Rebaudengo : I think it comes from the athletes. I see climbing is having a more mature approach on the sport, having this goal that a young kid or young girl can see and can watch Janja Garnbret taking the Olympics and having two Olympic medals, two gold medals in Olympic and approach the sport. Instead of having one million per event prize money. I think this is the big difference between us and tennis. "Our climbers are nice, are clean, are passionate" We have a lot of work to do with the athletes, bringing them with us together, being a role model, being available to meet young climbers before the competition, after the competition. The NBA has a contract with all the athletes obliging them to take time to be role models with schools, with the kids, with spectators. And this is also important. We are far away to be in this way, but this is a target. Because they are nice. Our climbers are nice, are clean, are passionate. Most of them are students, have an intellectual level, high level. And they combine their life with the sport, with an elite sport. And this is the role model. Piero Rebaudengo © World Climbing Vertige Media : There is also a private league in climbing, the very recent Pro Climbing League, which offers £10,000 to the winner in a single event, with expenses covered for headliners. Did this competition weigh in your decision to increase prizes? Piero Rebaudengo : Competitors are necessary to grow and to improve. In the monopoly, you do not improve. Our performance, our athletes' performance is based on the goal to be Olympic champion. And probably the Pro League is far away to be in the system, but we are very keen on these models. We can also discuss with them. Vertige Media : You've already had conversations? Piero Rebaudengo : Yes, we see them. We monitor, of course, as we are monitored by them, of course. And we are on the spot. Conversation based on performances, on how to make athletes happier, how to make athletes safer, more safe, and how to have also a calendar of the competitions. Vertige Media : Will paraclimbing competitions also have guaranteed and public prize money? Piero Rebaudengo : We are working on it. We are working to clarify something with the paraclimbing movement which are the number of classification that are in the environment. It's also a cultural approach for us as for all sports who are doing para-sport. We want to have athletes. We do not want to do benevolent. We want to have performance. And this is the reason why we are in the Paralympic Games. Not to hope that, okay, we have a person on wheelchair, let's do climbing. Maybe it's not climbing the best sport for you to stay out of home. Maybe it's another, but we need to know their needs and what they want. Vertige Media : If you had to envision 2030, what scenario would you hope for the World Climbing circuit? Piero Rebaudengo : With a magic wand, I would like to have additional medals in Brisbane (host city of the 2032 Summer Olympics, editor's note), with a team event, a mixed team event, because it's one of the key points to push our national federation to invest in athletes. The work of the National Federation means some athletes are giving to the National Federation the possibility to have this performance goal. But if we have also a team opportunity, we can attract more National Federation. And they are obliged to bring the athletes and to pay for the athletes to bring the athletes to the competition. It's a virtuous system because it creates champions. Alberto Tomba (nicknamed "la Bomba," one of the most decorated Italian skiers in history, editor's note) was not a product of a research of the Italian Federation. It was the Italian star that shined, emerging naturally from a federal system. Stars don't emerge by chance. And it's difficult to find Janja Garnbret on the street.

Killed in a 2015 accident in Yosemite, Dean Potter remains one of climbing’s most haunted legends. So much so that HBO has now devoted a four-part series to him. In this exclusive interview, directors Peter Mortimer and Nick Rosen talk about the man behind the myth. © Andy Anderson May 16, 2015. Dean Potter and Graham Hunt step off Taft Point above Yosemite Valley in wingsuits. They are attempting one of the hardest lines imaginable in BASE jumping: flying through the Notch, a razor-thin gap in a rocky ridgeline. It is a tiny target. Hunt clips the wall. Potter makes it through the gap, then crashes a few yards later. Both men die on impact. “Such an important story” Peter Mortimer and Nick Rosen filmed Dean Potter for years. Admirers of the climber, they first set out to make a short tribute film after his death. Using their archive footage, they drew interest from a festival, then from Elizabeth Potter, Dean’s sister, who controls his estate. By then, Mortimer and Rosen were hardly unknowns. In the U.S., they are about as established as it gets in climbing film, with credits including Valley Uprising and The Alpinist. It did not take long for them to convince HBO to back their new project: a four-part series about one of climbing’s most mystical legends. Then came three years of post-production. “Without doubt, it was the most challenging, the most complex project of our career,” says Peter Mortimer from Colorado. “We felt like the stakes were really high. This is such an important story. So we really felt like we had to get it right. Like go really deep and get it right.” The result is four intense hours inside the life of one of the most troubled climbers of his generation. Available since April 14 on HBO Max, The Dark Wizard tries to illuminate the blind spots of an elusive figure who seemed to live by reinvention, illusion, and risk. “I think he’s kind of like—it’s almost like Kurt Cobain to music in the ’90s” Peter Mortimer, co-director of The Dark Wizard Dean Potter’s story unfolds like a distinctly American one. His past is rooted in a difficult childhood that pushed him early toward rebellion, all in an era when the rough edge was still part of free climbing in the 1990s. Young Potter came up smoking weed, taking mushrooms on his portaledge—a hanging ledge used on big walls—and dangling out over the void with friends who were just as wrecked as he was. “I think he’s kind of like—it’s almost like Kurt Cobain to music in the ’90s,” Mortimer says. “He represents a different era in life and society and climbing, when it was just wilder. It was more adventure. It was more just kind of uncurated. It was just a wilder time. And I think he’s the iconic representation of that time.” © Dean Fildeman Among Yosemite’s trails, still crowded with dirtbags—climbers living cheaply and loosely around the sport—Potter built a serious résumé. The climber who could sometimes carry himself like Zlatan Ibrahimović held the speed record on the Nose of El Capitan for years. He also invented free-basing, a hybrid of free soloing—climbing without a rope—and BASE jumping, a style he used on the north face of the Eiger. Unroped highlines at nearly 3,000 feet, BASE jumps, speed records: it is hard to argue Dean Potter was ever just a climber. “There’s a difference between, you know, Dean’s own kind of like self, like personally crafted kind of identity and persona and mythology, and maybe who Dean really was,” says Nick Rosen. “And I think, clearly, Dean saw from early on, saw himself as more than just a climber. He was striving for something maybe bigger or more or different than just the pursuit of climbing up rocks.” For Rosen, Potter’s climbing became “both a kind of a tool for him, a way for him to sort of like interface with risk and danger and the threat against life and the possibility of death, and try to face that and come through that would allow him some moment of psychic peace, you know.” In the series, Potter even calls himself a “performance artist,” a kind of avant-garde figure trying not only to pull off huge athletic feats but to reshape the disciplines themselves. “He wasn’t competing with anyone in a serious way, he wasn’t famous, he was just driven to do this stuff,” Rosen says. “He triggers a process that drives him to dig deep inside himself and confront his demons…” The Marauder’s Map To tell Potter’s story, Mortimer and Rosen had three main sources. First, the footage: hundreds of hours shot by them and others. Then the interviews: friends, former partners, climbers who knew him well. And then there were the notebooks, where Potter wrote about himself with startling openness. Part diary, part holding tank for his wildest ideas, they became a treasure for the filmmakers and, naturally enough, the thread that runs through the series. “Dean in interviews was very building the mystique of Dean Potter a lot of times,” Mortimer says. “And it wasn’t like he wasn’t pulling back the curtain most of the time. And then we had these really intimate, amazing interviews with his friends and the people who knew him best. And I think when we saw the journals and read through all of them, that immediately was a third element. This was the Dean that you didn’t get in the interviews, like the wrestling, the vulnerability, the self-doubt.” “I thought he’s amazing. Other times I thought he was being a bully and was really, really stressful to work with.” Nick Rosen, co-director of The Dark Wizard. In plenty of archival footage, Potter projects the opposite. On camera, friends often describe him as an “alpha silverback,” meaning the dominant male in the room. “He had a public persona that people really looked up to him as this like alpha silverback,” Mortimer says. “And so I think having access to that and being like as third-party filmmakers, we were able to show this side of Dean that he wanted to show the world but could never do himself. And I think it just makes him so much more compassionate and relatable.” Because in reality, Potter’s career was marked by rupture. In 2006, he illegally climbed Delicate Arch, the protected natural landmark in Utah. The “performance” sparked public outrage. He lost his sponsor, Patagonia, and, by extension, his marriage to climber Steph Davis. Six years later, after alienating many of his friends, Potter went to China to walk a highline above the void. Broadcast live on television, the stunt was supposed to earn him €200,000. Badly prepared, he nearly fell several times, somehow made it across, then burst into tears at the end, completely spent. The sequence, heavily featured in the series, is as gripping as it is revealing. “I thought he’s amazing,” Rosen says. “Other times I thought he was being a bully and was really, really stressful to work with.” Though they were close to Potter in real life, the directors had to create some distance from that relationship. “Our mission is not a personal mission,” Rosen says. “We’re trying to tell the world a story about Dean Potter.” A supersized ego, up against Alex Honnold In The Dark Wizard, the filmmakers devote plenty of space to the thing that shaped nearly everything in Potter’s life and climbing: his ego. “Dean was, he had this incredible motivation to go, like, right, to push into his fear, to go further than, like, any of us would go, to, like, risk his life, to achieve these incredible things,” Mortimer says. Was it really motivation? Self-expression? A need to be better than everyone else? “The answer is all of the above,” Mortimer says. One thing is clear: that ego flared up most when someone else challenged him. That is why the arrival of Alex Honnold in Yosemite changed everything. At first, the two men looked like opposites. Potter was explosive, tortured, poetic, and already saw himself as king of the Valley. Honnold was still a rookie, but he was also gifted, confident, and deeply analytical. Dismissed by Potter and his friends as a total dork, the young soloist would end up souring Potter on climbing by sending his projects before him—and doing them better. For the filmmakers, the series also reveals something about Honnold’s psychology, and how hard he could be. In one episode, Potter describes him as “a competitive twerp.” But in the end, it is Potter who seems most damaged by the rivalry. “Our point of view was trying to tell a story that was quite honest and maybe went below the layers of Dean’s public persona” Nick Rosen “Dean’s inability to accept that his like his monstrous ego is something is maybe could be argued is the problem,” Rosen says. “Like someone else who was a bit a little bit less, you know, sort of obsessed with being the best could have just stepped aside and had a graceful transition and a mentorship with someone like Alex Honnold.” According to Mortimer, “Dean always believed he was more of a visionary than Alex. And he talked about that and his friends all talked about that. And I think he always felt, he felt like he had one more trick up his sleeve. But eventually, you know, he realized that, you know, he was aging and Alex was just getting better and better.” Potter’s ego was powerful enough to reshape his whole personality. “I think his ego and that darkness and his competitive edge was—at times, it served him really well,” Mortimer says. “And I think at times, as we kind of see later, I think it really harmed him. And I think it really caused him to lose track and lose track of who he wanted to be and what his pure motivation was.” Far from hagiography, The Dark Wizard aims to tell what the filmmakers see as a more honest story. “Our point of view was trying to tell a story that was quite honest and maybe went below the layers of Dean’s public persona and almost kind of mythos, to something that was maybe a story that was kind of untold still,” Rosen says. “Dean’s really personal story.” Elsewhere, he describes the challenge as “balancing what we really thought was really heroic about Dean with the sort of other side that we thought was like quite human, but also at times dark and tragic.” Do you think it'll work? © Heinz Zak It is not the first time Mortimer and Rosen have tried to understand a deeply complicated climber driven to outrun his own demons through extreme risk. In The Alpinist, they were already exploring the inner life of the late Canadian climber Marc-André Leclerc. “They just lived these incredible lives that were so true to their spirits,” Mortimer says. And now, he adds, “that ability to like fulfill, you know, what you want to do and like what your spirit like calls you to do—I think I do understand that. It’s very powerful.” Even if it never lasts very long. About his childhood, Potter never shared much beyond the constant moving, the loneliness, and one dream he said came back again and again. A dream that now feels impossible to hear without a chill. “When I was a little boy, my first memory was a flying dream,” Potter says in the series. “In my dream, I flew and I also fell. And I always wondered as I got older if it was some premonition of me falling to my death.” See: The Dark Wizard on HBO Max (one episode each week since April 14)