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Voice of the Mountains: The Poetry of the Long Game with Randy Leavitt
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In this episode of Voice of the Mountains, host Steve House sits down with legendary climber and entrepreneur Randy Leavitt to explore how vision, hard work, and delayed gratification shaped a lifetime of adventure. From pioneering routes like Jumbo Love to building a real estate business that funded decades of climbing, Leavitt reveals how he approached both pursuits with the same discipline and curiosity. He reflects on lessons from the Great Depression, risk management in big wave surfing, and the art of creating routes that others would one day climb. Together, they discuss how craftsmanship, patience, and a willingness to be a beginner underpin both mountain and business success. It’s a meditation on purpose, endurance, and building a legacy that outlasts the climb.
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Transcript
Randy Levitt's Legacy in Climbing and Real Estate
00:00:00
Speaker
What does it mean work on something that you know you may never finish? What kind of vision does it take to equip a route that you have to wait 14 years for somebody to come along and climb?
00:00:11
Speaker
That's what Randy Levitt did when he equipped the route Jumbo Love. And k Chris Sharma came along 14 years later and climbed what was then the hardest route in North America. This just proves that Randy Levitt not only sees farther than us, but he sees farther than us both physically and metaphorically.
00:00:33
Speaker
But Randy's story neither begins nor ends just with climbing. He grew up with parents that were deeply forged by the Great Depression. His father used to find bent nails and straighten them to use them in his work.
00:00:49
Speaker
Randy took this work ethic and applied it to his own vision of life. While his stone master friends in Yosemite Valley were dumpster diving and living the dirt bag dream, Randy was going down to San Diego and quietly building a real estate business to achieve his plan A, which was financial freedom and an entire lifetime spent climbing and developing roots.
00:01:17
Speaker
all around the American Southwest. Randy pinned tax assessor maps on his walls and he would scour the foreclosure listings and at the same time he would take pictures of unclimbed granite walls and he would study the shadows looking for hidden crack systems and he would develop these crags and these walls at an incredible scale.
The Philosophy and Purpose of Climbing
00:01:40
Speaker
Randy always worked with a long-term vision. He believed in delayed gratification. He built systems. He worked hard and he showed up every day.
00:01:53
Speaker
In this episode of season two Voice of the Mountains, we're going to go into a different kind of business, a very personal business that was built expressly to enable Randy to climb more.
00:02:07
Speaker
We're going to hear how Randy found his edge in his business and at the same time managed to climb and develop roots at an incredibly high level for five decades.
00:02:22
Speaker
If you listen closely, you're gonna hear Randy describe being the architect of his life's ambition and then building that dream.
00:02:33
Speaker
It's amazing. This is a life lived as a meditation on vision, effort,
Randy's Real Estate Journey and Strategies
00:02:40
Speaker
and hard work. And listening to Randy, I was really struck
00:02:46
Speaker
Is there any more compelling expression of the human experience than working hard day after day build something that endures while acknowledging our own impermanence?
00:02:59
Speaker
It's pure poetry. And Randy Levitt has been writing verse after verse of poetry with his life. I think you're going to want to listen to this episode.
00:03:10
Speaker
My name is Steve House, and this is Voice of the Mountains.
00:03:19
Speaker
If you're enjoying the show and want to take the next step in your training, join our newsletter and receive a free four-week sample training plan. Head on over to UphillAthlete.com slash Let's Go, and once you sign up, you'll instantly get a link to try out some of our most popular training plans.
00:03:36
Speaker
It's a great way to get a feel for how we train our athletes for big mountain goals. Check it out at UphillAthlete.com slash Let's Go. That's UphillAthlete.com slash L-E-P-S-G-O.
00:03:52
Speaker
Welcome, Randy, to Voice of the Mountains. because It's really great to have you here. Well, thanks for inviting me here. And it's nice to talk to a legend
Evolution and Innovations in Climbing
00:04:00
Speaker
like yourself. And you've you've done ah incredible amount of mountaineering, which I always had a high, high regard for.
00:04:08
Speaker
Yeah, that's actually something I'm going to ask you about because in learning more about you before our conversation, saw that you idolized alpinists as a teenager when were coming up and climbing. And that was a curveball I didn't – I associate you with, of course, Yosemite in Southern California and – exploratory rock climbing and you know the Virgin River Gorge and climbing Baja.
00:04:38
Speaker
But I never associated you with alpinism. So to hear that you were like a fan of Boardman and Tasker, I was like, oh, wow, ah fellow ah fellow spirit. Yeah. I mean, when when I started climbing, it was all focused towards what became what would get you ready for the big mountains, bouldering, which would get you ready for rock climbing, rock climbing for big walls.
00:05:00
Speaker
big walls for dealing with law logistics and and big faces, and then ultimately to the mountains. So really that's where I thought I was headed all along and that's where I wanted to be. Nice.
00:05:11
Speaker
And digital did you get there? Did you did you go alpine climbing? I did. i I learned how to alpine climb. I went to Canada, did the normal routine
Parallels Between Climbing and Real Estate
00:05:20
Speaker
there. And then I went on an expedition in 1986 to Gashabrum 4 in Pakistan. And we made the second ascent of Gashabrum 4 of the mountain via a new route.
00:05:32
Speaker
I wasn't one of the summit climbers, but I was on that trip. And it was it was amazing. forgot that. Yeah. Greg Child. Who else was on that? Tom Hargis, great child, um and Steve McCartney Snape, and Steve Rissy, and ah several other really good climbers.
00:05:52
Speaker
Yeah, Tom was a mentor of mine. I guided with him at different stages and did a bunch of ice climbing with him a long time ago. And of course, you know Greg Child shaped way a lot of us of my generation thought thought of climbing. That's a really cool side story.
00:06:12
Speaker
I want to ask you about something you said and I quote, climbing doesn't really do anything for humanity. Yet from my vantage point, at least climbing seems to be one of the best things in your long career and lifetime.
00:06:32
Speaker
I just want to start there because I think there's a tension between this sort of conquistadors of the useless idea, this you
Influences from the Great Depression Era
00:06:40
Speaker
know, jousting at windmills idea of climbing and alpinism and said the actual experience that we have.
00:06:50
Speaker
in the mountains, whether it's climbing or skiing or trail running, that people feel ah and and derive and identify a lot of meaning from there time and these pursuits.
00:07:04
Speaker
So somewhere in there truth. what What have mountains actually given you? Well, they've given me a purpose to there I think there's something in human nature where everyone needs something, whether it's religion or whether it's an activity or whether it's both religion and an activity or a hobby or maybe just a profession they want to excel at or or do something meaningful to themselves.
00:07:32
Speaker
And now now that may be curing cancer, which is meaningful to humanity, or it may be climbing mountains, which is sort of not that meaningful to humanity, in my opinion. But everything, everyone needs something. And I've been involved in so many different sports, like a foil surfing, big wave surfing, kite surfing, climbing, mountaineering.
00:07:52
Speaker
um And everyone that is involved in these sports, that's their whole world. So I see all
Risk Management in Surfing and Climbing
00:08:00
Speaker
these different snapshots of these different worlds. where everyone's got their thing and they're so into it.
00:08:05
Speaker
These guys that do wing foiling now on Mission Bay in San Diego, where I go, that's their whole world. And it's so meaningful and so important to them. And yet there's all these different pursuits. You could be a stamp collector, you know, you could be ah anything and, and you know, all these different pursuits that people have.
00:08:25
Speaker
And I just think that gives the, it's human nature. it gives you some sort of meaning and some sort of way to connect with nature or to feel valuable about yourself. And so I think in that sense, it's important, but, but actually what it actually does is not important in my opinion.
00:08:40
Speaker
It, what it, what it really does is it helps people kind of like, how does it help people? Well, it keep keeps them grounded, gives them a purpose, gives them something to occupy their minds with and, and something to pursue and get better at.
00:08:54
Speaker
And maybe that's just my perspective. That's what I feel, but that's to me, that's sort of an interpretation of, of, those sports and however everyone's into it. And, you know, when when we were chatting before we started recording, I mentioned to you that, you know, this season is about this intersection between people who excel in the business world and people who have also excelled the mountain sports world.
Technological Innovations in Climbing and Surfing
00:09:20
Speaker
And we have people in different
00:09:25
Speaker
places in that spectrum, I guess is the word. And you also have, as you've called it, a plan A and a plan B and climbing was your plan B. So but tell us a little bit about your plan A and what that was, what that is. Well, plan a I guess you could call it the financial part of my life where I wanted to secure ah reasonable financial future and you know, be able to be able to plan for that. So um I think the way it started is that when I was a young kid and I wanted to climb as much as I could, I found the best way to do it, ah to afford it was to paint houses. I worked for a house painter and eventually started my own business.
00:10:11
Speaker
So here's Randy, the house painter. ah Someone calls me and says, Kate, can you do this job? And I can bust out a house painting job in a week,
Jumbo Love: Vision to Realization
00:10:20
Speaker
earn four times what ah someone would be working at a hardware store would earn.
00:10:25
Speaker
And then when that week is over, I'm free for three weeks, you know, for the same amount of money. And that that to me was a good formula. So I thought, oh, i need to work for myself. ah I did still go to college. My parents helped put me through college. So that was a huge thing at the time.
00:10:42
Speaker
ah But I kept going ah with this house painting business and eventually turned into wallpapering. And um I think the story led to where I ended up meeting my future business partner that way. I was exposed to ah people with you know fair amount of money in nice homes in nice parts of San Diego. So um as I would go on these climbing trips, work real hard, then go on a climbing trip, work real hard, you know do a big wall in Yosemite, come back and do another paint job,
00:11:13
Speaker
um i I ended up meeting some really interesting people. And when I finished college, I started putting out letters to these people. And I said, I want to start a real estate business. That was what I had focused my myself on. And I could see, I grew up in the seventies. So I saw what inflation did to home prices and asset prices. So I thought, well, real estate is something tangible. I can understand it.
00:11:38
Speaker
This is way before the internet, artificial intelligence, where these all, there are all these things you don't understand or can't touch. But real estate was something I could touch. I had experience managing the painting business and I understood maintenance on property. So I understood how properties were built.
00:11:55
Speaker
And anyway, I, I've put out a bunch of letters and i got a response from one of the guys. He was this gentleman and his wife ah in La Jolla, California.
00:12:06
Speaker
They live part-time in France and part-time in the United States. And he had a big business he was selling and wanted to put the money into real estate. So I became I co-partner with them, got my broker's license. And the interesting part of that, Steve, was that when I was getting ready to cast off on that trip, I had this Himalayan trip planned to the 1986 Gashabram 4 expedition to Gashabram 4 and Nameless Tower.
00:12:34
Speaker
So i went to my my future business partner as he had just proposed this business plan. um And I said, look, i've I've got this trip I want to do before i do this partnership.
00:12:46
Speaker
And I showed him the description of the trip and the details about it. And he said, absolutely, you've got to do that. you know He understood the value of these experiences. So it was great.
00:12:57
Speaker
On that trip, I was reviewing this intense long contract that would be between us that would form this 30-year partnership. So a great child was mar marveling at me, watching me pour through these contract pages, like 40-page contract, as I was you know in a snow cave somewhere.
00:13:16
Speaker
Did you really carry the contract? I really did, yeah. with a hi k there There was a lot to understand in there. There was a lot of legalese. I mean, I really learned a lot in my business dealings because everything I signed my name to had it you know had a consequence. And so it you you really start to look at the dotting the I's and crossing the T's.
00:13:36
Speaker
Yeah. And thinking through... potential eventualities implications of those words. But I would be afraid that my brain wouldn't be functioning well enough at 7,000 meters to be able to catch any of that.
00:13:50
Speaker
i would i was I was reading Kurt Vonnegut at meters. the The contract was more like at base camp. Okay. ah still basecams five thousand years That's That's, that's not nothing.
00:14:05
Speaker
That's so interesting. That's so funny. So what made you focus on real estate? I mean, I understand this trajectory, like started in where you know, you understood houses, as you said.
00:14:18
Speaker
how they're put together, how they're maintained. But you also said something second ago about how, when you're talking about sports and how you see these windows into all these different worlds that are people's everything, whether it's kite surfing or big wave surfing or rock climbing, is real estate one of those worlds? And are there even subsets of real estate? Which one you...
00:14:46
Speaker
ah focused on or which one do you obsess about? Real estate was one of those worlds. And in the world I was in, out there were probably four other competitors to me in my particular niche of apartment buildings in Golden Hill area of San Diego.
00:15:03
Speaker
So basically, we were like the, you know, the five best guys at that, at that job at the time were five most prominent active. And, ah you know, their their whole world was that some of these guys had other interests and some of these guys didn't.
00:15:19
Speaker
Their real estate was there. was everything for them. And for me, I took my job very seriously and I worked really hard, but to for me, it was it was really a job and a way to secure a financial future. It wasn't something that I wanted to do forever.
00:15:36
Speaker
Has that changed? No, no, no. i've I've retired from the real estate business more or less. I'm i'm still a California real estate broker, but i I'm very inactive compared to what I used to do.
00:15:48
Speaker
Was there... Ever like this fascination with business real estate? What were you doing? Were you, were you, were you buying and flipping? Were you a broker?
00:15:59
Speaker
Were you buying apartment complexes? What were what was your niche? I was a real estate broker and basically an asset manager and property manager all in one.
00:16:10
Speaker
So we would buy a building. You could do a 1031 exchange, which was a tax deferred exchange. And we would say buy four units, exchange to eight units, exchange to 16 units.
00:16:21
Speaker
In the meantime, maybe pick up another eight unit building. And this coincided with the early nineties where there was a financial downturn and in California, especially it was like a depression here, way worse than 08, way worse than maybe what's to come. It felt that way. felt like California was in a complete depression.
00:16:42
Speaker
ah especially in the real estate market. So I had started my business in 87. And by 92, 93, when this was in full force, I really understood the business. And that's when i started making hay.
00:16:57
Speaker
And that was buying properties from banks who had foreclosed on them. like ah knew the asset managers of the banks. When something would come available, they would call me or I would call them.
00:17:08
Speaker
i would take the property off their hands, manage it, because the banks didn't want to own property. They didn't want to be a property manager. Right. So let's go back to climate for a second.
00:17:21
Speaker
How did you... You're most famous, at least and for me, as being such a prolific route developer over for your life.
00:17:33
Speaker
And I've developed routes, all kinds, from sport rock climbs to mixed climbs, trad, like all the whole gamut. And... You know, you're, I'd say maybe like one generation ahead of me.
00:17:47
Speaker
And you came up in that era where strictly trad climbing, you lived through and adapted to the sport climbing era. And and now we've, you know, got this, I think, sort of equilibrium that we're in now where everybody does, let's say, everything. i mean, at least climbers like you and I, we're going to clip bolts. We're going to place gear.
00:18:10
Speaker
doesn't really make that much difference to us. So when you were when you were getting into that and developing roots, like tell me about your process. Like what, why develop roots? i I mean, I know how much work it is. I mean, not just this hiking around and trying to find the the nice piece of rock that might have a little gem in it, but All of it, like spending the money, buying the equipment, cleaning, scraping, making it safe.
00:18:47
Speaker
I mean, there's so much that goes into it. I mean, you don't really appreciate how much work has gone into developing the roots that we climb on a daily basis until you've developed, you know, 10 or 20 roots by yourself and realize how much just labor it is.
00:19:05
Speaker
Tell me about that process for you. There's a lot of reasons why I like it. There's the exploration, the newness, the discovery, the excitement of seeing something that no one has ever done.
00:19:16
Speaker
of You get your name in a guidebook. There's all these little things that are perks about developing roots. But for me, it was very personal. it It wasn't about getting my name in guidebooks or a lot of this other stuff. It was really about a way to push myself in a unique way.
00:19:35
Speaker
ah I guess when you do a new route, you don't know how hard it's going to be. You don't know what kind of things you're going to have to work out in order to do it. And it presents itself to you. The rock does.
00:19:48
Speaker
And that's what I loved about it. It made me a better climber. I would be, but let's say, for example, you go and you want to get in shape and you go into a gym and you have all these gym machines. ah To me, I walk into a gym and I want to do nothing in the gym. i just, I see the bikes, I see the weightlifting machines. I see everything in there and, and I'm uninspired, but finding a new climb is inspiration for me.
00:20:11
Speaker
It's like it lights a fire under me. And and that is the part I loved about it. If you could imagine maybe a, a gym machine. You don't even know what the gym machine looks like when you're doing new routes. you This thing appears and it all of a sudden you have to, oh, I got to get really good at this or really good at that. And you end up doing things you never thought you could do before.
00:20:32
Speaker
and that that was is it It's really inspiration for me. And in that same way, when you were on your real estate career, did that same thing happen? Did you end up doing things you never thought you'd do before?
00:20:49
Speaker
I got into situations. Yeah. that I never thought I would do, but not in the in a nice way. Like you think, I mean, I was dealing with low income apartment buildings in San Diego and rough, rough neighborhoods.
00:21:01
Speaker
And I, I got in situations where I wanted a bulletproof vest or, other things like that, where there was just such filth and squalor that you wouldn't believe what you see on the street level.
00:21:14
Speaker
But I dealt with it all and, you know, I made it work. And the what what satisfied me in those situations was, say, I would buy an apartment building that was just in horrible shape and had some good tenants, but had some really bad ones. And A year later, that place would be all cleaned up and I'd have housing for people that needed it and they were good people. And so there was satisfaction, but it was completely different and sort of gnarly compared to rock climbing.
00:21:42
Speaker
Really? Because rock climbing and developing new roots can be pretty gnarly and dirty and just beat you up. It can, but so I don't know. I don't mind the work.
00:21:54
Speaker
I've always been a hard worker. I didn't mind the work. Yeah. And the cleaning up low-income apartment buildings, that's also a lot of hard work. It is.
00:22:06
Speaker
It is. So was there a similar fascination with what would but you would – was there a similar like sense of suspense? Like when I'm climbing or you know trying to uncover a new route, there is a sense of suspense.
00:22:19
Speaker
You're – how is this going to unfold? What are those moves going to be like? Is that hole going to break? is it Did you have that kind of experience like going into ah a new apartment complex, a new deal, you know, all of that? Or was it – just like, Oh, I have to do this now.
00:22:38
Speaker
Well, I guess going into a new property when, when they would become available, a lot of times they would advertise them. And, and the, the etiquette was that you wouldn't tell the tenants is for sale. You don't want to go to an apartment building and say, Hey, I'm looking at this. It's for sale.
00:22:52
Speaker
Cause it just adds insecurity to the tenants. They they worry about what's going to happen. Uh, so generally speaking, you go there and you start, look around as if maybe you're a prospective tenant. Um,
00:23:03
Speaker
I guess there is that discovery where you would go to a property and I would look at what the access is, what the traffic patterns are, what the plumbing is like individually metered.
00:23:14
Speaker
You know, is it a master meter? Am I paying for everyone's power? ah What's wrong with this property? What, what are, how, why are is there all this dry rot and, you know, structural problems or are the bones of this property good?
00:23:27
Speaker
What kind of people are there? You know, I talked to the tenants and, a lot of more Hispanic. So I tried to learn how to speak Spanish as best I could. So it was it was a really interesting, but it wasn't exciting and rewarding like climbing. I mean, there's nothing like climbing that I've found that is so it's so wonderful that you can create a climb that that lasts for a long time and is, you know, is this sort of represents your work.
00:23:56
Speaker
It's not the same way. it's But ah there are some similarities. You know, my grandfather was ah was a welder his whole life. He was a union welder and pipe fitter union. i forgot what number.
00:24:11
Speaker
And I have this picture of him that still sits on my desk and it's him with his lunchbox, like one day going to work. And he's... And I look, I keep that on my desk because it's a reminder of, you know, he went every day and crawled inside pipes for the most part because they were doing big infrastructure projects and welded the pipes together all day, every day for years.
00:24:38
Speaker
And then I think about what I get to do and how diverse it is. And I'm and'm pushing pixels and I'm recording podcasts and I'm coaching and I'm researching. And and all of the stuff, it' frankly, it feels more like play most of the time. It feels more like climbing.
00:24:54
Speaker
And I realized that, you know, I'm super lucky that for him, my grandfather, it was it was was a job in the kind of classic sense of like,
00:25:08
Speaker
He had to do it. It wasn't a question, and he did it. And, you know, when you talk to him about his work, He didn't talk about like how much fun it was.
00:25:22
Speaker
He talked about like the like the cuts with the torch that he was able to do super well. um The other guys that could do things that had skills that could make these incredible perfect welds, like really high quality sort of craftsmann level.
00:25:43
Speaker
and And that's what he talked about. And so what I'm fishing for here is where that is in you know your real estate career. Where was that craftsmanship or that intrigue? and and Or maybe there wasn't. Or was it really like a journeyman thing? Like you just like put your cap on backwards and rolled up your sleeves and got in there and just did it?
00:26:07
Speaker
one of the things you said that just reminded me of my experience in real estate was, uh, how hard your grandfather worked and the kind of people that I was around improving these properties, a lot of contractors and workers, concrete workers, you know, woodworkers, carpenters, um, everything. And it made it, made me have a huge appreciation for people that work hard.
00:26:30
Speaker
And in your grandfather's case, that was his little niche. But you asked me about what, um, what kind of was my little thing in real estate. And that was, I was able to construct more information about properties that would give me an advantage over everyone else. And so I think that was the thing that kind of got me excited about the real estate business. So there are things called tax assessor parcel maps, which basically is a, like a ah satellite view of all the tax boundaries, parcel boundaries and their tax parcel numbers.
00:27:06
Speaker
And with those numbers, you could find out who owned what. And I made giant maps that I posted on my wall that I taped together Xerox and taped these maps together. of all the parcels in the areas that I was working, which was Bankers Hill, Golden Hill, and part of a university Heights.
00:27:25
Speaker
With those, I would go around and photograph each property with the tax parcel number on it. Now I would follow notices of default. And this was all collecting information, sort of like the internet does for us now, but I was willing to do this and other people didn't. And so I had more information, better information than I think any of my competitors. And that kind of gave me the edge.
00:27:47
Speaker
So that, I mean, it's also random deals that you get sometimes, but that that's, I spent a lot of time on that. And I guess I'm pretty proud of that. I hadn't even even thought about that for decades.
00:27:59
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, that's a classic advantage, right? Like one of the things I've, her you know, picked up along the way is, you know, business usually happens because you either are faster than your competitors at getting to a particular product or you have an information advantage and whether that's like an IP advantage or like you have a law degree. So you, you know, have a specialty, special piece of knowledge and and you had that in terms of understanding to a very detailed like level and you, because you did all the legwork,
00:28:36
Speaker
and built these maps, paper maps, took photos, obviously like were printed on, you know, people forget digital cameras that we used to have to like get the film developed and then get like the little, you know, three by four, you know, printed things and pick them up at the drug store and all that. You, you had those thumbtacks on the wall, I'm sure. And, and that was your information advantage.
00:29:00
Speaker
That was your business advantage. That was your running advantage. Most people don't know what a one hour photo developer is anymore, but that was revolutionary. You know, I could go and get a roll of film developed in an hour and have all these printed pictures.
00:29:15
Speaker
Right. now was I mean, I've watched things change so much with climbing and everything else. It's just amazing. Yeah, I mean, I just had someone recently request an image from my climbing path, picture I took over, you know, let's see, in 2003. So it would have been 22 years ago.
00:29:33
Speaker
And they they i was like, ah, that's on a slide. Like, I have to get it scanned. I don't have it. And they they just didn't, like, the photo editor was like, what? Like, I mean, he knows what it was, but he just hadn't, like, encountered anyone. I'm like, yeah, I guess I'm old now. Yeah.
00:29:50
Speaker
It was funny. So one of the stories, you know, yeah we talked a little bit, chatted a little bit about the RuPaul face before we started recording. and And you were talking about like the size of the wall. One of the things that was my competitive advantage, if you if you will, when I was researching that that climb that trying to climb a route there, which was a multi-year thing, just the research.
00:30:17
Speaker
I got in touch with a photographer that was going on assignment for national geographic and doing a assignment in the area where he would be right at the RuPaul face. And actually he said like, what I need, I told him what I needed. Like I needed like clear shots of the whole face from as far horizontally back as he could get with ah on a, you know, shot with ah a really good lens on a tripod.
00:30:40
Speaker
And he, he did that. And I, and I had, I can't remember how many there were, but it was roughly 30 pictures. And then I printed the ball out eight by 10. And then I taped them all. I got, and it was like a puzzle, right? Like I got like, he, he, he grid, he made a grid.
00:30:57
Speaker
Uh, with the pictures, he just went started at the top left and he went across the sky and worked his way down with these zooms. And there was about 30 of them and I had them all printed out. I taped them together and I had this map of of this giant picture of the RuPaul face. It was probably like, you know, six feet tall and six feet wide.
00:31:18
Speaker
And that's how we like studied the face and like figured out like where we could go. um we didn't take it to base camp cause it was this huge. thing, right? Like, and you know, you had to tape it together. Like you can't do that in a base camp.
00:31:31
Speaker
But by then we didn't need to, i just needed to do it at home. And that was like, I was, you know, I just did that legwork of like finding the guy, talking to him, convincing him, getting the film, you know, reimbursing him for it. And, you know, he was happy to not charge me for taking the pictures or anything, but I,
00:31:49
Speaker
paid for his materials and that stuff, you know, and, and like nobody ever thinks of that, right? They're like, Oh, you climbed that thing. That's so gnarly. Yeah, that was gnarly, but it was also really hard. Just getting all those pictures and mapping out the route was a huge task. And people don't think about that. And it's same with like real estate. Oh, you bought apartments and rented them out.
00:32:08
Speaker
Sounds super easy, but like you, you, there's like these, these depths to things, right? Like you, you went in deep. It's super interesting. Yeah. Yeah, that's handy on a mountain because one of the things I find so intriguing about climbing mountains is that one little passage can unlock a whole section of the mountain where, let's say you come up to an impossible buttress, but you figured out that maybe there's this little ledge system that skirts around to the right and that opens up some ice cooler or something that
00:32:39
Speaker
that you don't really see from yeah from anywhere else yeah and in fact we would do that kind of stuff on el cap when we would do new routes we would photograph it also at different times of the day so we could see shadows getting cast yeah and then we'd be up on the wall and we'd look at these photographs these kind of xerox printouts that we had and but oh yeah i think we need to you know head over in this direction we can't see where we're going but we we think there's something out there Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But on the Rupel face, that's that's the whole thing on steroids. That's the biggest biggest arena in the world, really, is climbing on a wall like that. Yeah. An insanely complex wall, right? Like, just so, so, so big ah in all dimensions, horizontally, vertically, everything.
00:33:24
Speaker
But... um One of the things that you mentioned was there there was a section, we only had one time of day, right? We had this image from early morning or you know, kind of not super early morning, like like five or six, but like, I think it was probably like 8.30 or nine.
00:33:41
Speaker
And there was a section where we could not see how were going to get through that. It was just like, and it was quite high. It was like over about 7,000 meters. And that we hit that section,
00:33:54
Speaker
uh, mid morning or maybe it was noon on day three. and it was like a huge gamble, right? Like if we didn't find, and we, we caught and we couldn't actually see, like you said, there was a QR and we couldn't see the QR until literally we got right up under it.
00:34:11
Speaker
And that whole morning we were just like, are we were like so nervous. Like we could get completely shut. This just could be turned into a big wall climb and we are not equipped for that. There's no way we can do that up here.
00:34:25
Speaker
And we think there's something in here, like it makes sense that there would be. and And there was, there was like a grade five ice pitch that went up to a bunch of grade three and grade four ice that, you know, we followed for a very long way. So it was amazing, but we couldn't see that until we got there. So it's, but you have to do what, you know, that's all great at all. Like we can talk about, oh, we found these amazing pitches and they were beautiful pitches and they were super rewarding to climb and discover and all of those things.
00:34:55
Speaker
But all those other pieces of the puzzle we're talking about, like getting the pictures made, whether it's El Cap or your apartments, all that homework is pretty unglamorous, but it actually is what kind of sets the sets the foundation for being able to to you know unlock a new pitch on El Cap. I mean, how cool how cool is that to be able to... I've never climbed a new route on El Cap, never will, obviously.
00:35:20
Speaker
I mean, how cool is that to climb new routes in, you know, the valley of all places, right? Well, it's, you get lucky as you get more prepared. You know, the more prepared you are, the more lucky you get.
00:35:31
Speaker
And you can see that in your climbing. And that's the same in my climbing. And that, you know, that goes for everything. the The safety preparations, the kind of food you're bringing, especially in mountaineering, just every little step you take is is sort of preparing you to be well position to make a summit push, whether it's your own health or the psych of the team or whatever it is. So it all it all adds up after time.
00:35:58
Speaker
And in a lifetime, it adds up big time. Yeah. And that's so interesting how things accrue over decades. And I think this is one of the things like, you know, as an older climber to an older climber, like if I had only known then what I know now, right?
00:36:13
Speaker
I think that like, thinking back about the clubbing I did in my 20s, man, like, oh man, if I had known then what I know now, it would have completely been a different outcome. and And, you know, you... If I if i only had if i had only had ah tomorrow's Wall Street Journal today.
00:36:32
Speaker
yeah okay. Yeah, right. Do you see your kind of... um You know, you were, of course, part of the famous stone masters. People who follow climbing history will know that term and what that represents. And it's been very celebrated in climbing as it should have been.
00:36:51
Speaker
and you know, you had and amazing, you know, contemporaries, whether it was back or, or, or, you know, Yanarian or Kauk Bridwell or Dale Bard, who just very recently passed. Very, very sad ah to hear that. um I know you knew him and climbed new routes but with Dale. So, sorry for your for your loss there.
00:37:15
Speaker
How did that, you, there that's the, that's the The Stone Masters celebrated, to me at least, this sort of dirtbag approach to climbing. You know, living in Camp 4, know, eating out, dumpster diving, like that whole thing. You took a very different path. You were sort of the anti-dirtbag, I would say. you were You were going, working hard, making a living thinking about the future, thinking about financial security, you weren't waiting for, you know, ah dope plane to fall out of the sky so you could hike in and like, you know, pick up some free money.
00:37:56
Speaker
you were, you were actively working on that. Do you see that as a radical choice? Was that radical in your friend group at the time or were there other people doing the same thing? No, it was a very different choice. But I did the dirtbagging thing with the Stone Masters, and it was great. you know but But to me, it was not there wasn't a future in it.
00:38:17
Speaker
And it was sort of like, well, hey, I'm 18, 19, 20 years old. Sure, we'll do this for a while. But like I could see that there wasn't a future in it. Could everybody see that, though, that was present?
00:38:30
Speaker
No, a lot these guys, they weren't thinking about themselves being 40 or 50 years old or 60 years old. It just, and and it's part of being young, right? You can't imagine, you know, youth is wasted on the young, as they say, because they don't imagine what it's like later on. But somehow I had a perspective on that.
00:38:47
Speaker
My, it could have been the way it was brought up or mean, everyone's different, but I, I had this sort of clock in my head. Like, I, I don't want to be doing this when I'm 50.
00:38:59
Speaker
and And I think I was ambitious too. It wasn't just, it wasn't just, oh, I want to provide for myself financially, but I had ambitions to do something in business. It always was of interest to me.
00:39:09
Speaker
So there, there was that aspect of it as well. so Tell me about that. like where did What do you mean by ambition? what did what was um What called you? What was the hunger? like i understand like climbing, we talk about like feeding the rat or being hungry or feeling a drive to climb or put up a route. what How did that manifest for you like in your business life?
00:39:32
Speaker
ah I think to answer that, I would say that i i did a lot of reading when I was young. I read a lot of classics, and I i felt like One thing I've learned and it's really resonated throughout my life is that human nature doesn't change. And so you can read these really old books and they would have all this stuff, which is involved these old stories, but humans don't really change, you all the stuff around us changes and, know,
00:39:57
Speaker
But we don't change. So I did a ton of reading. One of the authors I read was Ayn Rand. And um that left an impression on me. And I think that was kind of the business sort of side of me that latched onto that and said, that's that's cool.
00:40:14
Speaker
I want to experience some of that. And um so that I would say was from reading. and and And also my dad ah grew up during the depression. My dad and and mom grew during the depression and it was really hard.
00:40:28
Speaker
I watched how hard he worked his whole life and how he straightened nails out, you know, that were used and would reuse everything just to that mentality. And i I wanted to provide for myself and, and not be caught in that.
00:40:45
Speaker
you know, as so many people were during that time. Tell me about your, your father's work ethic. Did that, he was a child in the great depression or was he like a young man?
00:40:57
Speaker
he was, he he was a child in the great depression of probably he was 10, 12, 15 during great depression. And,
00:41:08
Speaker
fifteen during the the great depression and So it is a very you know impressionable time for him. I mean, it just it just stuck with him. And then he was part of the greatest generation during World War II.
00:41:22
Speaker
So there was a pretty heavy load that that that generation carried. This is one of the things that I think is interesting ah we're talking about human nature and how it's eternal in a sense. But the the greatest generation...
00:41:40
Speaker
you know, had the hardest row to hoe, right? Like they had the depression and they had the war, many of them, whether you're abroad fighting or home manufacturing. I mean, it was, you know, it was tough. It was hard.
00:41:56
Speaker
And then they came back and then had, you know, relative stability and where and all of a sudden thrived and in so many ways. And, I think that they paid a heavy price, right? Like, I think we celebrate them, but you know, if I remember, you know, I was really close to my grandparents and you know, they were very blue collar people and you know, they're, they and their friends were very sullen. Like they were like, i mean, they were part of the greatest generation, but they were tough.
00:42:28
Speaker
Like, like they were just disciplined, they were harsh, they were I don't know. They didn't, there was, there was no, no bullshit, you know, and there was no very little gray. Things were very black and white in their world. Did, did that affect, was that like, was your experience of your father and his, and your parents like that? And that, how did, did that like shape you as a climber and as a, as a business guy?
00:42:58
Speaker
Oh, that was a lot of the way my parents were. And, but they also didn't talk about it. A percent. that aspect. And, you know, i have to ask them things like, what was it like? And, you know, they were, oh we were digging up turnips in the yard, you know, to, to eat and just stuff that ah you would just take for granted. And people would, would roam by and everyone would try to help each other out and, you know, feed each other. And ah they lost everything. My parents were blue collar and they, you know, they're, so was their, their family. And,
00:43:32
Speaker
That's, that's the way it was. I don't know how it affected me as a climber. It made me want to not waste time. You know, i felt like you you never know what's going to happen in life and you want to take everything you can and do the best with it.
00:43:45
Speaker
So kind of maybe ah instilled a sense of urgency in me.
00:43:52
Speaker
So one of the sports we, I want to dig into with you is surfing and you went on water sports in general, but specifically I want you to tell us a little bit about this experience you had in Todos Santos Island where, you know, you had a ah near death experience. You want to walk us through what that experience real quick.
00:44:14
Speaker
you know, big wave surfing is, is pretty exciting. You're, you're trying to catch a wave paddling in this is before toe and surfing. This is before skis were in the channel to come and rescue you. This is before inflation vest.
00:44:27
Speaker
you could pop these CO2 cartridges and float up to the top or just wear like an inflation suit. So, um yeah, I mean, i I wasn't anything like a great big wave surfer. I was just a big wave surfer, a climber who idolized that sort fantasized about that sort of thing. And so I, I went to,
00:44:48
Speaker
I met a guy named Chris Hubbard who took me kind of on the surfing tour to get ready for Toto Santos. And we would go to different places and he would step it up each time he saw that I was able to take some of the beatings involved and, and manage ah myself in the ocean, you know, know where to be for, to catch the wave.
00:45:08
Speaker
So when you're big wave surfing, you're just basically sitting, waiting for this mountain to form. in front of you and it's really kind of intimidating because you have to be willing to sit there and wait for it you most people start panicking and paddling for the shoulder for the channel whatever but if you figure out the spot you will need to sit you sit there and wait and you need to be at the bottom of the thing when it's starting to unload so that as you're paddling down the face it's almost passing you by but you're catching it right at the right moment before it passes you by because it's moving so fast and so big
00:45:43
Speaker
So we had a great day at Toto Santos. it was It was huge out there. They would call it like 20 Hawaiian. So you can double the size of that to be the the wave face on on these waves.
00:45:57
Speaker
It was a big day, kind of unruly and rough. Anyway, I was, I thought I had figured out where to sit that day. There's all these different places to sit depending on the size of the swell.
00:46:10
Speaker
And ah I saw Chris paddle past me and he he's pointing to the horizon and he goes, here it comes, here comes a big one. And I go, yeah, I know I'm waiting for it. And i miscalculated, I was too deep and too far inside.
00:46:23
Speaker
So the whole thing unloaded on me. was like ah having a sport climb break on your face. You know, was just, it just explodes. And then the white watered drives really deep. So you try to swim below it.
00:46:35
Speaker
And it held me down for two waves. And as it's as the first wave passed and I wasn't coming up for the second wave, I started to kind of check out like my vision narrowed to like a tunnel where I was looking. I looked like I was looking down a tunnel of light and my fingers were getting tingly. And I thought to myself in a real calm way, wow, this is how you drowned.
00:46:58
Speaker
This is actually how it happens. Kind of just almost detached from myself. And then i thought, man, it'd be a really freaking good idea to get some air. And I start pulling on the leash and pulling for the surface as I, as the second wave passed and I got a breath of air. And then I got obliterated, like on every single wave after that, it just first, you know, it was like,
00:47:22
Speaker
40 foot faces breaking on you. And then at the end, it was like 15 foot faces on the inside, just these little inside waves. i just got washed all the way through. But ah that was, that was quite an experience.
00:47:34
Speaker
And, and I thought I was done surfing that day. I, I, I paddled over to the boat, crawled into the Ponga and got in the fetal position and I was done. But after that date, I thought,
00:47:46
Speaker
wow, and well, that's, that's the worst it's going to get. So I can really do this. ah So it had the opposite effect instead of stopping me from doing it, it made me more emboldened. I've seen this with alpinists, right? Like where they're in situations, you know, the the the the details are different, but the the overall arc of the story is the same. Like you almost die and you somehow survive mostly out of luck, maybe a little skill, whatever.
00:48:14
Speaker
And then they were like, okay, that wasn't so bad. I'm still here. And you've also talked um um very eloquently about how you are not a risk taker. You're a risk manager.
00:48:28
Speaker
And so talk to me about like how this near-death experience turned into a risk management lesson rather than a risk taking lesson? Cause some people would say, Oh, I was taking a risk. I almost died. So therefore i will take no more risk.
00:48:46
Speaker
And then I won't die. You took it a different way. You're like, well, I didn't die so I can do this more. And I know more about how to manage for it. Also at the same time came toe in surfing. So I was doing this paddle and surfing.
00:49:01
Speaker
That was a big day. I did big days after that. And for, as far as risk management, I would, Be a little better about lining up where, you know, where the channel is on that particular day, where the takeoff spot is.
00:49:14
Speaker
i felt like I felt like it was still under my control to some degree and that I could manage the risk. Whereas Alpine climbing, I went on that Gashabrum 4 expedition, and that was the year that a ah bunch of prominent climbers died on K2.
00:49:29
Speaker
And I watched avalanches scream down faces on the Nameless Tower and on Gashabrum 4 that were so random that I thought, wow, this is almost beyond what kind of risk management I can really deal with.
00:49:43
Speaker
And so that scared me a bit out of Alpine climbing. I mean, I think it's way more serious than... I knew it was serious. I left that experience thinking that it's extremely serious and maybe it's not something I want to do if I want to dive old age, but surfing, i felt like I still had it, you know, within my range of control. And then maybe a couple of years after that toe in surfing came along and it changed everything. Now we could, we could tow into these waves that were that big and not even be scared.
00:50:13
Speaker
It was crazy. That you'd be towing behind a jet ski on a rope and the jet ski would kind of position you in over the boil, over where it's going to break.
00:50:24
Speaker
And you could let go and you're not out of breath. You're not just paddling for your life to get into the wave. You're just calm and you're breathing and you're standing straight up and down. You let go of the rope and you have this short board and you can decide what part of the wave you want to be on, how deep you want to go.
00:50:40
Speaker
And you just, it it's almost like a feeling of invincibility compared to, and ease compared to what we were experiencing as big wave paddling surfers. And so as soon as I did that, that was like, oh my God, that is the, that is the e-ticket.
00:50:55
Speaker
That is the stuff, you know, I want that. And it was so fun. We had, five, six, seven good years out there at totos before it became too crowded really with paddle surfers to do that.
00:51:07
Speaker
Cause they, they don't, you know, you don't want to be towing with paddle guys. We used to tow from first light till nine 30 when they showed up and then we would and take the day off and then go, you know, for the last hour, hour and a half of light.
00:51:22
Speaker
Now that now they all have their own jet skis and they all paddle. So anyway, yeah. But you know one of the things that I hear you saying from my perspective is that you know you were I can't remember the words you used, but you're so familiar with the ocean and the environment. Two things happened.
00:51:42
Speaker
One, you're really comfortable in the ocean, you know where to be, where not to be. You're learning all the time and getting better at that. And two, you're – The technology just changed and it made it an order of magnitude easier, safer, more fun.
00:52:00
Speaker
with i think I don't know that the technological part of that has happened with alpinism, but I would say that for me... getting to know them every aspect of the mountain so deeply and so well, like one of the reasons I pursued a ah mountain guide track professionally was, okay, this forces me to learn everything about snow and avalanches and weather and all these other skills that I need to be safe in these complicated environments.
00:52:30
Speaker
you know, as safe as possible. So, so I do think that like, you know, you see this with business guys too, where that I've talked to the, where they're, they can, they can take a lot of risk because their understanding of a particular niche is so deep and they're, they're seeing patterns or recognizing things because they've, they've been, you know, they've They're at level 30. They started at level one, but they've sort of ratcheted up, ratcheted up, ratcheted up.
00:52:58
Speaker
you went to you know You went to the Karakoram one expedition, did a number of climbs on that expedition, but you know you didn't go back year after year after year. i think the the hack on alpinism that's made it safer and the technology is really the weather prediction.
00:53:16
Speaker
For sure. um But, but as far as going back to the Himalayas, um, that coincided with starting that partnership. And I didn't think that I could do both Himalayan climbing and this business. I had to make a choice.
00:53:29
Speaker
So I thought, well, I was never that good at, well, I was never as good as I thought I should be at free climbing, you know, sport climbing, and I can do this free climbing, drag climbing, sport climbing, and still be a businessman in San Diego.
00:53:46
Speaker
And I can't do, I can't be a Himalayan climber and still be this. So if I'm a Himalayan climber, how do I support myself? I, well, it's a full-time job getting ready for each expedition, as you know, getting sponsors and all that. We had sponsors for our trip and it's a lot of work, a lot of, lot of commitment. So yeah that was the decision I had to make.
00:54:07
Speaker
And it was ah made a little easier thinking that I'd probably die if I was Himalayan climber full-time. I'm still fascinated that this made you more bold and not more cautious. did Did the near-death experience give you sort of permission somehow to live differently? Or was it like I'm still trying to understand how you reached this conclusion?
00:54:32
Speaker
I think when you have near-death experiences, you reflect on things differently. i've I've had them with climbing, but they were more like, hey, I was halfway chopped through that rope when I was jumaring 2,500 feet above the deck, and i got past the chop and the rope. But it wasn't it wasn't an experience. It was more like a really bad situation, and you get past it.
00:54:57
Speaker
it There was no... physical, you know, and nothing happened physically. But yeah, i almost died because of bad luck of where this rope was rigged. But the surfing was more of a physical process, almost like a birthing or something where you, you know, it's, and so at least an impression on you where you really feel like you've gone through something and reflected on your life. So it did make me more bold um for a while surfing.
00:55:26
Speaker
until I started toe surfing. And then you get used to the jet ski and not getting cleaned up all the time. Oh, you still get throttled pretty heavily on those ways when you wipe out, but it's, it's, it's a way different.
00:55:39
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm sure some of the listeners can to appreciate that. I've never been, you know, never been a surfer. My claim to fame was because I worked for Patagonia for so many years.
00:55:52
Speaker
ah We would often be thrown into these little impromptu surf camps. And I was my first rate wave I ever rode. I was pushed into by Jerry Lopez. Yeah. And that's pretty much the highlight of my surfing career. I was like, after that, I was like, I think I'm going to retire.
00:56:07
Speaker
It's like ever get like, I'm never going to get more like a street cred than like being pushed into a way by one of the absolute legends. So it's like, so, yeah.
00:56:18
Speaker
You I've, I've had the ah privilege of surfing with Chouinard and I think Jerry Lopez was there too at at Hollister Ranch. So yeah it's, these guys are, you know, legends in the sport.
00:56:32
Speaker
And it's pretty cool to see them. So um you made a comment that big walls came naturally for you because they were a combination of risk management, systems engineering, and long-term physical strain and suffering.
00:56:46
Speaker
But sport climbing didn't come naturally to you. So you, and I don't know what year this was, but you know you can fill in the blanks here. You built a big climbing gym in your garage. Like you took a four-car garage and you built to You turn it into a climbing, bouldering gym.
00:57:05
Speaker
i mean, this is way before indoor climbing was a thing where there's a gym on every corner, pretty much like there like there is now. I mean, now we have private equity money going around the country trying to open as many gyms as they can as fast as they can.
00:57:19
Speaker
You did things like made dental, took dental impressions. You'll have to tell me about this to make the shapes of the holds of the out in the wild and then bring them back to your gym so you could train on the exact shapes.
00:57:32
Speaker
I mean, you know, people do this now and sometimes it's almost like a little controversial, the you know, recreate, you know, Certain sections, you know, Josh Wharton in his home gym has the the the crux of Freerider like set up and you can like – and he can cycle that crux and do it all day, right?
00:57:56
Speaker
Exactly, right? It's all measured out like – you know. and And you were doing this decades – before. So, you know, this was a time in Tony and Nero was a big part of this. Tony contributed an excellent essay in the training for the new alpinism book that, that we published almost 10 years ago now about his training and his, okay. Cause you guys were really early on this idea of, okay, I need to get my body stronger to be able to do these things that my mind wants it to do.
00:58:25
Speaker
Take us back there. I bought a home in 87 that had a four car garage and that's where I built that that gym starting in 87, 1987. Um, the, I had this crux of Scarface there. I had the crux of planet earth and planet earth is where I took dental impressions of this thing. I call the bottomless pocket and the bone crusher pocket.
00:58:48
Speaker
And so ah that was a very important, I don't know, V V whatever V double digit move high up on, on the wall. Uh, so you, Some of this was sort of started by Tony.
00:59:02
Speaker
I mean, a lot of it was he was. He was always thinking ahead one step or two or three or five steps ahead everyone else. And so Tony thought, well, hey, we're trying to do this climb.
00:59:13
Speaker
ah Let's not lower to the ground each time we fall. Let's just hang on the rope and try it again. That's hang dogging, right? And that was frowned on. And then he would train for specific muscles for like thin hand cracks. They have a certain set of muscles you need in your hands to actually climb those. Well, Tony trained on them.
00:59:32
Speaker
So he he would figure out a lot of stuff and I was like a sponge just going, Oh yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. You know a lot of the stuff we're doing made a lot of sense. So I just carried that forward in my climbing and I didn't really let the, what was considered okay or not okay during that day, as long as they're during that time period, as long as I felt good about what I was doing.
00:59:54
Speaker
Um, that's, that's the way I did my climbing. and So, um, that was That gym, unfortunately, just that house just got sold. I had sold it to my friend, Rudy Hoffmeister and Rudy owned it for, I don't know, 11 12 or 15 years. And then he finally sold it in to a flipper and they've just torn the gym out just recently. So that's a sad ending to that gym, but, but I retained this, I had thought ahead, like I knew this gym wasn't going to last forever. So I had all these famous climbers sign this access door that was to the storage on, on one of the storage pods.
01:00:30
Speaker
within the wall. And so I took that, uh, with Rudy's permission, I took that door and put it in my house. So I have that door with all the climber signatures, which is my memento from that wall. Nice.
01:00:41
Speaker
Nice. I mean, you know, this was 87. eighty seven I mean, I think that's about the time that the vertical world opened in Seattle as the, you know, the first climbing gym in North America was probably, or maybe it was early nineties. I don't, I don't remember, but Could you even get climbing holds or were you just making your own, just droop just creating wooden blocks and gluing stones onto the wall or what?
01:01:03
Speaker
You could get some. The Entreprise was making holds. they Tony made holds and he made custom holds. So a lot of the wall was also ah inset pockets that I made.
01:01:16
Speaker
where you would cut a hole in the wall and put ah a pie tin, like an aluminum pie tin behind it and fill it with Bondo, fill the hole with Bondo so that you could create sort of a finger pocket or however, one finger, two finger, four finger.
01:01:31
Speaker
And it wouldn't present itself as a giant jug that you could stand on. when you were climbing on the wall. So it actually made the wall feel taller. In other words, you're you're down low on these just four finger jugs with that are inset.
01:01:43
Speaker
And as you climb past them, you can barely get your toes in. So it wasn't like having a giant jug there. And it it really made the climbing realistic on the wall. And help train us for, you know, one finger, or two fingers. which is Which is actually one of my complaints about climbing gyms is everything sticks out.
01:02:01
Speaker
And that's not that's not realistic. Like that's not how that's not how the rock is for the most part, right? Like very few rocks have like big exo sort of features. They usually, like you said, pockets, cracks, edges that are flush.
01:02:17
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Hmm. Yeah, interesting. I mean, i I think that we need to bring back the Bondo pockets to the local climbing gyms. The problem with those is they can't change them and wash them and clean them and move them. And I guess that's the the argument against Bondo pockets.
01:02:34
Speaker
Yeah, and they um there's just a lot of work. we would I'd spend so much time in my gym with a gas mask on and this Bondo, and Tony and I had figured out the exact perfect...
01:02:47
Speaker
kind of sand to use, you use silica sand to, and we were, I think we're using 120. We figured that was ultimately the best sand for skin wear and skin friction.
01:02:58
Speaker
um And this stuff called Bondo household putty. I used gallons and gallons of that stuff. fuck ah You're like their big customer. They're like, who's buying all this stuff in San Diego?
01:03:09
Speaker
I got it at Home Depot. Nice. I want to talk a little bit about ah Clark Mountain. And you've, in my understanding, have you know, kind of gone through these big periods of time where you were developing and area like, you know, areas, particular crag. And I think that's normal, right? Like you find a crag and there's not just one good route there. There's a bunch of different, you know, climbing opportunities there and you develop that over time.
01:03:40
Speaker
And Clark mountain is this sort of very unique, very stunning, ah climbing area set up quite high outside of Las Vegas.
01:03:51
Speaker
Tell us about how you, you know, you were kind of one of the first on the scenes or other Jorge Visser was there. Like this was sort of the post sport climbing boom, I would say, you know, a lot of sport climbing had been kind of established and accepted.
01:04:09
Speaker
and we'd been through that sort of little, you know, hiccup of of climbing history and it was, and and you found this incredible I mean, I can't call it a piece of limestone. It's ah really a mountain of limestone that's up there.
01:04:24
Speaker
Tell us a little bit about how you ended up there.
01:04:29
Speaker
We would, you know, when I would take commercial flights, airline flights, I'd always look out the window, try to get ah non-wing window seat. And I saw this thing outside of Vegas that was this big mountain with, looked like cliffs on it.
01:04:43
Speaker
And When you would drive down the 15 freeway or drive north on the 15 freeway from California into Nevada on the west side of the freeway, this east facing mountain had shadows at 10 in the morning.
01:05:00
Speaker
And i'm thinking, why is an east facing mountain cliff? And the cliff looks like dirt. Why does it have shadows at 10 in the morning? and Well, it's the simple math is it's severely overhanging, and that's why.
01:05:13
Speaker
So finally, after flying commercially and looking out the window where there might be roads, this is before Google Earth and all that, I i made a trip out there.
01:05:23
Speaker
um And I thought I found it and I was ecstatic. I would, I got down from the car and I look back up at and I go, that's, that's really good. I'm going to start bolting that. This was probably like 1989 or 1990. Oh, it's earlier than I thought then, because we were still in the sport climbing, ah whatever we call it, uh, boom revolution. Yeah.
01:05:48
Speaker
Yeah, and it was still controversial to be a sport climber in California. Yeah, for sure. And this crag, i saw this cra of guy I would see on my way to the Virgin River Gorge, which was my new hangout after after I had some run-ins with Backer at Joshua Tree. was just like, I needed a new scene for a while. So anyway, I yeah i found Clark, or we thought we found Clark, and I'm driving down the road afterwards a different way than we came in, and I look in the rear view mirror, and I see the real Clark.
01:06:22
Speaker
And I thought, oh my gosh, I thought I was at this cliff, and I was really at another satellite cliff on the mountain, and now here's the real cliff. And so we just ran up there, uh, just bushwhacking and hacking our way up. Didn't know where the road was. So we just incredibly long hike.
01:06:40
Speaker
I got to the base of the third tier and I thought this is an amazing piece of porcelain, like limestone too bad. There's no holds, but I'll climb up to this traversing ledge and touch the the actual wall.
01:06:53
Speaker
And I look up and I touch it and my hands just wrap around buckets. And I thought, wow, this, I didn't even see those from the ground. So that was a huge moment. wow And I just ran back with the drill as fast as I could.
01:07:07
Speaker
that That sounds like ah every root developer's dream to like, because you're right. Like if you, if ah I have been in that situation and get Oh, this is a, there was a, there's a cliff where I used to live in Colorado limestone. wasn't very big, but so beautiful. And it's just, it's just so smooth.
01:07:24
Speaker
Like, man, this would be such a great climb. It's such a great place to climb. If it was, if it had any holds on it and just didn't. So it's like, it's, ah it's amazing how much has to come into
01:07:38
Speaker
how much has to come together to allow us to even put up these routes? So you that that sounds like an incredible, I can really feel your excitement there. the the Unfortunately, the jugs ended after the first pitch or the first, say, 80 feet.
01:07:52
Speaker
And then it became this smooth headwall, but still pocket lines. And that's where I saw Jumbo Love. To me, i I always look for the best route on the wall to bolt first because that's the king line.
01:08:05
Speaker
And Jumbo Love was a king line on the third tier Clark. It was a really incipient crack. You could hardly see a crack unless you had binoculars, but it almost a fracture running the length of the wall with pockets on the sort of this crack line.
01:08:20
Speaker
and But you couldn't really call it a crack. It just, you could see it once you see it um more like a seam. And that became jumbo love. I bolted that. I, you know, I just saw that that was everything i i thought could be done on that route, but I thought there was no way I could do the whole thing.
01:08:39
Speaker
And I just shelled the idea of that one, started doing all this other all these other lines that were easier. And finally, ah we got Sharma out there saying, I forgot, 2007, whenever it was that he did that route. So it was really cool to see that happen after seeing and bolting that route.
01:08:57
Speaker
Yeah, so what my notes say that it was 14 years between your bolting it and Chris climbing it. You know, what is it?
01:09:08
Speaker
You know, okay, I understand, and maybe this is an explanation, that you just bolted the king line. You're like, that's the king line. But if you didn't have the feeling that you were going to be able to actually climb it, why bother? Why not just let somebody else put in that work and put in that, invest that money and time and effort?
01:09:28
Speaker
Well, you never know until you know, until you, you never know until you go. So, know, The way I bolted that route was I started at the top and I would go down.
01:09:40
Speaker
i think the top section was what I would call a slab, which means it was just gently overhanging. And that was, I forgot, 40, 50 feet. And I bolted ah wrap down, swung in, put a bolt in, and I look at that section and go, that's like 13A.
01:09:56
Speaker
Okay, I'll go down farther. I go down farther and go, oh, that's like... the v v5 that boulder problem between these two poles and it would just keep going and then i'm finding boulder problems are like that's like v10 you know and i'm in my trainers on a cold day just trying kind of kind of you sort of try the moves you get a really good idea after enough root development of how hard something's going to be and every time i went down i could still see myself doing each section And then, but when I got to the bottom, I thought that's, I just, I can't see myself doing the whole thing ever.
01:10:32
Speaker
That's, that is something that can be done, but not by me and not by anyone I knew at the time. Not by anyone at the time, right? Like it's the, you know, North America's first 515B, we would call it now.
01:10:44
Speaker
And that, that grade, I mean, at that time 94, what was the top of the grade? Like fourteen b maybe? Yeah. I think I bolted that 92. 92? Okay.
01:10:55
Speaker
and okay Yeah. so then Sharma did it in 2007, which was 15 years. But in 92, the top of the the the highest grade anybody had climbed, when wind was when did Scott Franklin climb Scarface? That was fourteen a That was right around that time.
01:11:15
Speaker
and this is so much harder than 14A. It's a joke. Yeah, yeah, yeah. i people don't People that just look at grades and go, oh, 15A, 15B, 15C, 15D.
01:11:26
Speaker
ah when When you get to the top of the grades, those are huge jumps. They are, yeah. um And yeah I climbed 14B at the hardest, at my personal hardest. So I'm not any close anywhere close to climbing jumbo low.
01:11:39
Speaker
What was the experience like of watching you know Chris climb this route that you'd envision? It's the most fun I've had not climbing a route, you know? And I, it was weird to say that because I've always wanted to climb every project I bolted, but I actually, in a way, enjoyed it more that it was too hard for me and that I saw someone else do it because that's progress, right? That's the sport.
01:12:05
Speaker
And we all want to see that. We all want to see, you know, if, if we were as good as, The best we got was the best we were in, say, the mid-90s when I was climbing my best. Then that wouldn't be that exciting. But look, the sport keeps moving ahead. So that's cool.
01:12:23
Speaker
That's really cool, huh? And Sharma will see someone climb something e-bolted that he'll never do. Right. It just happens that way. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, one of the things that you said was you like to try to create classics that others will repeat and love when you're setting up and and and developing roots and crags.
01:12:48
Speaker
This is, it's such an interesting idea that you're building an architecture for other people's joy. Where does this, where does it come from? Like why, why what is the What is the wellspring of this motivation for you to to to do this? and And like you just said about the experience watching Chris, and and and I can attest to having experienced this from my side and in small ways, it is so fun to watch people climb your roots and love them.
01:13:19
Speaker
Right. Like it's such a cool experience. But but why do I like is it is it like ego death? Is it ego manifestation? Like where does that come from? What do what what is the what is the impetus for that?
01:13:34
Speaker
It's probably like walking into ah a house somewhere for a guy who's. done a tile job in his shower and it's perfect. And you walk in and you go, you did that tile job. That is amazing. Look at that.
01:13:49
Speaker
And you know, they're proud, right? It's, it's, it's, it's pride, I guess. And I work really hard at my roots to make them right. If they're, if they're not right, I'll spend a time cleaning them.
01:14:01
Speaker
Um, Moving the bolts, doing whatever I need to do to try to make it ah really good route. And so if someone recognizes that and enjoys it, it's satisfying. I, you know, it's a recognition of all the hard work you put in.
01:14:16
Speaker
It would, it would be no fun to put up these routes and no one ever does them.
01:14:21
Speaker
When you look back at sort of that teenage intensity that took you from, you know, first being exposed to climbing at 14 to climbing a big wall in Yosemite at age 17 to, you know, all the way through all your climbing achievements to Jumbo Love, what is the thread that connects all those versions of Randy the climber?
01:14:49
Speaker
Well, all the climb, and I've done it a lot of different types of of climbs, new climbs. And I also, the biggest compliment I get is when people say, oh, that's a Leavitt route.
01:15:01
Speaker
You know, it's really good. And so if it's a Leavitt route, then hopefully people will like it. If they're challenged, it's in a way that I intended not. not like a way I didn't intend. I don't want people to hurt themselves, but I want them to have to push themselves a little higher above a bolt sometimes.
01:15:18
Speaker
And i want it to be a quality experience and you can't control the rock, but you can sort of choose what rocks you you spend your time on and and where you put your efforts. So it's it's always nice to see that.
01:15:31
Speaker
And what what is the thread that's thread that's continuous from Randy the house painter to Randy the, you know, are you retired? Is that a word we can use?
01:15:46
Speaker
Yeah. what is what is that What is that thread and how is it similar to or different than the that ah climber thread? Because it feels very different, but maybe there's a connection in there I don't see.
01:16:00
Speaker
Well, you, I mean, as you get older, you have to change what your expectations of yourself are and what your goals are and what's realistic. So I feel like I'm just trying to get old gracefully and still enjoy things and still be a good person and set a good example for people if they're younger and they're looking up to me. um It's just, ah I don't know what the threat is when when you're done. i mean, in,
01:16:28
Speaker
in 50 years after I'm dead, probably no one will remember who I am. It's just, that's kind of the nature. Everyone sort of remembers George Washington, but all these other people who are probably in some ways ah as important or more to our country or in other situations, they just don't remember them. So you, at the end of the day, you just have to look at yourself in the mirror and say, that's, I did, I did my best. And, you know, I did the right thing. And as a person, that's, i that gives me joy. You know I've, I've got,
01:16:57
Speaker
A beautiful wife and a nice marriage. So I'm grateful for that. You know, things have gone pretty well for me. I've had my challenges, but I just try to keep things moving forward. Not not look, not try to rest on what I've done, but just be content and happy with what I'm doing.
01:17:17
Speaker
how do How do you be content and happy when you're with what you're doing when you're looking so far forward all the time? It feels to me like that's what you're doing. You're, you know, jumbo love is like, well, I can't do this, but I'm going to bolt it up anyway. That's in a way looking forward, you know.
01:17:33
Speaker
Putting up roots for others, I think, is is by itself a ah looking forward. Like, this doesn't exist now. I'm going to bring it into existence so that others can experience this piece of rock.
01:17:44
Speaker
You mean as far as the first ascent goes? Because all the routes that I bolted and developed for first ascents, I had every intention of being able to do them. But there's some of them that there's probably a dozen of them at least that I left that I wasn't able to do.
01:18:00
Speaker
And then I knew someone else stronger had to do it. So, you know, starts out with the idea that you're, you're going to do it yourself. Okay. i have I have a belief in what I can do, but also I'm realistic. you know I'm not the best climber, never was, but i but I was maybe one of the most motivated ones.
01:18:18
Speaker
So I was feel willing to keep going back there and build the thing in my gym. And remember one time when I was working on planet earth, my first 514, I had built planet earth in my home climbing gym.
01:18:30
Speaker
I drove 514. Five and half hours out to the Virgin River Gorge and a half an hour short of getting there, you know, six hour mark, half hour short of that. They had closed the the freeway and I couldn't get there.
01:18:43
Speaker
And so I had to turn around and drive home. So I'd left at four in the morning. I got home that afternoon and I did my planet Earth boulder problem like 10 out of 10 times in my garage, which is the first time I'd ever done it.
01:18:56
Speaker
And so I felt like, wow, I'd made a lot of progress on this route and I never even got to the route today. It was the biggest success. And I did the route soon after that. But yeah, I'm always, I'm always believing I can do it or, or working towards it.
01:19:12
Speaker
You know, I think there's these threads. Like i'm there's this integrity that comes with like the, you know, the pride. i mean, you've used a lot of words like, you know, ah around integrity,
Work Ethic and Legacy in Climbing and Business
01:19:25
Speaker
I would say. You know, leaving things for others, creating things for others. Of course, you want to do them, like you said. But it's...
01:19:31
Speaker
Beyond that, you want to have good, good. If you just wanted to do them, you do the minimum, right? But you're not just doing the minimum. You're taking a lot of pride, a lot of integrity in what your creation is, and you expect it to have a long life after you, whether they remember you or not, you don't seem to care. And that's, that's fine.
01:19:51
Speaker
But there's a work ethic and an integrity that you're bringing to to that, that I suspect, whether you were, I don't know, that that that was the same in your real estate career. Like there you worked hard. I heard you talk about how hard you work.
01:20:08
Speaker
And you developed you know knowledge, you developed relationships, you developed an area, but narrow like you know you had, sounds like you had a specific area of San Diego where you worked.
01:20:20
Speaker
And that, that, that gave you like this long-term advantage that, and I think a lot of people don't see that kind of work as being valuable and they don't put in that amount of time.
01:20:32
Speaker
And where does that, where does that come from? Like, what is the, what is the wellspring of that? What is the seed of that willingness to, first of all, envision it And then second of all, to actually go up and show go out and show up every day and like,
01:20:50
Speaker
you know, pay make the maps on your wall and take the pictures and read about foreclosures every week or whatever, however it is that you got the information, then there'd be a different version of it now, as you said. But where does that where does that come from?
01:21:04
Speaker
i can't really answer that. I do know I have it in me no even obviously Even a 65-year-old guy. Like last year, i was 64, and I did a landscaping project in my yard, and I had to hire some laborers.
01:21:19
Speaker
And they would look at me like, whoa, look at this dude. he Look at him go. You know, they'd have to step up their game. And they're like 25 years old. ah But, you know, so I was oh I've always respected work and worked hard. And and the product of work being whether you're building a house or building a climb or whatever you're doing is important to me.
01:21:42
Speaker
And maybe that's just inherent. Maybe it's from my parents. I don't know all the chemicals that make up a person, how how it happens. I can't answer that. But i I was blessed with it. I know I have that. Maybe cursed with it, some would say.
01:21:57
Speaker
Because I have i have partners that are that that just like, oh, my God, Randy – Randy, you know we want to quit for today, but he wants to do a whole other pitch. you know He wants to wrap down this other section of the wall and we just want to go home. and don' one oh no, ah why is he running the show today?
01:22:18
Speaker
so it can be a blessing and a curse. Yeah, I understand that. when i When I have hired people to work with me at FL Athlete, one of the things I'll tell them in the like in sort of an interview, I don't know if we really do interviews, but I'll communicate early on. is like i can you know I know I'm a little bit like that in the sense that I can be really intense. I can be too much intense.
01:22:41
Speaker
And, and that's, that's what you're signing up. Like i just I'm just out with it now. Like I used to sort of be almost ashamed of it. Like people would, cause people will try to shame you for it. Like, why do you have to do that? always want to go home, like that kind of thing.
01:22:54
Speaker
and it And it takes a certain strength to be like, Hey, no, this is what I want to do. This is what I came to do. This is what we came to do. and we're going to see it through. And, and there's like this kind of, ah tension a lot of times around that.
01:23:11
Speaker
Yeah, I've seen it. And earlier in my life, I didn't see it. You know, I had these blinders on. I'm just moving towards that goal and working hard and doing stuff. But as you get older, you get more aware of actually how you interact with people and how it
Randy's Diverse Interests and Community Impact
01:23:26
Speaker
affects them. And so I do see it.
01:23:28
Speaker
Sometimes I try to... try to just kind of collar it a little bit so everyone can just kick back and have a good day. But when it comes to climbing, I ah feel like, especially in San Diego, we've been doing some really long approaches and were we've hiked for two and a half hours to get to the crag.
01:23:46
Speaker
Let's make the most of the day. Let's get up at four in the morning and then hike out in the dark. But I'm also the kind of guy where I was in my business, I would be in a suit walking around looking at a a property and there's trash on the ground, I'd pick it up. I've just sort of, I don't like to see stuff being undone that needs to be done.
01:24:04
Speaker
So I think it's just programmed in me. Don't call her that, Randy. just Just unleash it all. I love it. Okay. So, you know, I think it's it's so i interesting. i sort of see this You know, from my perspective, Randy, what, one of the things that, you know, I've been an admirer of yours, you know, I grew up reading, you know, climbing magazine and rock and ice and the hot flashes, you know, remember that that's how we used to get our climbing news and you're always in there doing, so you know, something and pushing the boundaries, creating all these new routes. And I didn't aspire to be like a rock climber so much, of course, but I just loved that you were just out there in your zone, like creating
01:24:51
Speaker
Virgin River Gorge, creating, you know, Clark Mountain climbing, creating, climbing around San Diego, or you know, not creating the like the rocks, but developing and and and opening places up for people.
01:25:04
Speaker
And it's so interesting for me to get to hear about, you know, your, your, business trajectory, your business life. ah One thing we didn't get to talk about that I was hoping to talk about is is your flying. I consider myself a student pilot. You've been flying for a while and and get to fly your own Bonanza.
01:25:23
Speaker
And, you know, you've been able to pull all these things together in this kind of combination of energy, discipline, ah kind of deferred gratification.
01:25:37
Speaker
and this, ah I think the French would say, je ne sais quoi, this, this zest for life, this this, this, this, the spice, the secret ingredient that makes Randy Leavitt, Randy Leavitt, that that,
01:25:51
Speaker
that enabled you to unlock all these things. We didn't even talk about off with climbing or levitation, right? Like there's, there's all these aspects to, you know, you just being who you are and showing up authentically as you, as Randy. And that has opened up all these experiences and opportunities for other people, whether it's having a nice apartment to live in or having a nice route to climb. And I just think it's ah it's a wonderful legacy that is not even close to being over.
Embracing New Beginnings in Aviation
01:26:24
Speaker
I'm not, not reading your eulogy or anything here, but I think it is very poetic and I really admire it. So I just want to say thank you for all that you've, you've contributed to, to my community and our community. It's just been incredible.
01:26:38
Speaker
I think one of the things I've learned is it's okay to be a beginner. I see a lot of guys who are like me that are good at their respective sports that don't want to get outside of their lane and try to be something new to be a beginner but i everything that i've done i had to be a ah total beginner at make mistakes i'm trying wing foiling now and i'm finally to the point where yeah hey i'm i'm you know i'm not i'm i'm decent at it but it took a lot of time so time and being a beginner is it's it's a natural thing to have to go through so don't be afraid of that
01:27:18
Speaker
Do you think it's hard to be a beginner when you're already an expert in something else? For me, I like the process there, but um there's a lot of people who don't there. They just don't want to be a beginner at anything. They want to be the expert. They are at what they do.
01:27:30
Speaker
And what do you say to them? Just open your mind, just be a beginner. It's okay. You know, it's, it's fun to learn. Learning is fun. Like you, you, you know, as being a private pilot that you learn so much as a pilot, it's just, you learn more about things that you never thought you'd have to learn.
01:27:48
Speaker
And it's just a great learning experience. So it's just enjoy it. And when, are you a private pilot? Do you have your license or are you still student pilot? Yeah, I'm still a student pilot. I have only a check ride.
01:28:01
Speaker
So um I'm close. Oh, you're, you're getting ready for your check ride. Yeah. Well, it, You know, they say that the private pilot certificate is just a license to learn. So you're I consider myself still a student pilot. I'm commercial instrument rated, but i I still feel like I'm learning and I'll train and learn. And it's just it's just really interesting. And that's one reason I love aviation is just the rabbit hole of information and learning that you get to do.
01:28:30
Speaker
That's what I'm loving too. It's just so, and, and getting to be a beginner again, i also like you ah love being a beginner. I love learning and it's just like, oh wow, look there's this whole, like all of these rabbit holes or universes like you talked about earlier. And it's just a fascinating one. It's like, you know, I had to relearn trigonometry for my navigation. i was like, oh man, I haven't done this since I was 16. It was like, what a great opportunity to get to remember how all this works and Why? And everything. So, yeah, it's incredible. And the great part is you'll forget it all by the time you have as many hours as me because you have all these other aids. And then someday you'll have to go back and say, oh, yeah, i that's something I learned as a private pilot. I.
01:29:13
Speaker
And I, and I suck, you know, because I don't remember it. And I got to learn it again, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. yeah We're always, always, always learning. Well, thank you so much for your time, Randy. I really appreciate you. This has been an incredible conversation. I'm sure the voice of the mountains diehard listeners will really love this episode.
01:29:33
Speaker
ah Hope we get to cross paths again in real life sometime soon. I think we'll go flying together. How's that? That sounds amazing. and but Thanks for having me here. I really appreciate It was great to talk with you.
01:29:47
Speaker
Thanks, Randy. Thanks so much.
Conclusion and Future Plans
01:30:01
Speaker
One of the most common questions I get is, how should I get started with training? Well, they say the first step is the hardest, so let's make that easy. We are offering free four-week samples of our most popular training plans for mountaineering, trail running, climbing, and more.
01:30:19
Speaker
Go to UphillAthlete.com slash let's go to sign up for our newsletter and you will not only get monthly insights on training for uphill athletes, but you'll also get a sample training plan. It's totally free, so why wait?
01:30:32
Speaker
That's UphillAthlete.com slash L-E-T-S-G-O.