Becoming a Boulder Climber
I woke up in my VW van parked behind the Boulder Rock Club and started making coffee, map in hand, plotting the drive to Eldorado Canyon. I’d arrived a week earlier from my home in Seattle to spend the summer guiding for the Boulder Rock School. It was my first day, and I was nervous — not about the climbing (though I’d be leading clients up routes I’d never climbed before), but about the drive.
It was July 2001 (when paper maps were still a thing), and I didn’t know Broadway from Baseline. And though I’d been guiding in Washington since the mid-1990s, I feared being “found out” as an outsider in Colorado. Nothing scared me more than getting lost en route to one of the country’s most famous climbing areas with a van full of clients paying good money for local knowledge.
To my immense relief, all went well that day. So well, in fact, that by the time another week had passed, I’d ditched the map and had logged dozens of routes in Eldo (mostly “onsight” guiding), Boulder Canyon, the Flatirons and on Longs Peak. I couldn’t believe the volume and variety of climbing so close to town. I would guide in the morning, climb with friends in the afternoon and repeat. I’d never climbed so much in my life.
Admittedly, I used to roll my eyes whenever I heard Boulder being called the “Center of the Universe” for American climbing. It couldn’t be that good. But by the end of that summer, my skepticism had turned to pride: I owned 14 guidebooks covering thousands of climbs, all within 90 minutes of Boulder. I felt like I was just getting started.
So I did that classic Boulder thing: I never left.
I stayed because being a climber in Boulder feels limitless; it means as many different things as there are climbers. We’re scramblers and ice hogs, first ascensionists and gym rats, alpinists and Olympians. We’re young and old, fast and slow, inexperienced and elite. We’re of every color, gender, shape and size, and yet somehow we’ve all chosen climbing as our medium to face fears, challenge our beliefs and build meaningful friendships.
Above all, being a climber in Boulder means taking part in a wild and wonderful community invigorated by our unique vertical playground. Here, there’s a synergy at work — a motivating power that strengthens relationships well beyond the “Off belay!” on top of a climb.
Photo by Jon Glassberg, Louder Than Eleven