The 5.13 Chronicles: Hear From People Who Have Sent 5.13

Okay. This is where the “Beyond” part of 5.12 And Beyond comes in. I’d like to introduce you to The 5.13 Chronicles: a place where I interview people who have sent 5.13 – or harder – to find out what they learned along the way.

The why

My sport climbing experience caps out at 5.12b, and I’m only one person with one perspective. So I think it makes sense to ask some crushers about their experiences to make this blog more useful and more well-rounded.

I’ve noticed that things that are obvious to others aren’t always obvious to me, and vice versa. While the whole concept of this blog is to provide those little insights, what I find insightful you might find obvious. And what I might think is obvious could be insightful to you. By bringing in other humans, I’m hoping to fill in all the gaps and build a robust resource – not to mention up the level of sport-climbing experience featured here. 

In real life, you might not have friends who climb hard. I didn’t for a long time. And there’s a reason that everybody gets better when they start climbing with people who are better than them. Part of it is beta and logistics, but another part is learning soft skills from the people who have been where you are now. I’m aiming to create a resource that covers those skills to help you improve your climbing – one that everybody has access to (no crusher friends necessary).

The who

You can find a million Alex Honnold interviews online. So I’m hoping to interview people who haven’t been featured as much in the media (yet), including women and minorities. Representation is important, and hearing what another white man – or woman, hi yes that’s me – has to say isn’t always the most useful thing. You’ll find all sorts of different people here.

If you want to be featured on The 5.13 Chronicles, send me an email. I’d love to have you.

I believe that everybody who has climbed 5.13 has valuable information to share, regardless of who they are, what they look like, or how big of a following they have. And I want to create a space for this information – one that focuses not on the what of ascents but on the how. We’ll be talking more about the journey than the destination so that you can incorporate these things into your own journey.

The how

So what exactly does that look like? Example time. This is going to make me sound very silly, but I’m okay with that. One of the key things that I learned somewhere around 5.11b is to “squeeze harder”. Yep, somebody had to tell me to moderate my grip – and crush holds to get through cruxes – in order for me to do so. See above “things that are obvious to others aren’t always obvious to me”.

This is an egregious example, and most of these things are a bit more subtle. But everybody I’ve ever spoken to who climbs harder than me has had sage advice – and everybody’s advice is different. I’m looking forward to hearing what these rad people have to say.

First up

I’m just going to say it: Anna Hazelnutt. My first interviewee climbs 5.14 sport and E9 trad as well as being an all-around wonderful human. Anna was top of my list to kick this thing off and I couldn’t be more stoked to feature her. Stay tuned!

Photo credit: Ezra Byrne

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