Alex, looking back at your climbing, do you remember a certain breakthrough when it came to hard free climbing way off the deck?

Like, were you just always like okay with the exposure, the difficult moves above small pieces, or was that something you had to work on?

That's definitely something I had to work on. There was no, there was no breakthrough.

I mean, my first big free routes, I was

coming to five nine, I was scared for my life. I thought my gear was all going to fall out. I thought

the rope would break. It was all terrifying, but I slowly built up to it. Yeah. Was there a breakthrough

moment? I don't know if there was a breakthrough. I mean, maybe climbing all cap. You know, for me, free climbing and aid climbing was pretty intermixed as I was learning how to track climb.

So it was all, I was just learning how to trust my gear.

I don't know if there was really a breakthrough.

I'd say I still struggle with all the same things.

I just struggle less.

Yeah.

Do you think that someone who wants to go do those big, long, hard routes way off the deck,

do you think there's like a standard approach to the progression that happens or is it something

that people just sort of do by feel? I think that everybody winds up finding their own path,

but I think ideally you would have a sort of progression to it where you would progressively build on your skills. I mean, particularly if you want to learn quickly and safely, then, you know, ideally you would progress in a certain way. But realistically, I think everybody just takes their own path and kind of comes to it in their own way.

When you think of people in the climbing world that are leading the way in terms of

the hard traditional climbing, who comes to mind?

So Nico Favres and Sean Villanuevo Driscoll come to mind having put up hard trad routes

all over the world and first sense all over.

I don't know, I mean, somebody like Tommy Caldwell comes to mind for having freed most of

the roots on O'CAPP.

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