Age: 31
Years Climbing: 11
Sponsors: Five Ten, Organic
The Local: Yosemite
Top 5 on your iPod: The Soul Jazz records, DJ Knuckles (props DJ P-Rob), Corinne West, Iron & Wine, Atmosphere
Top 5 Sends: Duel, Thriller, Alta, Le Lepreux Direct (years of blood, sweat, and tears for a 7a), Kauk Slab (without the running start)

What are your goals for 2008?
To pull a really good espresso shot.

What do you do for a living, and how does it balance with your bouldering?
I do programming and project management for a company that builds custom web applications. They have a policy that allows their employees to take big chunks of the year off, which allows me to go on some nice, lengthy climbing trips. The work is actually an interesting parallel to bouldering in that both require a collaborative approach to finding solutions for ‘problems’. So during the week I pair with people on figuring out software problems, and on the weekends our crew in Yosemite will session some tricky feature on a granite bloc and eventually figure out the beta to get ourselves to the top. In both cases, the synergy created when you combine people who are excited and inspired to work together is a truly beautiful thing.

Describe the perfect boulder problem?
High, clean solid rock, with distinct but limited features in a isolated and breathtaking environment. A big plus if there is some sort of water nearby (hot spring in winter, waterfall in summer).

How special is Font to you?
It will always be my home away from home. It will also be the place that I happily get schooled at so that I might return to an appropriate state of humility.

What’s hiding under your bed?
Too scared to look. I actually had a dream as a kid that my leg was dangling over the side of the bed and something grabbed it. I’ve pretty much avoided the area ever since.

Who is a climber you have respect for and why?
This may be a cop out and I should be giving props to all of the amazing climbers I have been fortunate to share a day out with, but my respect always goes with the people that are focused, humble, and contribute to the overall positive energy of a day out. I’m absolutely blessed to have an amazing group of people in the bay area (word up bay area posse!) that can head out and support everyone in the group no matter what their own personal agenda for the day may be. It has created a magical little world of bouldering bliss and I will be forever thankful for it.

Your most memorable send and why?
Selective (and limited memory capacity) always tend to make it my most recent one. However, I think that the ones that I really worked hard on, even if they were a V5, are the ones that really gave me joy. Duel would be in that camp, but so would the Font 7a Le Lepreux Direct, which took me a total of 5 years to complete due to one long move that shut me down, but was really fun to throw myself at.

How are you like your mother?
Oh, this would take pages and years to really answer well.

What are your thoughts on the current climbing scene?
The kids are getting crazy strong! I will be so psyched to see what avenues they choose to explore and introduce us old folks to in the future.

UC