From Urban Climber Magazine #24

Age: 23

Home: Reno, aka No-town

Sponsors: Mad Rock

In it: My good friend Jackie Hueftle took me to the gym when I was 13, and I was immediately hooked Climbing style of choice: Anything that involves Fat Boy movement!

Top 5 areas:
1. Bishop
2. Tahoe
3. Washington
4. St. George, Utah (sport crags)
5. Nor Cal Coast (Santa Rosa)

Tell us about the bouldering you’ve been developing in areas around Lake Tahoe.
Mainly the crew and I have been working on areas around the Sierra Buttes. It’s a sick alpine bouldering area with very featured, slick granite. There are loads of boulders to be developed there. It’s overwhelming and all a matter of how far you want to hike. Luckily we’re pretty motivated, and I’ve had the pleasure of putting up some really proud and hard lines.    

Heard you took an interesting fall recently...
Yes, last month I was trying to repeat a problem that Dustin Sabo put up, and it spit me off onto my face and right shoulder from about fifteen feet. I was lucky to hit the pad instead of the talus but I still felt like I’d been hit by a train for a few days afterward. In the movie Rampage, Chris Sharma FA’d a longstanding project called The Ashtray, and you’re among the few who’ve repeated it — tell me about the problem. The Ashtrayis sick! I got to the last couple moves at least ten times and was just pitching off the top over and over. I lost track of the days I spent working it — probably an entire fall season. It’s not the hardest line, grade-wise, but it was a barrier-breaker for me.

You’re also a routesetter. How’s that going?
I’ve been the head setter at my local gym for about five years. Also, last February I interned at the ABS Youth Nationals — it was a lot of work and I didn’t get much sleep that week, but I learned a ton. It made me really psyched to keep setting for big events.

Where are you right now?
I’m in Guam, an island in the South Pacific –basically Tijuana for Japanese tourists –with massage parlors as far as the eye can see. (The masseuses don’t really specialize in massage, if you know what I mean.) I’m here building a radar dome for a military base. Its pretty top secret and any more info than that could get me killed. It’s by far the most physically demanding job I’ve ever done, but it’s only for three weeks, and it’s providing me the opportunity to go bouldering in Japan when I’m done.