Tommy Caldwell - Episode 32

weMove Podcast

This weeks podcast is the recording of a conversation we had with Tommy Caldwell at the start of 2017. The short story behind this conversation is that we had a received an advance copy of Tommy’s book ’The Push’, had been blown away by it and had then found out he would be in Fountain Blu, a five hours drive away us, a few months later and would be available to co-create a feature with us for issue 2.

For those of you who don’t know, Tommy is the legendary climber who back in 2015 became more widely known through his first ascent of the Dawn Wall, of El Capitan in Yosemite Valley. This is widely regarded as one of the hardest climbs in the world and became worldwide headline news, but is only the tip of the iceberg in his achievements and life experiences. There’s the being kidnapped at gunpoint in the remote Ak Su Valley of Kyrgyzstan almost 20 years ago, the speed record on El Cap and various other climbing achievements throughout his career, the loss of one of his fingers in a sawing accident and a whole lot more. There’s also general conversation about fear, motivations, and the evolution of his life and career in this conversation.

The recording represents well how we spend time with people. Listening back, it sounds like a gentle relaxed conversation between friends. It was recorded in the back garden of the AirBNB Tommy and his family were staying at. The birds are singing in the background, the sun was shining down hard, croissants on the table. We had brought friend Jules St Gerome with us; Jules being the focus of the micro adventure feature we had in the Japanese alps in Issue 1. Jules and Tommy share common ground over loss of flesh and so there’s some pondering and reflective moments in here.