Tommy Caldwell Quotes

Tommy Caldwell

Profession : Athlete

Birth : August 11, 1978

From an early age, Yosemite became the centre of my universe. I've been going every summer since I was a child. I love everything about that place: waterfalls, high-quality rock, history.

Tommy Caldwell

My earliest memory is being in a snow hole, aged two-and-a-half, with my dad somewhere up a mountain in a blizzard. I don't know what my dad saw in me - I was a geeky kid - but he had that philosophy: prepare the kid for the road, not the road for the kid.

Tommy Caldwell

I tend to walk through life sort of looking through a pair of binoculars, and I focus on certain things and push out the rest.

Tommy Caldwell

My natural abilities weren't necessarily brute power and strength. They were more about the ability to endure and not give up.

Tommy Caldwell

I have a very distinct goal all the time that I'm working toward, and I love the way it makes me live.

Tommy Caldwell

I tend to pick objectives that I feel are safe because I know that, in the moment, I always go for it. I have some rules for myself, though: Look for the rock faces without a lot of loose rock. Always rope up on glaciers where there is even a slight chance of falling into a crevasse. No pure free soloing. Never climb below hanging glaciers.

Tommy Caldwell

In some ways, climbing in the clouds is comforting. You can no longer see how high off the ground you are.

Tommy Caldwell

I've always been really curious about the limits of human capability.

Tommy Caldwell

Stand at the base and look up at 3,000 feet of blankness. It just looks like there's no way you can climb it. That's what you seek as a climber. You want to find something that looks absurd and figure out how to do it.

Tommy Caldwell

For me, I love to dream big, and I love to find ways to be a bit of an explorer. These days, it seems like everything is padded and comes with warning labels.

Tommy Caldwell

Climbing a big wall over several days is like running a giant construction project: constantly making lists, rigging ropes, organising food, figuring out camera angles - but you're in this crazy place with your best friends, and it does take on a party atmosphere sometimes, like a big dudes' camping trip.

Tommy Caldwell

I grew up a clumsy kid with bad hand-eye coordination. Yet here on El Cap, I felt as though I had stumbled into a world where I thrived. Being up on those steep walls demanded the right amount of climbing skill, pain tolerance, and sheer bull-headedness that came naturally to me.

Tommy Caldwell

If you don't have to worry about socializing because you don't like it, you can more fully immerse yourself in climbing.

Tommy Caldwell

One of the nice things about indoor training is you can make holds that are better on your skin, so you can train more before your fingers wear out. You can get stronger faster climbing inside.

Tommy Caldwell

Through climbing, I've learned to find goals and work toward them. That's just the way I love to live.

Tommy Caldwell

There are specific things in our world that are incredibly dangerous. Wingsuit BASE jumping is the very, very top of that. Big alpine climbing objectives are maybe right below that. I've probably had 20 friends die - people who were pretty close to me. I would say about 18 of them were because of snow.

Tommy Caldwell

The types of climbing that I choose to do I'm good at justifying. I do really try and pick things that I'm going to live through. I don't want to die, and I'm relatively cautious. I play with that line all the time. I want things that are very exciting, so much so that they can feel almost spiritual.

Tommy Caldwell

I pretty much bailed on high school. I mean, I graduated, but I wasn't even there for my own graduation.

Tommy Caldwell

El Capitan is the most chapping environment in the world: windy, cold, super dry. I wake up twice a night and reapply lotion to my hands. We sand our fingertips to keep them smooth.

Tommy Caldwell

In rock climbing, people get strong enough, and then they pick goals they can do with their strengths at that moment.

Tommy Caldwell