Inside Game
Head 2 Head: Mind Games With Will Wild
Fear is a funny thing. When I first started lead climbing I was terrified of falling. I felt helpless on the wall, unable to move above my last clip and into the unknown territory of the iminent whipper. I climbed below my level for a long time trying to build the confidence to push myself.…
Read more...Inside Game no. 8: Michaela Tracy
Michaela Tracy on “Numb Thumb” (V7) at Pawtuckaway State Park. FINDING HER ZONE Michaela Tracy has always struggled to define home. The daughter of two American ex-pats, she was born in London, where her father Jack worked for more than twenty years. As she spent the majority of her early life in the UK, Michaela…
Read more...Inside Game no. 7: Mike Morin
Our Man in the Trenches “It’s funny, people’s idea about what a bolt or fixed protection is,” says Mike Morin, the Access Fund’s Northeast Regional Director. “If you’re not a climber, ‘bolting’ can sound so ominous. A big part of my job is to explain and break down those barriers.” A self-described access “nerd”, Morin…
Read more...Inside Game No. 6: Ethan Pringle
“Failures are always interesting,” Ethan Pringle muses. “That’s where you probably try your hardest, because you didn’t actually do it, so you didn’t have to give it just 80 percent, you had to give it 100 percent… and still not do it.” Ethan was eight years old when his father took him to Mission Cliffs,…
Read more...Inside Game no. 5: Hilary Sherman
Life changed for Hilary Sherman on a frosty day at Rumney in November, 2014. “Sally’s Alley is a route I’ve done – I can’t even tell you how many times. I’d been warming up on it for years. But that day, it was cold. There was ice that had formed, and it had melted…
Read more...Inside Game no. 4: Joe Terravecchia
Joe Terravecchia first lay eyes on Pissing Mare Falls in remote Western Brook Pond, Newfoundland, twenty years ago. “Casey Shaw and I first tried to go there in ‘96, but they were having a shitty winter, so we went to Quebec instead,” he says. “The next year, we looked at a tourist brochure and saw…
Read more...Inside Game no. 3: Henry Fitts
Henry Fitts was scared the first time he tried climbing. The thirteen year-old kid from Pine Point walked into the Maine Rock Gym one day with his Boy Scout troop, but he got so terrified that he failed to reach the top of any of the climbs he tried. “I used to be really scared of…
Read more...Inside Game no. 2: Andrew Drummond
There are 48 mountains over the elevation of four thousand feet in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. For peak baggers dwelling across New England, collecting each one of these summits represents a lifetime goal. Really motivated climbers might do them all in winter, or over the course of a single calendar year. This…
Read more...Inside Game no. 1: Matty Zane
Matty Zane grew up in the small town of Freedom, Maine. Both his parents worked at the nearby college in Unity, and growing up, Matty and his older brother Cody lived for soccer. Then, at the tender age of 14, Matty’s adventurous mother Nancy took him climbing for the first time on the granite crags…
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