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The Nugget Climbing Podcast

EP 252: Justin Salas — Life As a Legally Blind Climber, Building Mental Maps, and Being a Changemaker

The Nugget Climbing Podcast

Steven Dimmitt

Project, The Nugget, Lattice Training, Alpine Climbing, Climbing, Sports, Climbing Nugget, Self-improvement, Sport Climbing, Rock Climbing, Smith Rock, Careless, The Nugget Climbing Podcast, Bouldering, Gold, Dirtbag State Of Mind, Thenuggetclimbing, Fitness, Training Beta, Wilderness, Runout, Nuggetclimbing, Steven Dimmitt, Steven Dimmit, Training, Nugget Podcast, Climbing History, American, Nugget, The, Nugget Climbing Podcast, The Climbing Nugget, Struggle, Climbing Podcast, The American Climbing Project, The Nugget Climbing, Climbing Gold, Climb, Power Company, Yosemite, Enormocast, Health & Fitness, Lattice, @Thenuggetclimbing, Climber, Dirtbag Diaries, Alex Honnold, Climbing Training, Testpiece, The Struggle Climbing Show, Education, Trad Climbing, Talk, The Struggle, For The Love Of Climbing, Training For Climbing, Dirtbag, Sharp End, Nugget Climbing

4.0589 Ratings

🗓️ 9 December 2024

⏱️ 194 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Justin Salas is a legally blind climber who is a 6x National Champion and the 2018 World Champion. He’s also climbed up to V11 outside. We talked about what his visual experience is like, the psychology of an invisible disability, assistive technology, how he climbs, sight guides, projecting tactics, building out a van, the Olympics and paraclimbing competitions, visualization, being a changemaker, and much more.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello, friends, and welcome to the Nugget Climbing Podcast.

0:05.5

This is your host, Stephen Dimmit, and my guest today is Justin Salas.

0:10.7

Justin is a legally blind climber.

0:13.3

He's a six-time national champion in paracliming, and he was the 2018 world champion in

0:18.3

paraclimbing, and he climbs so hard. He's climbed's climbed up to v11 outside he's done a number of them

0:24.4

and I wanted to know what his visual experience is like because it's not the black void that I am

0:31.2

terrified of it's different than that and as he talks about in the episode, visual impairment is on a spectrum. And it was

0:39.4

fascinating to hear where he lands on the spectrum, what his visual experience is, how he gets

0:44.6

through the day, how he climbs, how he works, how he projects hard boulders, how he on-sites

0:51.7

routes and competitions. It was amazing.

0:54.5

I really enjoyed talking to Justin.

0:56.2

He's just a very kind and warm soul.

0:59.8

And, yeah, I think we became friends after this conversation, which is really cool.

1:03.9

I always love it when that happens.

1:05.0

So with that, I think we'll dive in.

1:07.9

Please enjoy Justin Salas.

1:23.6

Cause, gas, no one can do it. I think we'll dive in. Please enjoy Justin South. There he is.

1:25.0

Hey, Justin.

1:26.2

How's it going, man?

1:27.3

It's going good. Yeah, you've got a professional setup over there. Hey, Justin. How's it going, man? It's going good.

1:28.9

Yeah, you've got a professional setup over there. Damn.

1:32.1

Yeah, I try. Well, this is mostly for work.

...

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