EP 282: Kerwin Loukusa — 4 Keys to Unlocking V13, Forecasting Perfect Conditions, & Embracing Beginner's Mind for Projects

The Nugget Climbing Podcast

Steven Dimmitt

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4.2 • 576 Ratings

🗓️ 1 September 2025

⏱️ 233 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Kerwin Loukusa lives in Leavenworth, WA, and sent his first V12 and V13 last year while juggling a full-time job, wife, and two young kids. We talked about how he improved his flexibility to send the Freerider in Yosemite, bouldering after having kids, home wall training, the key to building persistent strength, bodyweight manipulation, energy availability, beginner's mind, feeling vs. analysing, weather forecasting hacks, how dew point affects climbing conditions, and much more. A lot of nuggets in this one.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, friends, and welcome to another episode of the Nugget Climbing podcast.
0:05.4	My guest today is Kirwin Lakusa.
0:08.0	This was a really fun episode to record.
0:11.4	Kerwin is a close friend of mine and someone I deeply admire.
0:14.9	He lives in Leavenworth, Washington, and we were able to climb together quite a bit this past
0:19.0	season and try some projects together.
0:21.6	Kerwin is a family man with two kids, juggles a full-time job, and still manages to climb at an
0:28.3	incredible level. He's in his mid-30s and is still improving. He sent his first V-13 last year.
0:35.4	I got to be there when he did it, which was really inspiring to see. And yeah,
0:40.3	I've learned a lot from his approach to life and climbing, and it was a blast to sit down with him
0:46.1	for this interview. A lot of nuggets in this one. Please enjoy Kerwin Lukusa.
1:12.3	Okay, I wanted to start with how we met. This was summer of 2020, I believe.
1:15.5	At the Ben Rock Gym, COVID was happening.
1:17.1	I think I just got back to Washington.
1:18.8	I was on the road.
1:22.3	Things opened back up, so I came back home, and it's hot.
1:24.8	So I was training in the gym, having a bouldering session. And I remember I was, you know, we're both climbing in the steep area.
1:29.6	It's a small bouldering situation at the riverfront rock gym.
1:33.6	And you were like the other guy climbing hard.
1:37.6	And I was like, oh, there's this muscular dude climbing really well.
1:41.4	And like, holy shit, he's also like doing the splits on the wall i don't know what
1:44.9	you what you were trying but you were trying some boulder that involved a really wide heel hook
	...

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