You are the story that you tell yourself and that, you know, I register that in my mind.

It's so true because if you believe in yourself, you can do a lot more than if you are doubting yourself.

Alex, this year is a place you are doubting yourself.

Alex, the Sierra is a place that means a lot to both of us.

We were both born in its shadow, and we have a lot of climbing memories from them.

How do you describe the Sierra to people who aren't familiar with them?

I think it's the best. I mean, how do you even describe it?

The Sierra is just big, clean, beautiful sweeping walls, like perfect white granite.

I mean, it ranges from Yosemite, some of the best big walls in the world, to sport climbing,

like, say, at Donner, which is the first place that I grew up sport climbing to sort of easy multi-pitch adventure, you know,

like Lovers Leap, which is the first place everyone's Soling, to like big alpine scrambly roots,

like say the East Butters Mount Whitney or something. The high Sierra has a collection of 12, 14,000 foot peaks, I guess, I think, all sort of in a chain. And then almost countless sub-peaks all

around them and jagged spires. It's just like it's spines of rock, basically. It's funny because I always

think of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado as big lumps of dirt. Because you're like, they're just

all eroded and they're just piles of dirt. But the Sierra Nevada is what you imagine is like fantasy

mountains, like jagged spires that are

connected by like slim ridges that have steep drop-offs on both sides.

It's just like limitless mountains going in all directions.

It just feels so epic.

When you look at that place like that where there's limitless mountains all around, there's

rock everywhere, do you think the golden age has come and gone for the Sierra?

I think in some ways the golden age maybe hasn't quite arrived for the Sierra. I mean, it's hard to say.

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