TOMMY CALDWELL

I am at a climbing area called the Wendenstock in Switzerland. This area has some of the best quality multi-pitch climbing I have seen on limestone. There is about a two-hour approach on one of the steepest grass slopes I have ever seen. The setting is amazing.

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

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

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.

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

The Dawn Wall and the Fitz Traverse were super-satisfying climbs. But I will always be searching for the next thing - the need to accomplish and explore are just woven into the fabric of who I am.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

I have always let my motivation guide me, and that has served me well. Climbing has taught me how to thrive and created a life that I feel incredibly lucky to have.

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.

My wife always says that I function better up on a big wall than I do anywhere else in life.

I travel and climb about eight months a year. That's pretty great training in itself. When I am home, I do a lot of bouldering, gym climbing, and specific strength training in a effort to get stronger for climbing.

I have been to Switzerland a handful of times, and it is quickly becoming one of my favorite places to climb.

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.

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.

Climbs like the Dawn Wall don't come around every day.

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

I've climbed in a lot of places, but only once in the U.K., at Stanage Edge in the Peak District.

I love that idea of mastery.

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.

My motivation is internal.