Sam Weir Climbs V16 but Dislikes Social Media and Works Full Time
On June 28, Sam Weir made the fifth ascent of Fuck the System (V16), in Fionnay, Switzerland. It was the 32-year-old’s first climb of the grade—or second, if you count Giuliano Cameroni’s Cameroni’s REM, in Cresciano, Switzerland, which Weir thinks is either low-end V16 or hard V15.
Weir began climbing in 2012, while he was an undergraduate at Penn State University, and though it was quickly clear that he was a very talented boulderer, he wasn’t interested in pursuing the typical sponsored athlete path—in part thanks to his mentor, Pennsylvania local Brian McCall. “Brian was Pennsylvania’s strongest boulderer,” Weir told Climbing, “opening new hard lines all the time [while also] holding down a full time job. Never spraying.” Often, McCall wouldn’t even tell Weir the grade of the problem he was trying, instead saying, “Here, this one is a bit harder than the last.”
McCall demonstrated that it was viable to have both a career and a dedicated climbing pursuit, and Weir brought this knowledge with him when he moved out to the bouldering hotspot of Boulder, Colorado, to work as a financial analyst at Colorado University while also pushing his climbing.
In Colorado, Weir sent his first V14 (Memory is Parallax) and V15 (Topaz), before going on to send dozens of climbs at those grades. But even though Weir was quietly developing a very impressive ticklist, he felt that the culture in Colorado was suffocating. “I would post and send but it never felt too genuine,” he said. “Colorado was so send-focused that it was really bad for me.”
Then, on a climbing trip to Bishop, CA, in 2015, Weir met Lucas Tubiana, a French climber who was essentially dirtbagging around the USA for months on end. Talking to Tubiana made Weir realize that he’d love to do the same thing in Europe, and even though he’d never left the country, he began making plans. “I started studying French every night for four years. Podcasts, books, anything you can think of to learn a language. I was on it. Once I could read and write, I took the leap of faith.”
In 2020, he quit his job in Colorado and started graduate school in Econometrics at the Université Côte d’Azur in Nice, France. The point, of course, was “mainly to climb in Europe and have a long stay visa.” Once established in France, Weir went completely quiet on social media. He felt like it was out of place to spray about his accomplishments when that isn’t really an important aspect of the French climbing culture. Weir also admits that he was too busy to worry about that sort of thing anyways. “Man it is tough to integrate into a new country,” he said, “but it was the best choice I made in my life.”
While working toward his master’s degree—and, after finishing, beginning a career as a contract manager in the nuclear industry—Weir continued inching his way through the multitude of world-class boulders near his new home. One spot he frequented was the notorious Fuck the System boulder in Fionnay, Valais, whose huge roof hosts an extremely high concentration of problems from V13 to V16, including Dave Graham’s 2013 testpiece Foundation’s Edge (V15). Graham’s full vision was to enter the hard climbing on Foundation’s Edge from a lower, more obvious jug underneath the belly of the cave, which involves linking an initial V13/14 tension sequence into a two move V14, followed by a tricky V9 finish and a victory V1 topout. The project became the roof’s namesake and went until 2021 without an ascent, until Shawn Raboutou finally put the moves together.
After climbing every other major line on the boulder, including Foundation’s Edge, which he sent in May 2023, Weir saw Fuck the System as a logical next step. “It was a good choice for a hard project not too far from home. As I started trying, I really fell in love with the movement and enjoyed every single session on it.”
Weir made fairly linear progress on the problem, and by his twelfth session, inSeptember 2023, he had fallen off the V9 outro. “After this I was sure I could do it, but then I left for a month for vacation and didn’t climb. By the time I was home, I was out of shape and the season was dwindling, so I decided to wait for 2024.”
Over the winter, Weir trained hard. He’d log several board climbing hours, work his shoulders, and stretch often. “I came back to the boulder in spring 2024 in way better shape… but then the rain started.” Weir would head out to the project once a week to dry the line and climb short sections, but he struggled until the boulder finally dried in mid May, when he linked through the crux and fell off the V9 section twice. The following weekend Weir climbed through the entire V16 part of the climb twice in a day—including one attempt when he “crushed the boulder but rested too long on the jugs trying to warm up my hands and pumped off the 5A (V1) topout!” That heartbreaker fall was followed by six weeks of rain, but Weir was patient. Finally, on June 28th the boulder was dry for twenty four hours. “I made it count!”
Weir was surprised at how emotionally easy the experience was. Completing the line ended up seeming like a very satisfying formality after putting in so much work to train during the winter. “I really had no idea it was going to go like that!” he said. “I was ready for a saga, and it was one, but more of a conditions war than physical!”
Looking ahead, Weir has his eyes on even bigger objectives. He plans to put effort into Alphane (V17) and to finish off Poison the Well (V16).
Reflecting on his pursuit as a pro-level boulderer with a full time job, Weir is content to maintain the path he’s on. “Honestly, I love hard projecting. I’m someone who needs big goals and I love working towards them. I love finding what my perceived limits are then surpassing them over and over, even if marginally. I’m a strong believer that if someone else has done it, I can do it too, so long as I put the work in. I truly believe this and it has yet to fail me.”
Sam Weir // Scarred for Life 8B+ from Well Good Productions on Vimeo.
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