Aging Isn’t Always Kind to Climbers. Here’s How to Stay Strong, Sharp, and Stoked.
In August 2023, I returned from three weeks of bouldering in the granite moonscape of Ladakh’s Suru Valley. It should’ve been a high point of the year—sharp alpine air, proud lines above wildflower meadows, trading beta over milky Himalayan chai. But when I landed back in Delhi, I couldn’t lift my left arm without wincing.
Among orthopedists, surgeons, and sports med specialists, the verdict was consistent: severe osteoarthritis combined with a frozen shoulder, colliding to shut down my movement.
“Avoid overhead sports,” one doctor said. Another floated the possibility of shoulder replacement. “You’ve had a good run,” someone told me. It felt like a eulogy.
I wasn’t ready to quit climbing. But I also wasn’t naive enough to ignore pain.
In the months that followed, I found myself searching for better answers—not just medically, but mentally and physically. That search eventually grew into Ageless Athlete, a weekly podcast I launched in January 2024, where I speak with outdoor athletes across disciplines: climbers, ultrarunners, surfers, mountain bikers, and more.
Each conversation has been a window into how to adapt, endure, and keep chasing what we love, even as the years stack up. While every athlete offered insights that I draw upon in this story, I’m focusing on advice from the climbers I’ve spoken with—legends and lifelong practitioners like Lynn Hill, Steve McClure, Thomas Huber, Ben Moon, Craig DeMartino, and Hans Florine.
Those conversations didn’t just inform my recovery. They redefined it.
Here are the strategies that shaped my journey back—lessons for any older climber who wants to keep moving, continue progressing, and find more joy on the wall. These are eight of the biggest lessons I carried forward.
Author Kush Khandelwal talks through his favorite three lessons from this story
1. Start by advocating for yourself
When I spoke with Craig DeMartino—the longtime adaptive climber in his upper 50s who has returned to big walls—he emphasized how crucial it was to push past standard medical advice and build his own path to recovery. That also held true for Heidi Wirtz, a climber and guide in her early 50s known for hard big wall ascents around the world. Wirtz shared with me how she was once told she needed a hip replaced, but by seeking second opinions and committing fully to physical therapy, she avoided surgery and got back to the mountains.
Hearing their stories made me realize I had to take the same responsibility for my own healing.
I consulted multiple physical therapists while researching modalities I’d never tried—scapular stabilization, PRP (plasma rich therapy), deep rotator cuff activation, breathwork. Some of it helped. Some didn’t. But through that exploration, I began reclaiming agency. And I realized something both surprising and reassuring: The best climbers don’t wait passively for recovery to happen. They fight for it.
2. Let awe lead
In one of my earliest episodes of Ageless Athlete, I spoke with Thomas Huber, the German alpinist now in his upper 50s, and half of the renowned Huber Brothers. He described standing below towering alpine walls, where fear meets reverence, and the mountain reminds you that smallness is its own kind of power. “It’s humbling,” he said, “but also energizing. The beauty fills your lungs.”
That idea changed how I approached not only my climbing, but my day-to-day life, too. Walking my dog up Bernal Hill by my home in San Francisco, or clipping chains on a coastal crag just past Golden Gate Bridge, I started pausing—not to perform, but to absorb.
As I get older, I’m learning that days like that—easy, joyful, rich with presence—aren’t lesser days. They’re the ones that keep me connected to climbing for the long haul.
3. Power isn’t just for the young
When I interviewed Lee Sheftel—who is still sending 5.12 in his late 70s—he told me something simple and profound: “Power is the first thing to go. So it should be the first thing you train.”
He didn’t start training power until his 50s. At a time when most climbers were scaling back, he was building up with system boards in his garage, and short circuits to keep the fast-twitch sharp.
Another guest, Ben Moon—a climbing pioneer who is still elite into his late 50s, and the inventor of the Moon Board—emphasized that staying sharp doesn’t always require high volume, but it does demand focus. “One good session a week can hold the line,” he told me.
Back in San Francisco, I took that to heart and committed to the Kilter Board. Early on, I flailed on V3s that kids breezed through. But over time, I climbed back into V5s, then V6s. Even if those were still warmups for the teenagers around me, I could feel the spark returning.
When I arrived at the steep, tufa-laced walls of El Salto this January, that work paid off. My first project: Ungabunga (12c), steep, resistant, with just enough commitment to keep me honest. It took effort, tension, and love of the process. When I surprised myself with a quick send, it wasn’t luck. It was everything I’d rebuilt through my power-focused training.
4. Fear isn’t the enemy. But it is loud.
My relationship with fear changed a dozen years back after a serious fall at Lover’s Leap in Tahoe. It was the result of a bad decision. I was climbing in a blizzard with no headlamp, a light rack, and dwindling daylight. We made it out, but the experience left a scar—one that deepened after losing three climbing friends in the years that followed.
When I interviewed Hazel Findlay, a British climber equally renowned for her hard lines and mental coaching, I admitted that I’d started avoiding big days in the alpine. Findlay didn’t downplay that. She reframed it. “Fear is information,” she said. “Exposure therapy helps you reframe it—bit by bit.”
That same winter that I was in El Salto, I also went to Potrero Chico—not for the bold trad routes, but for systems and exposure on long bolted lines like Black Cat Bone, 5.10d and Sendero Diablo 5.11c. As I moved higher with each pitch, I felt that fear slowly quiet. Not disappear, but shift. My mind stopped forecasting consequences. I was simply there, climbing.
5. Mentorship can give you back your fire
When I spoke with Craig DeMartino in the first season of my podcast, he shared how mentoring adaptive climbers after his accident gave him a renewed sense of purpose—something bigger than grades or accolades. “I wouldn’t wish the fall on anyone,” he said of the 100-foot ground fall he took over two decades ago, “but mentoring others gave me back something bigger than performance. It gave me peace.”
It made me think about how, as we get older in climbing, renewal doesn’t always come from pushing ourselves harder. Sometimes it comes from connecting with others.
This past season in Potrero Chico, I wasn’t the mentor. I was the one soaking up the energy of a younger crew—stoked, hungry, and wide-eyed. Watching them light up at their first multipitch adventures reminded me why I started. Their joy lit a spark in me that no solo training block ever could.
And maybe that’s what mentorship can look like, too. It’s not always about teaching, but sharing presence. Let energy flow in both directions. Let’s remind each other, across generations, what the sport is really about.
6. Recovery is performance
Eric Hörst, a climbing author and coach in his early 60s, told me, “You don’t get stronger from training. You get stronger from recovery.” Matt Samet—a climber, writer, and longtime Climbing contributor and former editor in his early 50s—echoed that, crediting his longevity to yoga, mobility, and listening more than pushing.
Since then, I’ve rebuilt my daily rhythm around that truth. Whether in San Francisco or my van, I carry what I need: a yoga mat, resistance bands, two adjustable dumbbells. I do my shoulder rehab in parking lots, activate with deep stretching in campgrounds, and never skip post-session care. My shoulder isn’t bulletproof, but it’s resilient. Because I’ve earned that trust again.
7. Movement before metrics
After injury, it’s easy to obsess over numbers—what you used to send, what you’ve “lost.” But in my conversation with Steve McClure, the British sport climbing icon in his mid-50s, he reminded me to chase feel, not figures. “If you’re tuned in to movement,” he said, “the numbers take care of themselves.”
These days, whether I’m hugging tufas in Guadalcázar, Mexico or warming up at the Happy Boulders in Bishop, I focus on movement quality. I climb to feel efficient. Calm. Curious. And more often than not, the grades seem to follow.
8. You don’t have to peak to progress
Lynn Hill—American climbing icon now in her early 60s—put it plainly when I interviewed her last summer: “I’m not chasing my old numbers. I’m chasing what’s possible now.”
That stayed with me.
Routes I once walked up now sometimes spit me off. And yet, as I move through the U.S. and Mexico — climbing, working, and piecing together a new sense of self — I find myself relishing the simple act of movement again.. As I link lines up to 5.12, I climb with flow and focus. Rather than fighting for numbers, I’m chasing connection.
It doesn’t mean I’ve given up on harder grades. Far from it. But for now, I’m loving where I am—still growing, still learning, and rekindling my love for the process.
Still sending
This journey back hasn’t been linear. Some days, my shoulder aches. Some nights, doubt creeps in. But I’ve learned to listen—not just to my body, but to the stories shared with me by those who’ve walked this path before.
At 47 years old, I’m not the climber I was at 30. But I’m something better: aware, engaged, still evolving.
If you’re rebuilding after injury, or wondering whether your best days are behind you, I hope my story—and the wisdom of the climbers I’ve spoken with—lands as a reminder:
Sometimes the best days aren’t about grades or numbers at all.
Last summer, I spent a quiet weekend at Donner Lake in Tahoe. I climbed easy routes, nothing close to my limit. But the granite, the lake breeze, and the scent of pine warmed by the sun, reminded me that presence not performance is what stays with you.
Getting older has taught me that it’s not always about pushing harder. Sometimes, it’s about staying close to what you love.
You’re not broken. You’re just in the middle of your story.
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