9.5
That 17-year-old confidence started to kick back in, and I decided that if Tommy can do it with nine fingers, I could do it with nine-and-a-half.
Nick’s Dad, THE stud
This man is my Dad, he was an absolute stud on a rock wall and an Appalachian Trail through hiker. He spent a lot of his younger years working and living in Yellowstone as an EMS. The outdoors has been his home for longer than I've been alive, so naturally, as his son, he raised me in the outdoors as well. Growing up in Pennsylvania, I was surrounded by beautiful hiking and climbing for most of my life. As a kid I was outside scrambling on rocks and up cracks without ever touching a pair of climbing shoes or a chalk bag. In fact, I loved it so much that my embarrassing first email handle was "BoulderBlaster," made back in 2009.
When I went to a climbing gym for the first time at 15, it was like a light went off in my head. All of a sudden, everything I had done outside was put to use and I felt natural on the wall. Most of my free time was thrown into climbing as a sport. I couldn't get enough. I climbed everywhere I could, indoors and outdoors. I was progressing well as a young climber, even joining a youth team for a summer, and entering into competitions.
The Guns. Photo: Sarah Fisher
After just two years, the worst thing that could happen to a climber did; a devastating finger injury. During an international rugby tournament, I pulled the tendon of my left ring finger off the bone. With as much ego and hubris as a 17-year-old kid can have, I decided to continue to play for the rest of the games in the tournament, thinking I had only dislocated my finger. I taped that finger up and kept playing as my mobility lessened.
I found out after, that I had completely pulled the finger tendon off the tip of the bone and severed both c4 and c3 finger pulleys. This event led to 3 reconstructive surgeries and more than 2 years of therapy. After everything was said and done, I suffered damage to both my median and ulnar nerves, as well as losing complete dexterity in half of my finger. This meant that any kind of touch or action would feel like pins and needles for the rest of my life. This injury was incredibly impactful to both my mental and physical confidence. After healing I never touched a rock wall or climbed outside again. I was in constant fear of re-injuring my finger as well as being dissuaded from the pain it caused.
Fast forward to September 2021. Laugh if you'd like, but it seemed like some kind of force was telling me to get back into climbing. Driving near my house, I started to see advertisements for a climbing gym grand opening. I remember dismissing the thought of climbing as I clenched my hand for the millionth time just to check if magically my finger was fixed; shocking to no one, it wasn't. I kept driving past that sign thinking about climbing, and magically the YouTube algorithm decided that now would be a great time to start pumping out climbing videos. Now wouldn't you know it, after not thinking about climbing for 7 years, there I am watching Alex Honnold free solo El Capitan. In that movie is a man by the name of Tommy Caldwell, as some of you may know, Tommy is a pro climber that lost a finger and is continuing to absolutely crush routes outdoors.
Photo: Sarah Fisher
I walked into Stone confident, flippantly telling the man giving me a tour of the gym that I was experienced and didn't need to watch the tutorial video. This man would later watch me peel off every V1 and V0 in what I later found out was his gym.
I called into Stone on its grand opening, thus, intertwining my climbing journey with Stone’s. I walked into Stone confident, flippantly telling the man giving me a tour of the gym that I was experienced and didn't need to watch the tutorial video. This man would later watch me peel off every V1 and V0 in what I later found out was his gym.
I can't tell you how scared I was pulling on a V0. Every move I made, I expected to blow my finger out again and throw myself back into another year of surgeries and therapy. I felt scared, weak, and embarrassed. I felt like every pair of eyes was watching me fail. My mind remembered how to climb, but my body was too weak to listen. I left after just an hour of failed climbing.
This failure fueled the next 8 months of near-constant effort to better myself. I am obsessed with getting stronger and becoming a better climber despite my finger, and so far, I am accomplishing that goal with the ever-present help of my friends. One day I hope to be as much of a stud on the wall as my Pops.
— Nick