Tommy Caldwell

“I tend to walk through life sort of looking through a pair of binoculars, and I focus on certain things and push out the rest.”

“I have different shoes for different types of climbing, six or seven different shoes that I alternate.”

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

“My motivation is internal.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“When I was super young, we were hiking to the top of the 14,000-foot peaks in Colorado. You know, when I was in my early teens, we went to Bolivia and climbed to the tops of the highest mountains in the Alps. You know, those experiences were so exciting that when I came back to school, I was actually quite bored.”

“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.”

“I'm always climbing.”

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

“As I get more experienced, I love the idea of going into big mountains and doing big climbs. But the problem is, it's getting more dangerous, especially alpine climbing.”

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

“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 don't journal that much, honestly.”

“My earliest memory is being in a snow hole, aged two-and-a-half, with my dad somewhere up a mountain in a blizzard. I don't know what my dad saw in me - I was a geeky kid - but he had that philosophy: prepare the kid for the road, not the road for the kid.”

“I crave time in Yosemite like I crave food and water.”

“One of the reasons the Dawn Wall climb went so viral is that you get great Internet access on El Cap. It's like the best Internet access in all of Yosemite, so we had our phones with us.”