Climbing
Find out why this pro climber is tackling bigger challenges then ever in 2017.
The first four months of Sasha DiGiulian's newfound freedom were a hectic whirlwind of travel. After graduating from Columbia University in May 2016, she visited Colorado, France, Montana and Brazil, where she completed a first ascent of a hard new 650m (2,132ft) route called Planeta dos Macacos with Felipe Camargo.
This was a huge accomplishment for DiGiulian, but hardly a blip on her schedule as she moved on to Rio for the Olympics to receive the news of climbing's inclusion in the 2020 Games. Yet while this flurry of activity and freedom was just what she craved after studying, it was also hard to focus.
So after moving to Boulder, Colorado in the autumn, she started the new year with a commitment to narrow in on her passion, which meant being optimistic about the present and not worrying about the future. For DiGiulian, it's sometimes hard to say no to cool new opportunities.
"It's easy to stretch myself thin with trips and events," she says. "But ultimately, I want what I do to be meaningful."
For DiGiulian, what's meaningful is both excelling in climbing and pursuing her passion for public speaking and advocacy work.
"While I have many goals that are endemic to climbing and exploration, becoming more of a voice for the platforms that I believe in is certainly a goal of mine,” says DiGiulian, who was just appointed to the board of the Women's Sports Foundation and also serves as a global ambassador for Right to Play, Up2Us Sports and the American Alpine Club.
DiGiulian is using her voice as a way to encourage youth development through sports; by using climbing as her platform, she hopes to serve as a voice for female empowerment.
Leading and inspiring the sport aside, there's more focused efforts on the docket for this little powerhouse in terms of climbing, both on and off the rock.
"I strongly believe that climbing a lot in general – whether inside or outside – does improve your climbing to an extent," says DiGiulian, who explains that it's easy to fall into a repeatable cycle. "This may be habitually trying the same climbs, or regularly doing the same set of exercises that activate the same muscles and areas of the brain. So then, we often find ourselves in a plateau."
To attack this plateau in performance, DiGiulian began working with Patxi Usobiaga, a professional climber from Northern Spain who has an impressive record of winning countless competitions on the international circuit between 2005 and 2009. This lead DiGiulian to train in Spain with Usobiaga in February.
"The timing fit into my schedule as a block for me to be in the gym," says DiGiulian, whose goal is to complete a route located on the giant, blue limestone cliffs of Oliana, Spain that has only seen a few male ascents. This training block, which consisted of four eight-hour training days and two outside climbing days a week, was aggressive, but a big learning experience for DiGiulian.
"The most difficult part of my training has been trusting the process," says DiGiulian. "I don't feel instantaneous gains. Actually, a lot of days, I've been feeling worse at climbing than before I began training."
But rather than shy away from the pain and suffering of hard training sessions, she's working toward not attaching emotion to the pain and simply focusing on the task at hand.
"This has also heightened my awareness to the power of believing," she says. "No matter how hard I train, if I don't believe in what I'm doing, I won't realise the success that I want to feel."
The true test will be in her upcoming year of jam-packed trips, which starts with her return to Spain in late March, followed by some big-wall projects that will take her to Tibet, Peru, possibly Madagascar and Yosemite.
But for DiGiulian, making sense of it all is simple. "I want to see what happens when I go beyond what I have," she says, “And explore what I didn't even know existed within me."
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