AI disclosure: no AI was used in the writing or proofreading of this post. Rawposting.

On August 5th, 2026 I free climbed The Diamond, one of the most coveted alpine walls in the world. The two-year mission to climb this wall is something that changed my life.

I don't throw the words "changed my life" around easily, because I have extensive firsthand experience with life-changing events. When I was 17 I had a near death experience: while on my motorbike a drunk driver crashed into me at high speed. My friend who was also on the bike didn't survive. I barely escaped with my left leg intact. The good samaritans that immediately stopped at the accident site that day saved my life, as I recall wanting to slip away into death/coma but they convinced me to stay conscious.

Why my life was in danger

This story starts in the winter of 2025. I was suffering from paternal postpartum malaise. Yes, there is a male version of postpartum - it typically kicks in later than it does for women, but men just don't talk about it, so most of us don't know it's a thing[^1]. I don't have a history of depression, so this felt pretty severe. I never received any kind of formal diagnosis, but I suspect my symptoms classified as what would be called "light depression". Still, even knowing that didn't help make any of the symptoms disappear (which is in itself a symptom I guess, so my armchair diagnosis checks out IMO). It felt like I was standing at the edge of a precipice looking into a long downward trajectory of ever decreasing health and fitness levels. I dunno, maybe parenting in a foreign country is just hard?

I'd tried multiple things over the previous two years to try and improve my happiness levels but nothing was really working. One evening at the climbing gym I saw a note on the community board from a mountain guide (Brent) who took people ice climbing. I thought hey, might as well try one more thing, and I reached out. This was February 2025. His rates were reasonable but we had to reschedule multiple times due to weather. He asked how I wanted to process the refund - as a credit for something else or as cash back. When I read the credit question it just kinda popped into my head: "maybe he should guide me up The Diamond?".

About The Diamond

The Diamond is a feature I've been eyeing ever since my first forays into Rocky Mountain National Park several years ago. It's this massively intimidating vertical wall, high up in the alpine. To just get a glimpse of it you need to do a steep 4 mile / 6km hike at altitude. It never really struck me as something I could ever climb. Over time though, as the Rocky Mountains sucked me in and I started climbing more regularly post-kids, the name of the "easiest" line up the middle of face kept popping up during conversations. Looking back it seems kind of outrageous that I was considering it at the time given how unfit I was.

The Diamond was off limits in the 50s for being "too dangerous". However the ban was lifted in the 60s, and Duncan Ferguson and Chris Reveley made the first free ascent in 1977. A free ascent being the style of climbing where you don't pull on any fixed pieces of gear - you ascend only using your own body. They originally called it the Integral Route. A short time later (1978), Charlie Fowler free-soloed the route. When someone asked him how it was, he replied something along the lines of:

Eh… casual.

Preparation: the life-changing part

It was early April. I was climbing The Diamond at the end of August. I didn't really know what it involved, but I knew that it was going to be a very big day out and that I was not prepared. That was five months to completely turn my climbing fitness levels around. I was forced to adjust every aspect of my life that could impact my climbing performance:

• alcohol (drink less of it)
• weight (lose some)
• stress (try to deal with it better)
• food (eat less junk)
• and last but not least, figure out a physical training plan

I... kind of did all of that? The only things I really measured were weight and training, so here are two charts for that:

On the weight side I basically cut out sugar and ate less crap and I was able to get to a good level again. From there my weight went up again as I put on more red muscle mass, which is crucial for climbing endurance.

Training was without a doubt the hardest dimension to tackle. All of the other factors (alcohol, weight, food) were quite simple to weave into everyday life. But to prioritize time for climbing, I essentially had to juggle childrearing, a tech startup, relationships, home ownership and more. I refer to this as boulder juggling. I have a pet theory that boulder juggling is behind why so many people experience the happiness U-curve.

Had I been a bachelor, the training part would have been much simpler — I would have simply gone climbing. But I'm married with kids. I'm also a (naturalized) immigrant, so no family backup. To carve out a full day for training in this life phase often felt impossible given my constraints. So impossible in fact, that come June I emailed Brent (the guide) to call the whole thing off. Bleak! 😭

I'll spend a bit of time reflecting on what happened next. This was without a doubt a low point / nadir and a turning point.

Being somewhat demotivated having just cancelled the trip, I was pouring my heart out about my sad situation to my loving wife (L) when she suggested that my brother-in-law (C) fly up from L.A. to go on a trial climb with me. I wasn't sure if he'd be game, but I gave him a call and he said he'd come! Things were looking up. I felt that if I was able to do a big alpine day without too much difficulty, then I'd have better confidence in my ability to climb The Diamond. So C flew up from L.A. and we climbed Sykes' Sickle in Glacier Basin, RMNP.

If C hadn't come through for me on this trip, The Diamond wouldn't have happened.

Well that's not the whole story. It also wouldn't have happened without the epic person known as Brent from Smile Moutain Guides. An incredibly strong yet spritely climber, I've learnt so much from climbing with him and that's after almost two decades of climbing and training. Check out his profile. 100/100 would recommend.

The rest of this blog post becomes more of a technical account of how I actually pulled it off.

Evaluation

Closer to D-Day Brent wanted to evaluate my climbing ability before committing to such a long day on the wall with me. The "eval day" was a link up in Lumpy Ridge near Estes Park, CO. We climbed P1-3 of Loose Ends (5.9), then Cheap Date (5.10b), and finally Outlander (5.10c). This mimics the difficulty of the hard pitches on the Casual route, at a lower elevation with a shorter approach.

This was a stunning day out and I had a lot of fun.

Unfortunately bad weather rolled in twice in succession, and I was unable to climb The Diamond in the 2025 season. The route freezes up pretty easily. We agreed to try again next year.

Dealing with cramps

This issue deserves special mention. I started running into severe muscle cramp issues. By "severe" I mean imagine being on pitch 4 and your entire hand fuses shut due to non-painful muscle seizure, and needing to use the other hand to pry open your fingers so that you can continue climbing. Then, as soon as you make a certain type of movement, the hand seizes shut again and you need to pry it open again. This issue is not fully resolved, but the below steps significantly reduced the severity:

1. Take 400mg Magnesium Glycinate per Day
2. Check your blood Vitamin D levels and supplement if needed
3. Regular (daily) Yoga
4. Stay hydrated

Winter of '25/'26

This winter was the driest I've ever experienced in Colorado.

From Grok:

The winter of 2025–26 (roughly October 2025–March/April 2026) was Colorado’s worst on record for snow accumulation and snowpack, driven more by extreme warmth than by the absolute lowest precipitation totals.

A kind of weird side effect of this was that I emerged from winter in pretty good shape, as did many of my friends.

Second evaluation

It was now 2026. Brent and I scheduled a date for The Diamond. I opted to go for a prep/eval day again. This time we hit Eldorado Canyon and climbed West ridge-Long John Wall to Green Spur on Redgarden. We finished the day with Northcutt Start on The Bastille. I was feeling good.

D-Day

Due to insanely loose rock in the north chimney "approach" pitches, the safest way to climb The Diamond is to start so early that no sane person would start that early. Which is basically midnight. Starting a hike at midnight was more logistically challenging than I anticipated, and these are mostly notes to myself in case there's a next time. The primary source of logistical challenges is getting some sleep before the hike starts. Since the trailhead is ~2 hours' drive from my house this boiled down to two options: sleep until 21:30 and then drive through or pitch a tent near the trailhead and sleep until 23:30. I went with the former, and was very pleased to find a great campsite walking distance from the trailhead. It's first-come-first-served and there were lots of open sites on August 4th (a weekday).

I got there early, put on an eye mask, popped some melatonin and put on the audiobook version of Meditations, which knocked me right out. Woke up at 11pm half an hour early. Plenty of time to have second dinner and make my way to the trailhead. Just getting to the base of the climb is quite wonderful:

1. Steep 4 mile hike up to Chasm lake with ~2,200ft of elevation gain
2. Boulder field traverse to one of the many bivvy sites where you can leave your hiking pack, gear up and filter water from the lake. Drink 1 liter of water at the lake, and take 2 liters of water with you.
3. 0.5 miles of boulder hopping (600 ft elevation gain) to the glacier. Pro tip: hike steep boulder fields with your harness leg loops off to the side (not around your legs).
4. Rope up and head over the glacier to rock. Pro tip: you can use your nut pick / tool as an improv ice axe
5. Climb the north chimney pitches
6. Congrats, you are now at the base of the climb

Comments on the climbing

All the topos are quite deceiving, since the average length of the pitches is ~50m. This is what's known as a "rope stretcher". This effectively makes most pitches R rated, which means "expect serious injury if you fall when you should not, but you probably won't die". The traverse for example must have been around 40m and it has 3 pieces of pro, 2 of which are old pitons. One exception is the 5.9 finger crack (pitch 2), which was relatively short (30m?) and could be protected as one normally would. The 5.8+ dihedral however is a full 60m, so even with 19 cams you're only placing gear every 6-10 meters (since you won't be placing all 19 of those on the pitch). You generally don't want to be fiddling with nuts/stoppers if you can avoid it since time is of the essence on this route. Very sobering, and my biggest takeaway is that you should be comfortable leading trad in the 5.10c range before leading The Diamond.

Another aspect of the climb worth mentioning are the approach chimneys - they are notorious for loose rock. I was at the P3 anchor belaying my leader up P4. An old friend of mine Dirk Versveld once told me that you should avoid belaying directly below the leader whenever possible. If you know the story behind his tragic experience, you will know where this comes from. My belay was in a very awkward position, but nicely protected by a large rock face. As Brent was moving up and around the face, I decided to move around to the side a bit to a more comfortable position and to have better eyes on him, but I was laser focused: Brent had indicated that this pitch was the worst when it came to rock quality. He was pretty far up when I heard him shout "ROCK" and saw these football-sized rocks flying down the face. It was still dusk and they were sparking like mad as they fell. It was truly one of the most awesomely scary things I've ever witnessed - fiery pieces of granite hurtling towards me. I deftly moved to the side, and was able to watch the rocks fly past where I had just been moments before (or very near to where I had just been, not sure). Phew.

From the top of the climbing, you can summit or abseil/rappel down. The rappels are full length so you'll need to take a tagline with you for them. The rappel rings are quite big, so on our first rappel the figure eight for the tag line pulled through the rings and we were unable to retrieve our rope. It took about 30 minutes to ascend the rope, fix the setup and retrieve the rope. So whatever you do, don't use this setup for your tag line:

Rather, use what's known as the carabiner-block tagline system: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/3Mvy-SmsNSE

Appendix 1 - Software and tools

Training for this at my age and with kids required me to get really creative. Especially on things like road trips, I had to pull out all the stops to stay fit, maintain + build red muscle mass, and keep hands strong.

Hardware

• Pocket Monkii - portable TRX system created in Boulder and whenever there was a tree and some free time I would set this up and do reps. Unfortunately it looks like the guy has stopped making these.
• Beastmaker - spent hours on this at home in between chores
• Wall-mounted pull up bar - installed this in my study
• Nature Climbing portable hangboard - my beastmaker away from home

Software

• Push Scroll (this app was instrumental for staying fit when I was on the road and not able to get to put up the pocket monkii)
• Titan (I used this app to configure, execute and track custom workout routines primarily weight lockout sets 90º and 120º, hypertrophy pull up sets, weighted pull up sets and core blaster sets)
• Glow (daily yoga to keep cramps at bay and stay, best yoga app I've found - the level 2-3 classes are intense)

I'm proud to say some of these apps are built with PowerSync!

Appendix 2 - Notes from the day

Timing

11:50 - leaving trailhead 12:08 - top of telephone shortcut 12:38 - wooden bridge river crossing 1:00 - Jim grove cutoff 1:27 - chasm lake split 1:52 - privy before Chasm Lake 2:10 - chasm lake 2:35 - filtering water in far side of chasm lake 4:05 - base of north chimney 4:15 - starting up north chimney 5:43 - near miss - top of P4 of north chimney big rockfall triggered by leader 5:55 - broadway ledge 6:30 - starting P1 8:33 - top of P4 8:48 - leaving P4 belay 11:42 - top of almost table ledge 14:37 back to mills glacier 15:30 packing up big packs and hiking out 17:50 back at car

So pretty much an 18 hour day, car to car. And I think we were going as fast as you could without simuling and what not. Take at least 2,400 calories for food with energy gels and electrolyte powder. If you're prone to cramping, carry antacid tablets.

Here is the trail: https://www.gaiagps.com/map/?loc=14.0/-105.5858/40.2654&pubLink=yJMmsJS57iycj8TxFfw91oxK&trackId=0cdf6ebf141667e34db151007c295fa5

Prep List - leader

• Hiking pack
• Climbing pack
• 60m alpine rope
• 65m tagline (plus stuff sack)
• Harness / Helmet / rock shoes
• FA kit (+ tape and wag bag + sunscreen)
• Water filter
• Phone tether
• Rocky Talkies
• In reach
• Headlamp
• Rack
  • .1-3 dbls, #4
  • Stoppers 2-13, nut tool
  • Alpine draws x4
  • Short draws x2
  • Slings plus one non-locker x4
• Kit
  • Crack gloves
  • Grigri + locker
  • Reverso + locker
  • Microtrax + non lock
  • 3 HMS lockers
  • Dbl length sling /friction hitch + non lock
  • Gloves + non lock
  • Alpine runner + non lock
  • Triple sling + non lock
  • Cordelette + non lock
• Shorts for hiking
• Pants for climbing
• Sun hoody
• Wind layer
• Med soft shell
• Emergency puffy

Prep List - second

• Food
• Sunscreen
• Kit
  • Dbl sling or PAS + non lock
  • Friction hitch + non lock
  • 2 lockers
  • Reverso + locker
  • Grigri + locker
  • Crack gloves
  • Chalk bag
• Short shirt + long shirt
• Shorts + pants
• Headlamp
• Camelback
• Water filter
• Harness / Helmet / rock shoes
• Hiking pack
• Climbing pack
• Wind layer
• Med soft shell

Pitch beta:

• chimneys: when placing gear, keep the ropes high so as to avoid rockfall cutting the rope, and make sure the belayer is out of line of fire
• P3 Traverse - stay lower than you think! When you see the nest of tat on the horizon you know what to aim for.
• End of P3 belay - use .4/.5 to bypass all the shitty stoppers
• Top of P4 stop below fixed gear on a nice flat ledge. This will make the next pitch a full 60m but it’s worth it for the nice belays
• Crux pitch - pull the bulge to shallow hand jam with left hand, reach out far right for thin side pull which you use to place a nr 1 in said hand jam
• Final traverse - first move is super airy just lean across with entire body

Easter Egg

If you made it this far, chances are good you just scrolled to the bottom! Either way, here's a picture of me about to head up the crux pitch

And here's another, showing the climbing and rapell lines (kinda crazy how you can't tell it's a 1500ft/500m wall!):

And OMG on one of our final rappels the rope corkscrewed into a crack and we had to retrieve it.

When we made it to terra firma Brent handed me some candy (Nerd clusters) and it was just a funny moment: