Notch Peak Base Climb.
Celebrating 20 years of partnership with @highsteph by looking back at some projects we were lucky enough to come along for.
Notch peak is the second tallest vertical cliff in North America, right behind El Cap, in the rugged desert of Utah. Adventures style climbing at its finest, on sharp dolomitic limestone where trusting your rope is crucial.
In 2013, Steph made the second ascent of the route Fin du Monde and flew off the top in a wingsuit, with her late husband Mario.
📹ladzinski @andy_mann
Honoring the memory of Mario Richard
#mammut #risewiththemountain #climbing #basejump #throwbackthursday
It breaks my heart to share this—Eric Odenthal, beloved Moab and SoCal local, and owner/operator of Windgate Adventures guide business in Moab lost his home and his sweet dog Chloe in a fire yesterday. He is starting over from nothing, and Chloe was everything to him. If you have climbed with Eric or worked with him as a guide in Moab, you know he’s one of the most genuine, positive people around, and he’s unfailingly generous and encouraging to everyone he meets. We can’t bring Chloe back, but can try to help support him in getting back on his feet 🙏🏻💔Gofundme link is at my profile.
@windgate_adventures_moab@eric_odenthal
Castleton BASE Climb, 2008
I learned to skydive and then BASE jump in 2007. In 2008, I climbed Concepcion, one of the hardest cracks in the desert which required basically free soloing a wide hands splitter for the upper portion of the route, and I felt I was strong enough to free solo the North Face of Castleton safely and with confidence.
I thought it would be the most aesthetic experience to free solo the North Face route and jump off the top of Castleton, no rope.
After a training ascent with a partner and a rope, I entombed my BASE rig in a cave on the summit so I could climb with only a chalk bag and a windbreaker.
We didn’t have drones then, or any access to a helicopter, and so the BASE jump was shot by my future and late husband Mario doing a perfectly timed flyby of the tower in a Cessna 182 (the Skydive Moab jump plane at the time), with a cameraman shooting out the open cargo door in a single, don’t miss it🤞🏻take.
This magical experience set me off on a quest of BASE climbing the most inspiring desert towers, in many styles—whatever seemed most aligned with the nature of each one 🧗🏻♀️🪂 It remains one of the climbs I hold closest to my heart ♥️
@ospreypacks@yeti@gnarlynutrition
Ziji BASE Climb, from the Perfect Circle project: climbing the most beautiful routes on desert towers and jumping off 🧗🏻♀️🪂
Ziji is one of, if not THE, most gorgeous and quintessential desert routes, and the jump from King of Pain is pure gold. This one was so special to me 💎🧡
📹 @ladzinski@mammutna@yeti@tenayaclimbing
Imagine standing at the edge of a cliff in a wingsuit, about to jump. What’s going through your mind? I asked Steph Davis.
She describes it as very emotional. And, you obviously can’t go backwards. “It’s a very powerful commitment,” she said.
Steph is a professional climber, BASE jumper and wingsuiter who has freed El Cap in a day and the Salathe Wall, free soloed the Longs Peak Diamond and put up first ascents in Patagonia, Pakistan, and the Arctic.
But Steph didn’t grow up in the mountains. She grew up in the suburbs playing classical piano, not really belonging anywhere, until one day in college someone asked if she wanted to go climbing, and that was it. She walked away from law school after a week, lived out of a car, and built a life that most people couldn’t imagine. People often attribute her life to her being fearless when in reality, it’s that she was willing to listen to really what fit her.
We talk about what it feels like to stand at the edge of a cliff before a jump & how there’s no top roping in BASE jumping. How she thinks about fear not as something to overcome, but as information. The discipline it takes to walk away when conditions aren’t right, even when everyone else is doing the thing. And, we talk about why staying true to yourself will always matter more than performing for anyone else.
🎙️ Episode 14, Defying Gravity with Steph Davis: Free Soloing, BASE Jumping, and Living a Life that Fits is out now wherever you get your podcasts — link in bio to listen.
📸 Photo credit:
Slide 1: Keith Ladsinski
Slide 2: @jimmychin
Slide 3: @ianmitchard
Slide 4: @jimmychin
#stephdavis #rockclimbing #basejumping #wingsuit #freesolo
I’ve stepped away from the media for the last 2 weeks, with the exception of watching the Buddhist monks and Aloka finish their walk for peace across the US. I’ve been struggling really hard with feelings of despair and hopelessness about the world, starting in 2016 and becoming a constant feeling of pain more and more recently. Feeling like humans don’t care about other humans or living beings or the world, seeing Americans fall into hate and division instead of trying to do better. Seeing the monks make this sacrifice to walk 2300 miles with so much gentle strength and purity of intention, and more than that, watching so many Americans show up for them, has broken something and given me a new feeling of hope. I’ve cried more tears in the last 2 weeks than I have in years. We all want peace and we need to stop allowing ourselves to be divided. You can break a stick easily over your knee, but you can’t break a bundle. May you and all beings be healthy, happy and at peace.
Archives and Stories EP.15
“Climbing is as close as we come to flying.” 🇺🇸 Steph Davis
Never asked for permission.
Never waited for a lane to open.
Walked straight into the desert, into the towers, into the wind, and built her own category.
Trad climbing in the 90s and 2000s still carried this quiet mythology. Big walls. Sandstone spires. Old ghosts of men who wrote the rules.
Steph didn’t argue with the mythology. She climbed inside it and rewrote the script mid-pitch.
Cracks that split the sky. Towers that looked like they should not be touched.
She moved on them with this eerie calm, like fear was a language she understood but refused to speak out loud.
Every ascent felt less like conquest and more like conversation. Rock to skin. Breath to void. Control stitched over chaos.
And then she went further.
Free ascents. Solos. Wingsuit exits into nothing.
She blurred the border between climber and philosopher, athlete and poet.
Not reckless. Not macho. Precise.
Intentional.
A woman choosing risk on her own terms in a culture that still tried to package women as careful, quiet, safe.
That’s the revolution.
Steph didn’t just climb hard routes. She expanded the emotional vocabulary of climbing.
She made space for vulnerability, loss, love, grief, obsession. She wrote about it. Spoke about it.
Lived it in public. Every tower became a page. Every jump a sentence. Every landing a reminder that freedom is never clean, never tidy, always earned.
For a generation of women watching, the message was electric: you don’t have to fit the mold. You don’t have to shrink to belong.
You can be fierce and reflective. Technical and wild. Grounded and airborne in the same lifetime.
She’s a frequency.
A pulse that runs through modern climbing culture. Every woman tying in at the base of something intimidating carries a fragment of that signal.
Step up. Breathe. Trust your hands.
And go. 🖤🧗♀️
#builtforthewild #ad
@highsteph
#girlclimber #womenwhoclimb #climbingwomen #sheclimbs #climblikeagirl #rockclimbingwomen #femaleclimbers #boulderinggirls #climbinglife #womeninadventure #outdoorwomen #strongwomenoutdoors
Mermoz, Patagonia.
The mountains are where we look for truth. Humans can only be there if they are humble. The only place I know that’s always safe.
Truth is simple but it’s not easy.
There’s no world in which little children belong in jails. My heart is broken for the innocents.
First, they came for the others…
