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In one of our recent Routefinding meetings, our photo editor mentioned a documentary series called “How Surfers Get Paid” by
Stab Magazine. The series is a deep dive into the surf industry, featuring candid, in-depth interviews with professional surfers, athlete managers, entrepreneurs and creatives. Watching it made me reflect on our own industry and the changes I’ve witnessed throughout my career. I get asked fairly often for advice from young climbers on how to make a living as a climber, so I’ve been musing on this topic for a while.
Thirty years ago, the formula was simple: enter competitions, climb hard routes, get featured in magazines and secure sponsorship contracts. Boom! You’re a professional climber. Simple didn’t mean easy, though. While surfers were signing contracts for six-figure salaries, climbing professionally back then meant living frugally, with little money and a lot of risk.
Before social media, magazine culture drove professional climbing. Today, there are more opportunities and there’s a lot more money floating around. But for nearly everyone I know, it’s become a serious hustle.
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I often talk to climbers who are crushing grades and climbing routes I couldn’t have imagined in my early days. I wish I could tell them that money automatically follows the sends. These days, though, the ability to make money in climbing is less tied to sheer physical performance and more tied to business skills, creativity and a relentless willingness to hustle. But the truth is, many of the best climbers out there either have some independent income source or they live in constant fear of financial ruin.
Compared to sports like surfing, pro climber incomes are pretty humble. The top-paid climber earns what a mid-level doctor makes. I’ve been fortunate to be among the more successful professional climbers in the US, and when people ask about my income, I like to compare it to a badass plumber’s. So, how did it work for me?
In my teens and early 20s, I lived a dirtbag existence. That was only possible because my parents—an insurance salesperson and a schoolteacher—lived frugally, owned their home and gave me a safe place to retreat to when disaster struck (which it did, more than once).
In my late 20s and 30s, I caught the tail end of what I’d call the “golden age” of full-time climbing. Climbing hard meant magazines and companies reached out, and sponsorship checks would arrive. Being among the top-paid climbers in the US still meant living a pretty meager existence by normal standards, but it was just enough to scrape by.
Then came nearly a decade chasing a risky dream: the Dawn Wall. During that time, I was making enough to keep going, but not enough to plan for things like retirement or kids’ college tuition. I managed to acquire a home, but only because I built it myself for a fraction of what it would’ve cost to buy one.
Completing the Dawn Wall changed everything for me professionally. I wrote a book. I started doing corporate speaking. A feature film was made about the climb. I became a spokesperson for the companies I’d represented for years. It may seem like a stroke of luck—and in many ways it was—but it also multiplied the hustle in my life. For years after, I barely climbed at all and worked 60–80 hours a week. Adapting my career and leveraging my climbing accomplishments required hard work, flexibility, confidence and a willingness to put myself out there.
When people ask me today how to become a professional climber, I think they’re often hoping for a life hack. In reality, it’s hard to make it work as a professional climber. To gain insight into how other climbers are navigating the modern era, I caught up with a few pros to hear their stories. Each of these climbers started off with a shared goal: to create a life that allowed for as much time climbing as possible.
Keenan Takahashi has been climbing for 17 years and made a living as a professional climber for several years before starting his own apparel company,
Antigrav, in 2023. After years of making a living from sponsorship, Keenan began to realize professional climbing felt unsustainable. He felt disillusioned by working for large companies for low pay, with little room for growth.
At Antigrav, he gives a significant portion of his earnings to his athletes, standing behind his opinion that the climbers who are pushing the sport and driving the culture deserve more compensation. Plus, as the owner of a small company, Keenan now gets to take some pressure off his own performance and feels like he has other outlets for his creativity. “Rather than feeling like I ‘should’ be climbing or doing certain things that sponsors might want,” Keenan said, “it feels right to be focused on climbing what inspires me and not worrying about what other people are doing. Even though I work way more than I ever have, I am climbing my best now.”
Next, I called up
Colin Haley, a real climber’s climber who keeps it simple. “The point of being a professional climber is to climb as much as possible. So if the hustle and toil of the professional game keeps you from climbing as much as you want, it kind of defeats the purpose,” he told me on the phone. Colin has been making money from climbing sponsorships for the last 18 years, and doesn’t recommend people get into climbing for the money.
The last person I interviewed was
Anna Hazelnutt, who represents a completely different and very modern approach. In some ways, she may have figured it out best. When she first tried to become a professional climber, she admits she didn’t yet have the skills to stand out, so she leaned into creative and business skills she already possessed. “I didn’t climb strong at first,” she explained, “so I didn’t get picked up by sponsors. None of this happened until I had a big enough social media following, and then I was able to have a lot of time to get better at climbing.” She built her audience through Instagram,
YouTube and an OnlyFans page featuring her “gnarly climber feet” in spectacular locations. In the early days, she worked relentlessly, producing online content constantly. Now the effort has paid off, giving her the freedom to climb full-time.
What emerged from these conversations is a clear difference between old-school and new-school approaches. The old guard were “soul climbers” driven by passion, ethics and a personal code. The new generation seems lighter, more playful and more comfortable being a brand—putting themselves out there as public figures. And maybe that’s the evolution of climbing itself.
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