Apr 15, 2025

Kai Lightner is no stranger to the spotlight—or to this magazine. He’s been climbing since he was six, when he joined the climbing team at a gym in North Carolina. Four years later Lightner won his first national title, and the wins just kept coming. 

In 2016, while still in high school, Lightner wrote an essay for...

Apr 5, 2025

Last year, Babsi Zangerl did something no one has ever done before—she flashed a route on El Capitan. Thousands of feet of hard climbing with no falls. Her partner, Jacopo Larcher, came really close, taking just one fall during their ascent of Freerider. 

Zangerl has been a climber for over two decades, since she was...