Sasha DiGiulian has spent two decades at the top of her sport: world championship wins, big-wall first ascents everywhere from Madagascar to Spain, and — at 33 — the first female free ascent of The Direct Line (5.13d), the longest free route on El Capitan in Yosemite. Now based in Boulder, Colorado, she's also a founder, author and Ironman finisher. A new interview in Outside magazine's Fall 2026 issue explains how she keeps it all going.
Her answer, in short: stop chasing balance. DiGiulian describes her life as 'operating in the chaos' rather than resisting it, prioritising week by week instead of pretending everything stays even. A turning point came in 2013, when climbing legend Reinhold Messner sketched the 5.14b big wall Bellavista on the back of a wine menu at a Salt Lake City dinner and told her to go climb it. She had zero big-wall experience — she learned to jumar while hanging thousands of feet off the ground in the Dolomites, with climbing partner Edu Marín shouting instructions in Spanish. She chose that trip over that year's World Games, and it reshaped her career towards outdoor adventures rather than competition circuits.
The interview doesn't gloss over the hard parts. In 2020, after the first of five hip surgeries, she doubted she'd ever climb 5.14 again — and had a panic attack the day before hiking in to attempt Rayu in Sweden, alongside Matilda Söderlund and Brette Harrington. That trip became her proof she could still push herself as a professional climber. She's also opened up about disordered eating from her competition days, saying learning to properly fuel her body — and the ingredient sourcing and supply-chain knowledge from running her nutrition bar company — became a form of recovery, like 'a small business degree'.
Her training week is punishing but instructive for anyone eyeing big mountain goals: five cardio days mixing trail running, road biking and swimming, plus four or five climbing sessions — two to three hours in the garage followed by 90 minutes of strength work. Mentally, she credits compartmentalising (with a Taylor Swift reference: 'I Can Do It With a Broken Heart') and staying open to whatever the next chapter holds.
Why should a traveller care? Because DiGiulian's story doubles as a guide to some of the world's great climbing destinations — Yosemite's El Capitan, the Dolomites' Bellavista, the Swedish big walls of Rayu — and a reminder that adventure goals are built through adaptability, not perfect conditions. If her comeback arc tempts you towards your first multi-pitch outing, start small: hire a certified guide, learn rope skills on the ground before you need them in the air, and pick an approachable crag rather than a 3,000-foot wall. Inspiration, as DiGiulian shows, is only useful once you've done the boring prep.
