EMILY HARRINGTON
Emily Harrington is climbing up a wall outside her condo in Squaw Valley near the base of the ski resort. She spent the morning backcountry skiing, and now she’s getting some climbing training in. Harrington, 31, is a professional rock climber, so technically, this is her job, but it’s also just what she loves doing.
“I wake up and I’m so psyched to be living in Tahoe,” she says. “I can walk out my door, and everything I want to do is right here.”
Harrington was born in the rock-climbing paradise of Boulder, Colo. She first started scaling walls in an indoor climbing gym at age 10, and by her teenage years, she was winning climbing competitions and earned a place on the USA Climbing Team. A five-time U.S. National Sport Climbing champion, she graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder and was prepping for law school when the North Face offered her a role on its global athlete team.
By her mid-20s, she had expanded her resume to include ice climbing, big-wall climbs and mountaineering. Today, she’s one of the most decorated climbers in the world, with first female ascents of multiple 5.14 (high-difficulty) sport climbs and a free-climb up El Capitan’s 40-pitch Golden Gate route. She’s summited Everest and climbed and skied Tibet’s Cho Oyu, the sixthtallest peak in the world.
There’s a reason she chooses to live in California. “California has the best granite in the world and accessible climbing literally year round,” she says. Here are her tips for climbing up a wall near you.