With His Latest Crazy Ascent, Connor Herson Steps into Rock Climbing’s Limelight

It’s an annoyance that many wunderkind athletes must navigate: having a pesky journalist compare you to an older, more accomplished star. Every awesome up-and-coming American skier is the next Lindsey Vonn, every basketball prodigy is the next LeBron.

Rock climber Connor Herson has dealt with this since he was a child.

“I’ve heard the comparison to Tommy Caldwell once or twice,” Herson, 22, told me on a recent call. “It’s an honor to be compared to someone like that, even if I don’t know if I’m at his level yet.”

The likeness to Caldwell is, of course, an easy way for extremely casual climbing fans (yours truly included) to understand Herson’s importance in a sport known for its opaque language and minutiae. Like Caldwell, Herson is among the very few to have free climbed the hardest routes on El Capitan in Yosemite. Herson freed The Nose back in 2018 when he was just 15 years old and still wearing braces. In 2024, Herson teamed up with Caldwell to free climb The Heart, another punishing route up the cliff.

“When it comes to the climbs I do, I don’t want to compare it to what anyone else is doing,” Herson added. “Comparing yourself to others isn’t productive.”

I’m inclined to agree. After his latest climbing feat, Herson no longer seems like the sport’s star of the future, a youngster who is poised to be the next big thing.

Herson is already a star for climbing’s current era. His time is now.

A First Ascent of a Challenging Granite Wall

This past summer, Herson recorded the first-ever ascent of a vertical slab of granite outside of Squamish, British Columbia, called Drifter’s Escape. The route is about halfway up a very famous 3,000-foot granite dome called Stawamus Chief, which, over the years, has been a proving ground for the world’s best rock climbers.

How anyone ascended Drifter’s Escape truly boggles the mind. The rock looks completely sheer with nary a hand or foothold in sight. Whatever bumps or rock flakes the cliff once had were buffed smooth by glacial erosion over the course of millions of years. And the route is a “trad” climb, meaning Herson had to haul up all of his removable safety gear.

Yet he somehow climbed up it.

“It’s harder than anything I’ve ever done,” he said.

Herson said the key to ascending the rock wall is two shallow vertical cracks running parallel up the length of the pitch. He crimped his fingers and pointed his toes into the two cracks to propel himself skyward. And midway up the ascent, Herson encountered an unbelievably challenging crux.

“You have to move your right hand from a very low hold to a higher hold, but there’s nowhere to put your right foot,” Herson said. “You have to do something called a Pogo. You kick your right foot to build momentum, and get a few seconds where your body is in balance, and you can then move your hand.”

Sheesh. I sometimes lose my balance while walking my nine-pound Schnauzer.

Herson spent several weeks at the Stawamus Chief trying to complete Drifter’s Escape alongside his friend and climbing partner Ethan Salo. They hung out on the narrow rock ledge at the route’s base, scouting the rock, cooking food, and enjoying the views.

“It was like a typical college-kid summer,” Herson said. He would know—Herson is a few months shy of wrapping up his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering at Stanford University.

Herson made multiple attempts on the route and, like most climbers, fell while mastering each challenging move. Prior to his successful ascent, he fell lower on the pitch and assumed it wouldn’t be his day. On his next attempt, Herson’s mind went blank as he pulled and pushed himself upward.

“I started climbing and noticed I wasn’t really thinking about anything, which was helpful,” he said. “It allowed me to enter a flow state as I got higher on the rock. It allowed me to throw away all expectations and to take each move one at a time, which is what allowed me to do it.”

Herson celebrated the successful ascent that night with some laughs and high fives in the parking lot.

How to Classify a Crazy Hard Climb?

You might assume that a 22-year-old would immediately share news of their greatest sporting achievement on social media. Herson, however, is not your typical member of Generation Z.

For months, he kept mum about his ascent of Drifter’s Escape. As the first person to complete it, Herson was charged with rating it on the Yosemite Decimal System (YDS), the grading system for rock climbing routes. And he wanted to make sure that the final number he gave Drifter’s Escape was fair.

“Giving things a number is always a little bit scary,” he said. “I did other hard climbs around the world and talked to other people before I was ready.”

In late January, Herson finally unveiled his rating: 5.15a. For those who don’t speak YDS, that translates to really super-duper flippin’ hard. 

“It’s strange to quantify a climb because each one has its own movements,” Herson said. “It takes a few iterations to settle on what a grade is.”

You may have stumbled through YDS ratings in stories on Climbing.com and wondered to yourself, how do you differentiate between a 5.13a and a 5.14b? The numbers (5.11, 5.12, 5.13) and letters (a, b, c, d) tacked onto the grade denote differences in difficulty.

But this grade is subjective, and is reliant on the first successful climber to set the rating. After that, subsequent climbers can try to repeat the route and then either verify or dispute the original score.

Since Herson is one of the world’s very best, very few peers will ever be good enough to critique his YDS rating of Drifter’s Escape. Imagine if Claude Monet completed Woman with a Parasol, only to allow other Impressionist painters to recreate every delicate brushstroke and then opine on whether it is a masterpiece.

“It’s challenging to propose something like that,” Herson said. “If someone comes along and disagrees with me, that’s OK.”

Since Herson made Drifter’s Escape public, climbing forums have been abuzz with critiques and hot takes on his YDS score. It’s the first time a 5.15 has been proposed for a trad climb. Will someone try to repeat the route and downgrade it? Is 5.15a fair? Was it really that hard?

Herson said he’s not focused on the chatter. He’d rather remember Drifter’s Escape for the pogo, the views, and the camaraderie and fun he experienced high on the ledge.

“I’ll always remember our moments of goofing around, of loud singing, and really fun moments,” he said. “It’s funny that my ascent is getting press right now, but what really stands out are those moments of having fun.”