The Thundercling Podcast

Whitney Pesek was 13 years old when she noticed her vision mysteriously turning blurry, sharp edges becoming soft. After a battery of tests she was diagnosed with macular degeneration, a condition that causes loss in the center of the field of vision. Despite her accelerating condition, a malady which she rarely discussed with others, Whitney discovered climbing and fell down the rabbit hole of obsession. After years of roping up and cruising boulderfields, she discovered a community of adaptive

Ryan Sewell causing pain to geologic formations. Photo by our own Fidi! Ryan Sewell, Denver via Texas, has been constructing the building blocks of a sustainable career in climbing since his early teenage years. Youth World Cup competitions, scrubbing holds in dingy gyms, ascending to a world-class outdoor status (V14/.14d), and finally wrestling with the notion of going pro or finding another route for a career in the industry. He eschewed the jet-setting hustle of becoming a professional

The top of Ariana after their first trip up the Diamond. "We didn’t send. Nina went back and fired it a week or so later. I did Turning Point the night after we talked," according to James. Episode one, touch down. On Thunderpod's inaugural episode, we speak with Nina Williams and James Lucas, Fidi and I in a living room in Denver, Nina and James sharing a couch in Boulder. It's pretty romantic. Nina and James charted entirely different trajectories through the climbing world. James lived out of a