Blake Herrington

Date of Birth:
April 9, 1986

Hometown:
Leavenworth, WA

What is your primary means of adventure, AKA what gets you most psyched?
Climbing long technical rock routes in remote places, but I also love to boulder, ice climb, ski, and sport climb.

Invent your dream adventure by combining five places, disciplines, pitches, peaks, environments, etc. and stacking them together into a combination. Why did you pick each part?
I would ski tour into a remote granite-ish peak and climb a beautiful thin chimney of bomber blue ice to warm up while the sun emerges, then here’s my dream 5-pitch route:

1. The 80m crux dihedral pitches of Moonlight Buttress would liked as P1, then we’d leave most of the climbing rack and proceed onward.
2. The second pitch would be a combination of the final 2 massively overhanging cobblestone pitches on Spain’s famous Fiesta de los Biceps routes.
3. The third pitch would a 40m 5.12c granite corner called “Eye of the Tiger”, which is part of a new route climbed by two friends and I in the North Cascades.
4. The I’d crescendo with 40m TPMV route from Index, WA which is a .13a journey featuring immacualte 5.11+ climbing culminating in a V7 boulder problem above some small gear.
5. The final “cool down” pitch 5 would be climbing all 3 pitches of Index, WA’s “Davis-Holland” route (5.10c) in one 78m lead.

Describe 5 climbs, trips, or moments that have defined you as a mountain athlete:

1. My first new route in the mountains was a long chossy ridge climb on a peak towering 7,000+ feet above the tiny cabin I was living in for the summer in the Cascades. It helped give me confidence to try new routes.
2. Completing a hard new freeclimb on stellar granite in SE Alaska (The Iron Curtain, 5.12a in the Mendenhall Towers) shortly after a very disappointing trip to Patagonia encouraged me to keep pursuing big mountains in wild places.
3. Standing on top of Cerro Pollone in Patagonia with Scott Bennett as we made the first complete/first free ascent of a dream route up the West Pillar, and made the 2nd ascent of the peak and the east summit, is one of my lifetime highlights.
4. Learning about the death of a friend and someone I’d looked up to, while he had been climbing with another partner of mine, has helped inspire me to value and cherish my friends and fellow climbers.
5. Sending The Full Amandla, a 40m 5.13d at Index’s lower Town Wall, has been the culmination of three years of very consistent climbing at Index and granite bouldering progression.

Describe your most memorable night in the mountains:
Freezing between two friend with no sleeping bag, bivy tarp, or jacket, while huddled on Mt. Stuart in Washington during a raging wind and ice storm amid the first ascent of Gorillas in the Mist.

What has scared or intimidated you as a mountain athlete?
Rockfall and icefall.

What would your adventure partners be most surprised to learn about you from before the time when they met you?
I was a serious high school rower, and rowed on the crew team in my first year at Western Washington University. The following year, the university budget cuts meant that the team was dropped.

What are your top 5 all-time favorite pieces of CAMP equipment?

1. Corsa Nanotech Axe
2. Blitz Harness
3. Ovo belay device
4. Nano 22 Carabiner
5. Air Harness

Why are you a CAMP athlete?
Lightweight yet bomber gear is key to succeeding on big routes, or remote climbs where every gram counts against your odds of success.

Tick List

It meant a lot to me when I climbed:

1. Fall Line – a 5.13- new route at Trout Creek, Oregon
2. Pretty Hate Machine, a V8 I completed in one session
3. Conde Dracula, an 8a/.13b I climbed first go, my first flash at that grade
4. The West Face of Mt. Bute for the FFA, with Madaleine Sorkin – I’d been dreaming about visiting the peak for a few years
5. The North Ridge of Mt. Stuart wth my wife Allison

The adventure, route or race I had to train the hardest for was:
Full Amandla, Index

The adventure, route or race that wrecked me the most was:
Climbing a 24-hour multiple peak linkup in Rocky Mountain National Park with Scott Bennett

I most want an all-expenses-paid trip to:
The Trango Towers – with bodyguards and camp/travel sanitation crews also provided.

My short list of climbing or adventure goals this year:

1. Return to the Bugaboos and make a free ascent of Sendero Norte on Snowpatch Spire.
2. Freeclimb El Capitan
3. Climb harder routes in the North Cascades