When Kalel Chester is on a boulder, climbing 50-plus feet off the ground, he prefers to be untethered. The crash pads below would not be enough to protect him should he fall at this height, but he’s not scared.
When he’s climbing with ropes, Chester said he doesn’t feel the same mental clarity as when he’s free climbing.
“You get into this flow state and it’s really meditative,” Chester said. “It gets you to really focus on where you are, what you’re doing, your breathing (and) your environment. You get really engrossed in the details of one singular face — all the individual crystals and textures on the rock.”
Chester has been climbing for six years and is a member of UO’s Climbing Team. He trains indoors on the rock wall with the team two days a week, but he’s most in his element when he’s climbing outdoors, specifically when he’s highball bouldering.
“Climbing engages your mind in a lot of ways you don’t necessarily get to do as much in your everyday life,” Chester said. “We spend a lot of time studying and working, but we don’t focus a lot on balance or presence in ourselves or breathing. All this stuff is really essential to the human condition.”
On the weekends, Chester and a few members of the climbing team drive out to Oakridge, Sweet Home or Smith Rock to climb. There isn’t much climbing development in the Willamette Valley, so Chester gets creative when scoping out a spot.
“I’ve spent a lot of time on Google Maps looking for potential rock features,” Chester said. “When I find one I’ll go drive out and hike up to the feature. Usually I have to do some development and clean a bunch of moss and stuff off the rock to make the climbing feasible.”
Sometimes, after spending up to two days developing a face, Chester will realize the rock is too soft to climb. The wet climate in the Willamette Valley can make outdoor climbing around Eugene difficult and dangerous. The weather alone often makes climbing impossible.
“When it’s pouring rain we either go to Smith Rock because it’s drier in the desert, or we go to a cave just outside of Oakridge,” Chester said. “It’s just so full of rat shit that it’s kind of a miserable place to be.”
Outdoor climbing has motivated Chester to explore in and outside of Oregon. He’s done climbing trips to California and the Colorado Rockies, but before he started climbing, he said he wasn’t interested in traveling.
“In middle school I was a gamer kid and I just sat in my house and never left,” Chester said. “I didn’t think traveling had any purpose because I was like, ‘Why would I travel somewhere when I could look at a photo of it?’ Looking back on that, it seems insane.”
When Chester first discovered climbing, he struggled to become fully immersed in the sport because of its financial demands. But after he was offered a scholarship from Elevation Bouldering Gym, he hit the ground running.
As a senior in high school, Chester competed in the USA Climbing Circuit, but he opted to focus on the Northwest Collegiate Climbing Circuit when he came to UO. He said the highly competitive nature of USAC had become extremely mentally taxing.
“I put too much of my mental health weight in results,” Chester said. “I did really well in the first few series, but when I got to nationals it just wasn’t my day and I did poorly, which kind of put me in a downward spiral.”
This year, Chester plans to dip his toe back into the USAC collegiate circuit. As a junior physics and data science double major, he believes this is the last year he’ll have time for USAC.
After college, Chester doesn’t intend to continue competing, but he hopes to move somewhere that will allow climbing to be a constant in his life. For Chester, climbing isn’t just a sport, it’s a lifestyle.
