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Enormocast 294: Simon Carter – Climbing Through the Lens

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On Episode 294 of the Enormocast, I connect to Katoomba, NSW in Australia- the heart of the Blue Mountains – to chat with photographer Simon Carter. Simon has been in the game as long as anyone currently active, and after four decades of producing some of the most iconic images in climbing, he’s published a retrospective: The Art of Climbing. After a demoralizing start in the mainstream world of photography, Simon began using his camera to capture climbing in the late 80s and early 90s and thereby found his muse. A State-promoted course in business planning resulted in Simon creating a selling a climbing calendar and voila, he was a professional. In the 40+ years since, Simon travelled the world shooting climbing, publishing photos, and writing guidebooks. He also worked through the shift from film to digital. Carter’s done more than anyone to bring the incredible beauty of Australian climbing to the world, and now he’s fighting a battle to keep two of its most legendary areas open to climbing.

The Art of Climbing at CNN

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Enormocast 293: Jim Ewing – The Quality of Life

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On Episode 293 of the Enormocast, I connect with paraclimber Jim Ewing. Jim grew up climbing in the storied days of 1980s North Conway in New Hampshire. In his formative climbing years, Ewing rubbed elbows with the likes of Randy Radcliff, Alison Osius, and Hugh Herr. He didn’t know it while eeking out a dirtbag life in New England, but that early friendship with Herr would become one of the most pivotal relationships of his life. Fast forward decades to Jim family-climbing in Cayman Brac, and a fateful day that resulted in a 60 foot ground fall and a broken body barely clinging to life. Later, while looking for solutions to a painfully destroyed ankle and leg, Jim found himself in the office of his old friend Hugh – now the preeminent inventor of leg prostheses in the world. Hugh laid out the argument for amputation, and Jim started down an experimental path to a better quality of life than he could have ever imagined while being stuffed into an ambulance in the Caribbean.

Augmented Documentary

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Enormocast 292: Hamish McArthur and Holly Toothill – Showing Up

Photos Sam Pratt
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On Episode 292 of the Enormocast, I sit down in a hotel in Squamish (Sḵwx̱wú7mesh) during the Arc’teryx Academy with Olympian Hamish McArthur and British competition climber Holly Toothill. I arrived in Squamish with Hamish booked and asked Holly to join at the last minute as a friend, teammate, and observer of Hamish’s performance in Paris. Hamish finished 5th in the combined at the 2024 Olympics. The conversation ranges from examining their friendship, competitive styles, to Hamish’s Olympic experience. Hamish also reveals that his path to the Olympics was never a dream, and he was sometimes even reluctant to pursue the contest. But when he got in, he knew he would show up and do his best. Turns out that showing up is his superpower.

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