El Capitan

November 27, 2025November 27, 2025

Enormocast 316: Chantel Astorga – What Would Voytek Do?

Art: Chantel Astorga, Lower right photo: Michael Kennedy

On Episode 316 of the Enormocast I sit down with alpinist Chantel Astorga. Though Chantel didn’t grow up in a climbing family, it was her dad who lit the fire for climbing by giving a tween Chantel a book on the Alaska Range. Then an encounter with the writings of the enigmatic Polish climber Voytek Kurtyka in a Salt Lake City library sealed her fate. Voytek’s evangelism for the “night-naked” style of fast and light alpinism became Chantel’s lodestone as she pursued her mountain skills first through skiing, then ice climbing, then forays to the Alaska Range. In 2021, it all came together when she soloed the Cassin Ridge on Denali and found her own “contact with the mystical” (Kurtyka). Since then, she’s become a sought after partner for ascents around the globe. Though Astorga recently joined the North Face Team, she spent most of her climbing career funding her own way through her work as an avalanche forecaster. Pretty damn old school.

The Art of Suffering by Voytek Kurtyka

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November 3, 2025November 18, 2025

Enormocast 315: Kate Kelleghan – Turbocharged Life

Photos: Abbey Bergh, Kate Kelleghan, Julien Scherliss, James Lucas

On Episode 315 of the Enormocast, I sit down with Boulder-born Yosemite-trained speed climbing maestra, Kate Kelleghan. Kate came to climbing at 20 despite, or maye TO spite, her climbing dad. A youth of dark eye make-up, music, art, and smoke-sessions behind the school finally gave way to a life of climbing adventure when dad took Kate up the 3rd Flatiron as a teen. Then, as was her way, she leapt into the deep end and became a CLIMBER, eventually moving through the gym to finding trad climbing on the cliffs above Boulder like Castle Rock and Eldo. Then she fell into the quirky world of the Naked Edge speed games eventually creating, setting, then breaking her own women’s speed record. Eventually, Yosemite pulled her further west where bigwall speed climbing was her future. This path culminated (for now) when Kate and Laura Pineau became the only women (so far) to ever complete the Yosemite Triple: Half Dome, El Capitan, and Watkins in a day.

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December 28, 2024September 24, 2025

Enormocast 299: Nina Caprez – Two Roads Just as Fair

On Episode 299 of the Enormocast, I sit down in a fine hotel suite with the elegant Nina Caprez. We met up at the Arc’teryx Academy in Squamish, and after a Co-MC gig on the main stage the previous night, Nina and I reviewed our performance and then got down to business reviewing the 9 intervening years since our last Enormocast. Among other things, Nina climbed El Nino on El Cap, got shut down on the Nose, fell in love, had a kid, moved into a surplus military vehicle, and got pregnant a 2nd time. But that’s not all! She also had an epiphany that perhaps, just perhaps, there was more to life than the next big climbing trip. We now get a Nina who is in an ongoing mission to calm down, balance momming and climbing, and be a less selfish partner.