Lives of Adventure: Stories of those who choose to live a life less common

Hazel Findlay is a professional climber and performance coach. She was the first woman in the world to climb E9 and has since climbed a slew of hard (and often scary) routes including 3 free ascents of El Cap and, more recently, the first ascent of Tainted Love in Squamish.

We talk about Hazel's early climbing, how she managed to climb hard on a severely injured shoulder, her approach to coaching and mental training, travel, and much more.

I was so impressed with the understated way that Hazel talks about her own achievements and her lifelong dedication to learning and personal growth.

Iain Miller is a marine engineer turned guide that lives in County Donegal, Ireland. Iain is responsible for establishing routes on nearly every sea stack in Donegal (and doing most of them free solo). Iain spends most of his days guiding clients in the hills, mountains, seas, and on the crags in and around Donegal, one of Ireland's most wild and remote counties. We chat about how he landed in Donegal as a Scotsman, how he got into climbing sea stacks, his views on soloing, and why he gets so much out of guiding.

Harald Zundel is a renowned adventure racer, ultra-runner, and all-around endurance junkie. Born in Germany, Harald came to the US for university and then joined the Navy. Early in his naval career he somewhat accidentally decided to become a navy seal. As if it’s easy, right?

Harald did his first adventure race on a team with several other Navy Seals. They won that race and Harald was hooked on adventure racing. He became a professional adventure racer shortly after and spent nearly 8 years travelling and competing full-time before quitting the pro life and endurance sports altogether for a few years.

But Harald is not one to take the relaxing path. More recently, he has gotten back into punishing, I mean, challenging himself by running extremely long distance races like the Barkley Marathons, the Bigfoot 200, and the Ultra trail du Mont Blanc.

Damian Browne spent 16 years as a professional rugby player. That's more than twice the length of the average professional rugby career. Based on that fact alone it should be clear that he has both physical and mental resiliency in spades.

Since retiring from Rugby, Damian has poured his non-trivial amount of energy into traveling, photographing, and pushing himself–both physically and mentally–in far flung regions of the world. Everything from 6 day, 250km ultra marathons in the Sahara, climbing Kilimanjaro, trekking through Afghanistan, and riding iron ore through west Africa.

We cover a lot of ground in this episode; talking about his rugby career and what traits enabled him to last (and enjoy it) for so long, talking about his new passion of photography, his love of travel, and what drives him to attempt his more audacious adventures.

Elaina Arenz is a professional climbing guide and is the owner or co-owner of several businesses including New River Mountain Guides and Chick with Picks. She’s spent most of her adult life living on the road, climbing nearly every day, and has been responsible for numerous first ascents all over the world, including being an early pioneer at El Potrero Chico in Mexico.

It was great to catch up with Elaina. We talked about everything from getting to reinvent herself every few years as a kid, the first outdoor climbing she ever did (including her first lead, on her first day climbing outside), her eventful and course-altering road trip from Alaska to Mexico (and the characters she met along the way), and her more recent escapades as a guide, bringing people into the world of climbing.

What is adventure to you? And how do you even recognize it when it comes your way? It goes back to what you want out of life and what your own values are. We take a few minutes in this mini-episode to talk about these questions and leave you with a challenge.