Madaleine Sorkin travels to climb long, difficult rock walls from the Rockies to Yosemite where she has freed up to 5.13+ on El Capitan and the Diamond on Longs Peak. She has completed first free ascents as far as Kyrgyzstan, Patagonia and Jordan. Increasingly a self-described homebody, Madeleine and her wife live in an off-grid home near the Black Canyon National Park in Colorado. She still pushes her own performance edge and enjoys coaching other climbers to do the same. In 2018, impacted by climbing-related tragedies in her community, Madaleine founded The Climbing Grief Fund (CGF) in partnership with the American Alpine Club. CGF works to evolve the conversation around grief in the climbing community and connect individuals to effective mental health professionals and resources. For more information, please visit: https://americanalpineclub.org/grieffund I have known Madaleine since I moved to Colorado in 2011. I have always appreciated her calm energy and also knew there was a V8 engine hiding beneath that mellow vibe. She wouldn’t do what she does, without fire and drive. This is what has inspired more than one conversation between the two of us. Relating to her stories and experiences has helped me understand my own relationship with ambition and the meaning of success. For Madaleine, the drive to achieve crept up on here during her 20s. For a while, her passion for climbing led her to be less selective about who she would partner up with, as long as she could get on the route she was psyched on. At age twenty-four, a pretty severe rappelling accident that almost cost Madaleine her life, changed her perspective. Today at thirty-nine years old, she poses a question that inquires about her intentions, goals and reasons for doing something, whether in climbing or other areas of her life: “What am I up to?”. This allows Madaleine to check in with herself before getting on a long hard route, making sure the timing, partner and weather feel adequate. The urge to push her performance edge continues to bring great moments of success as well as feelings of ‘not doing enough’. She likes to call this ‘Failure Dysphoria’. On days, where Failure Dysphoria is turned up, it’s almost impossible to be productive. In our conversation, we dive deep into all the lessons, tools and ways we have both learned to be kind to ourselves, go into our bodies and out of our minds. For Madaleine, the experience of listening to herself and doing what she needs to do (and that might be calling it a day at the crag and pulling out her journal) is really helpful in building the relationship she wants to have with herself, her partner and her work.
Madaleine Sorkin travels to climb long, difficult rock walls from the Rockies to Yosemite where she has freed up to 5.13+ on El Capitan and the Diamond on Longs Peak. She has completed first free ascents as far as Kyrgyzstan, Patagonia and Jordan. Increasingly a self-described homebody, Madeleine and her wife live in an off-grid home near the Black Canyon National Park in Colorado. She still pushes her own performance edge and enjoys coaching other climbers to do the same.
In 2018, impacted by climbing-related tragedies in her community, Madaleine founded The Climbing Grief Fund (CGF) in partnership with the American Alpine Club. CGF works to evolve the conversation around grief in the climbing community and connect individuals to effective mental health professionals and resources. For more information, please visit: https://americanalpineclub.org/grieffund
I have known Madaleine since I moved to Colorado in 2011. I have always appreciated her calm energy and also knew there was a V8 engine hiding beneath that mellow vibe. She wouldn’t do what she does, without fire and drive. This is what has inspired more than one conversation between the two of us. Relating to her stories and experiences has helped me understand my own relationship with ambition and the meaning of success.
For Madaleine, the drive to achieve crept up on here during her 20s. For a while, her passion for climbing led her to be less selective about who she would partner up with, as long as she could get on the route she was psyched on. At age twenty-four, a pretty severe rappelling accident that almost cost Madaleine her life, changed her perspective. Today at thirty-nine years old, she poses a question that inquires about her intentions, goals and reasons for doing something, whether in climbing or other areas of her life: “What am I up to?”. This allows Madaleine to check in with herself before getting on a long hard route, making sure the timing, partner and weather feel adequate.
The urge to push her performance edge continues to bring great moments of success as well as feelings of ‘not doing enough’. She likes to call this ‘Failure Dysphoria’. On days, where Failure Dysphoria is turned up, it’s almost impossible to be productive. In our conversation, we dive deep into all the lessons, tools and ways we have both learned to be kind to ourselves, go into our bodies and out of our minds. For Madaleine, the experience of listening to herself and doing what she needs to do (and that might be calling it a day at the crag and pulling out her journal) is really helpful in building the relationship she wants to have with herself, her partner and her work.