How Mates and Mentors Shape the Climber

Trusting another person with your life is a big commitment. Mat reflects on some partnerships that have shaped him as a climber and as a person.

They say you need a mentor to get anywhere in climbing. While that may be true, I never had one in the traditional sense and I’ve been climbing for almost 15 years. I started as an indoor gym climber, then I began my outdoor adventures clipping bolts on Mt Tibrogargan in Queensland.

Eventually I got around to exploring alpine routes on snowy mountains. For years I tried in vain to find some wise older climber, a Yoda to my Luke, someone to help me get to that next level. But I ended up progressing through this spectrum of climbing without a mentor. Fortunately, I’ve been lucky enough to partner with some exceptionally motivated peers who grew with me into the climbers that we wanted to become.

My first great climbing partnership was with Adam Sanders. He’d decided, long before meeting me, that he was going to make climbing his life. Admittedly, I wasn’t quite so dedicated when we first met but I was just starting to explore trad climbing and I needed a solid partner.

Since then, Adam and I have climbed hundreds of routes together. We went from throwing ourselves at the cracks of Frog Buttress, to an apprenticeship of all the classic adventure-trad lines this country has to offer. Up to our onsight limit anyway! We pushed ourselves and each other to be better, to try harder, to be bold and audacious.

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Only once did our gung-ho ethic backfire – I took a ground fall at Frog Buttress and it was a loud wake up call. Not everyone survives the early days of their trad climbing, it’s dangerous, tenuous, and you don’t really have it dialled until you’ve placed thousands of pieces of gear.

I met Lachy Short a few years later. I was between careers, working at K2 selling gear, and all-in on climbing. Lachy is a climber, an outdoor ed teacher, and a frother of the highest order. In pursuing his vision of adventure and trying to make a life in the outdoors, he’d partnered up with K2 as an Adventure Advocate and that’s how we met.

We clicked right away and started climbing together regularly. Eventually we went on a climbing trip together to Tassie where we spent a week raging around the Tasman Peninsula. With our friend Liv Grover-Johnson, we danced up the Moai and cragged at Mt Brown. One day the weather wasn’t good enough for climbing so we ran the Three Capes Track.

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When we staged an Instagram takeover for K2, I began to see what was possible in this space with a bit of hustle. Lachy planted the seed that led me to a new career in outdoor tourism. Without seeing him hustle first-hand, I may never have considered searching for creative avenues to build my resume as an outdoor professional.

When I met Chris Torley, I sensed that he was more serious than most and knew immediately that I’d found another great climbing partner. Even though he’d just started single pitch lead climbing at Kangaroo Point, he was already confidently attempting routes in the low 20s and keen to do more. The gap in our respective experience levels created a dynamic that was more akin to a mentorship, but we quickly developed a solid partnership.

Each week we tackled a new multi pitch route on Tibro and before long our partnership had matured into a productive one. Unfortunately, our adventures together were cut short when I moved interstate, but Chris has taken the skills and confidence we built together and run with it, accomplishing some impressive climbs. I like to think that I had something to do with that, even if it’s only a little bit.

Now, a few years down the track, I’ve come to realise that I did, in fact, have climbing mentors. But they were my peers, and my mates, and we were mentoring each other. Together we helped each other progress our skills. We shared the vision to create a life in the outdoors, and a lifestyle built around our passions. 

From Lachy I learnt that if you want to do this, and do it well, you can. While there’s no blueprint to pursuing a life in the outdoors, if you’re prepared to hustle and put yourself out there, you will find opportunities. 

From Adam I learnt what it means to be a serious climber. He taught me how to approach and accomplish big goals. Adam has since decided to create a business doing exactly this – he helps people fill the physical, mental or technical gaps in their skill set to take their climbing to the next level. 

From Chris I learnt that perhaps there’s something to this mentoring thing after all. It enables a newer climber to accomplish so much in such a short time. Ultimately though, I think it just comes down to finding great partners, people who have a similar vision to you, and getting out with them as often as possible. 

Mentors can be mates and a great climbing partnership is a beautiful thing.