Bryan Turnbull
Job: Barista/Bartender/Gear Salesman
Primary Outdoor Sport: Climbing
Favorite Beverage: Beer
Sunrise or Sunset: Sunset
Non-Outdoor Hobby: Swimming
Favorite TV Show: Wilfred
Climbing Snack: Pretzels
Guilty Pleasure: Soloing
Fun Fact: One of My Pupils Doesn’t Dilate
Three Words to Describe You: Stubborn, Excitable, Clumsy
“I grew up skiing with my family. I don’t even remember learning, just started before I was even conscious. I was the youngest of three boys so I always felt like I was holding them back and I wanted to be better. So in some ways it was a bit overwhelming, especially with skiing. They were always so much better than me. A lot of the time, it was a little much, but it was fun to have those experiences as a young kid because I think a lot of people don’t have that. And, I was lucky enough to move around and live in really cool places. I was born in New Hampshire and then moved to England and Germany. So I got to ski in the Alps. It was cool. I liked it.”
“I moved here and I just started getting after it. Trying to meet people and get out as much as possible. I was so struck by the grandiosity of these walls. That was it for me. I went to the gym and started trying to meet people. Made a few friends. Then, I really got into it when I started working at Redpoint because I started meeting all the people who were actively getting out all the time. That was a big thing for me. That’s when I started getting a lot better and having a lot more fun.”
“I enjoy face climbing, crack climbing, and multipitch climbing. Not a big bouldering fan. I like them all for different reasons too. Sometimes it’s just who’s going out with you that day and what they’re stoked on. Sometimes I don’t really care what I do, I just want to be out and doing things. Sometimes your fingers ache after two days of crack climbing so it’s like, ‘Oh, I could just go pull down on some holds’ and not have aching joints.”
“I’ve recently stopped letting fear dictate how I climb and what I climb. It took a long time, especially at Smith, a place that’s commonly known to be scary. I think that’s what I’m really proud of. I climb with people that are way better than me, physically way stronger, but I feel I have a good way at managing fear. It’s not that I’m not scared. It’s just that I can say I’m scared and then still do the thing that I want to do. I try to reframe things as exciting rather than scary.”
“I think it's a pathway for me to get really intense energy out of me. When I think back to when I was 20 years old, I was a crazy person. Maybe that’s just a part of being 20 years old, but I think it’s an outlet for me to release a lot of intense energy, especially with hard, for me, climbing. It’s a way to just squeeze all that whatever it is, anger, anxiety, anything, just like squeeze it out. I feel so chill after. I don’t want my whole life to be climbing, but it's a way for me to find a path through my youth and use my youth and do something cool, at least what I think is cool.”
“You can just do harder and harder things. There is no limit to how hard you can climb, especially if you start as an adult. You’re not going to hit the upper end. You’re just probably not going to do it. So there’s no cap. And you can just keep going and keep trying different things. I love 5.9 simul climbing just as much as I love 5.12 projecting. It can just be so many different things.”
“You find like minded people who are excited about the same things and I think that creates great friendships. You’re both actively trying to get better. That’s one thing that’s really cool is that I think I'd gotten stagnant in a lot of my friendships before I climbed. In the climbing community there's a lot of people that are really healthy and are like, ‘Why are you eating ramen and eggs five days a week?’ And you're like, ‘Oh yeah, why am I doing that? If I want to climb harder I should probably eat healthier.’ So you're just around healthier people. It makes you want to be healthier. Not just physically, but mentally.”
“That’s one thing that I realized. I thought it was more about the climbing when I started dirtbagging around here and it just became a lot more about the people that are around when you’re doing that. You know, you’re eating dinner together every night. You're drinking coffee together in the morning. You’re rock climbing all together. You become very close and bonds become very strong.”
“Just do it. If you feel like you want to do something different with your life, just do it. Don’t care what people think. With me, I was always a little nervous about people thinking that I’d look silly. But when you’re bad at something, that’s almost the most fun time because the progress is going to be so substantial in the beginning. You’re going to get so much better so much faster than if you’re already kinda good at something. Just do it and don’t care what other people think or even what you think of yourself. Just do it.”
