The Kid Under the Stairs
There was a kid sleeping in a basement closet in our house for $300 a month. Turns out he was one of the best mixed climbers in the world. He just never made a big deal about it.
I was living in Bozeman with five other dirtbags. Gear was everywhere. There were two refrigerators, mostly stocked with beer. In the kitchen there was a microwave, an oversized trash can, and dishes piled in the sink.
Then Matt Cornell walked in and said he’d be staying with us.
I looked around. Every bedroom was taken. He didn’t seem concerned. Turns out he’d been staying there every winter for years. There was a closet in the basement just big enough for a sleeping bag. He didn’t mind. Most importantly, at $300 a month, the price was right.
Matt was a professional climber, which I think paid for gear but that was about it. He’d spend his summers climbing in Yosemite, then bike to Bozeman every winter to ice climb. He didn’t own a car. Didn’t need one. He had a bike. Hundreds of miles on a bike, because that’s the dirtbag existence a professional climber commits to in the early days.
He was a great hang and a hell of a baker. The brownies were excellent. Sometimes he’d add a secret ingredient. After a couple of surprises, we made sure he labeled them appropriately.
What he was actually doing
What Matt was doing on the rock and ice wasn’t just a hobby. He’s one of the best mixed climbers in the world, which means he climbs frozen waterfalls and near-vertical rock faces at grades most people don’t attempt on a rope, let alone without one. He free soloed Nutcracker in Hyalite Canyon, a 450-foot mixed route rated M9 that Conrad Anker had helped him dial in. Anker is a legend, one of the most accomplished alpinists alive, the kind of guy who has a film made about him and a mountain named after him. He practiced that route with Matt. That’s how good Matt is.
Anker grew up around Alex Lowe, maybe the greatest American alpinist ever, who died in an avalanche on Shishapangma in 1999. Some of the routes Matt climbs in Hyalite were established by Lowe. There’s a lineage there, a passing of something down through the people serious enough to show up for it.
And then in 2023, after three years and two failed attempts, Matt and two partners made the first alpine style ascent of the north face of Jannu, a 25,000-foot peak in Nepal. The route they put up, Round Trip Ticket, 9,000 feet of M7 ice and rock at altitude, has been called maybe the best alpine climb done in the last few decades. They took seven days. Matt got home, and I assume he baked something.
The guy sleeping in my closet was doing all of this. He just never made a big deal about it.
That’s the thing about real dirtbags. The ones who have truly cracked it aren’t performing anything. They’re just living.
