The Curious Climber Podcast: Chatting with Hazel and Mina Mina and Hazel

This conversation is with New York based climber Anyssa Lucena (@genuineclimbing). Anyssa re-found climbing later in life and incorporated it into her already busy life - a single mum of three kids. Not only did she find space for it, it saved her in a difficult period in her life. She felt such a passion for climbing, and it had such a deep personal affect on her, that she underwent a complete career change and created a business around climbing. Anyssa is a guide in the Gunks but she does more than just the standard teaching people to go climbing. She works, predominately with women, by using climbing to challenge self limiting beliefs, find bravery and develop resilience. It was a pleasure to talk to her and to hear both her story and her experiences coaching.


Anyssa's Website

Anyssa's Instagram

This episode is with Swiss machine Nina Caprez. Nina is known for her hard, adventurous ascents including Sibergier, Wogu, Merci La Vie, Never Ending Story…the list goes on. She has a really interesting attitude towards the mental side of climbing and an unusual relationship with fear. We talk about her experiences on hard routes and what she learnt from them; both successes and failures. We also discuss a new phase in her life that includes a social project close to her heart and a journey into parenthood. Enjoy!

Andrew is a successful writer and social commentator in the world of climbing. He is the founder of evening sends a website that hosts in-depth writing and articles from himself and other writers. He’s also co-founder of the runout podcast with Chris Kalous. He’s maybe best known for unapologetically saying what he thinks. Something of a rarity online in 2022.

We talk about his experiences as a writer in a polarised political climate and how the culture wars and the way we tend to converse on social media have affected discourse, writing and activism in climbing. 

You can support what we're doing here by donating at hazel-findlay.com/podcast or becoming a Patron of the Nugget Climbing Podcast 

Recently, we have entered into a collaboration with Steven Dimmitt of The Nugget Climbing Podcast who is helping us with the editing, sound and production of our podcast. Steven's podcast is great, with loads of fantastic episodes to choose from. He is also a whizz at all the technical things. As part of this collaboration we are producing some mini-episodes together in pairs called "Reflections". These 10-15 min episodes are discussions around various different topics with the focus on learning, reflection and insights we may have had. They will be available to those who support The Nugget Podcast via Patreon, but we have included one here as a taster - enjoy!

This episode is a conversation between Mina and British climber Hamish McArthur. Hamish is 20 years old and current World Youth Champion in both Bouldering and Lead climbing....a pretty impressive feat. But he isn't planning to stop there, Hamish has big goals and isn't afraid to name them. This conversation is both interesting and empowering. Hamish has a depth of perspective on performance and mindset that is both interesting and useful to hear. As an athlete who is still emerging and finding his rhythm, it'll be exciting to see where his journey takes him. 

Steven Dimmitt chats to Mina on his podcast 'The Nugget Climbing Podcast' about her early life and living in India, learning about impermanence from her dad, chasing flow state, memorable high ball boulders, learning to try hard, becoming a mama and much more...

We highly recommend his podcast! You can find it here

Enjoy!