The Secret to This Everyman’s 5.13 Big Wall First Ascent? A Work-Life Balance
Max Barlerin is an everyman. He has a wife and child. He holds down two jobs to keep his bills paid—one as a climbing ranger and one as a cobbler—while also co-running a fledgling side business in Boulder, Colorado, dedicated to climbing education. And yet, he somehow makes time to author big routes—including a new 14-pitcher deep in Wyoming’s Wind River Range. The route, Children of the Sun (IV 5.13-; 1,500 feet), ascends the Monolith, a towering chunk of stone that looms over its corner of the Wind River Range like a broad-shouldered god. The project was the culmination of years of effort, a year-long recovery from a life-threatening illness—and a nearly heroic ability to find balance amid the chaos of life.
The Monolith first entered Barlerin’s consciousness in 2018, when he read about Sam Lightner’s first ascent of Discovery (IV 5.12c C1; 1,600 feet) on the same feature. The Monolith’s rock quality, aesthetics, and sheer size were all striking, and, for Barlerin, its remote location added a little extra sparkle. Plus, the Monolith only bore a handful of other routes—including the famous Beckey Route (5.9+). The majority of the massive face was a blank canvas.
Barlerin, it should be said, is no stranger to big alpine objectives. He’s put up a few first ascents in Rocky Mountain National Park—where he works as a ranger on his days off from cobbling— including multipitch trad lines Highwayman (5.11) and Geronimo (5.12-), both on Chiefshead.
“Max is an incredible undercover boss in the mountains,” said Maury Birdwell, who accompanied Barlerin on the first free ascent of Children of the Sun this September. “Aside from his technical climbing ability—at the 5.14 level—he has tons of experience [in the alpine].”
Enraptured by the Monolith, Barlerin trekked into the Winds a few times to take a look—once in 2020, and once in 2022. The 2020 trip was ill-fated; Barlerin and a partner got eyes on the feature, but stormy weather kept them off the rock. They’d intended to tackle the wall in a single-day push, but didn’t have enough gear to either do the route or wait out the weather. So, in 2022, Barlein came back better equipped. This time, he had more gear, portaledges, camping equipment—and Keiko Tanaka.
Barlerin and Tanaka had worked together for years: Tanaka is the operations manager at Rock and Resole in Boulder, Colorado, where Barlerin is a cobbler. But Tanaka is also as close as you can get to a household name in the U.S. aid climbing scene, having notched 11 different El Cap routes and several first and second ascents in the Fisher Towers. Barlerin had never climbed with her before, but he knew that Tanaka knew what she was doing—and she was psyched
“I had a hard time finding partners who were willing to hike the 13 miles into the Winds without any certainty of success,” Barlerin said. “But Keiko was.”
“I hadn’t done anything that remote, and the Monolith was about two-thirds bigger than the other first ascenting I’d done,” Tanaka said. “This lofty goal, to go out there and just figure it out—that was really inspiring to me.”
So they hired horse packers and—armed with haul bags, cams, portaledges, and aid gear—set off into the Wind River Range for a two-week expedition. Neither Barlerin nor Tanaka had any vision for their line until they stood at the base of the wall, gazing up at the sea of silver stone.
“That’s a really rare thing these days, just to go up to a formation and have open country laid out before you like that,” Barlerin said. “I love that. I live for that. I think it’s rare for our generation of climbers to be able to step into the unknown and try to get a little taste of the adventure that’s part of all the alluring stories and climbing literature we grew up with.”
Barlerin and Tanaka ultimately spotted a potential line on the Monolith’s Northeast Face: 1,500 feet of adventurous-looking climbing, connecting sections of run-out face climbing, splitter cracks, vertical seams, and steep roofs. They didn’t know if it would go, but it seemed worth a shot.
“So we chose a line and just kind of whacked away at it over two weeks,” Barlerin said. The method: Barlerin would free-climb until the terrain or gear got too bad, at which point Tanaka would take over, aiding via cams, hooks, and tension traverses until she found a logical belay. At that point, she’d build an anchor and Barlerin would jug up, cleaning the route as he went and placing bolts where necessary.
“We were able to play to each other’s strengths,” Barlerin said. “It worked out. Yes, I cleaned her out of the tent with my farts, and, yes, she listened to way too much ABBA. But we made a good team.”
Their line, Tanaka said, followed “bulletproof granite” and veins of quartzite, much of it between 5.11 and 5.13/A3 in difficulty. At one point, they pulled up to a belay to find nothing before them but a sea of rounded, granite knobs—no protection in sight. It was Tanaka’s turn. She racked up, clicked into problem-solving mode, and went questing.
“I had to lower down about 20 feet, then tensioned and pendulumed to the right to access this quartzite vein,” she said. “I mostly hooked and used number-one beaks—really small pitons—and all bodyweight placements. I was in this really hard quartzite, so the pins weren’t going in.” She followed tenuous hook after tenuous hook until she gained a crack, which deposited her at a solid belay. Barlerin was able to rap-bolt the X-rated face, reducing the risk enough to bring the grade to a run-out 5.12-.
“Probably no one will ever do that aid pitch again,” Tanaka said. But she’s glad she got to.
Over the course of their two weeks on the wall, Barlerin was able to free every pitch except one—a 60-foot A3 beak seam on pitch nine that seemed to go at low-end 5.13—before their weather window closed.
He meant to return for it fairly soon after the first trip, but life got in the way—big time. Shortly after coming home from the Winds, he started to experience extreme fatigue. That devolved into a 105°F fever, ruthless nerve pain, and chills that left his whole body shaking. After weeks of seeing various doctors, he finally got a diagnosis: he had West Nile virus.
“I was sick for about six months,” Barlerin said. “There was a lot of nerve damage and nerve pain. I had to teach myself how to climb again.”
Coming back to activity was slow. Everything felt painful, and it took him days to recover from even the simplest exercise. He started with V0 and 5.7, and he worked up from there.
By the next year, he was back to climbing at a moderate level, but he and his now-wife had gotten engaged. Wedding planning kept him off the rock that summer. And the arrival of their first child kept him home the summer after. That same year, he launched his guiding and climbing education business with Tanaka, which they dubbed Yama Vertical (yama is Japanese for mountain), and he poured his spare energy into a longtime project closer to home: Tommy Caldwell’s The Honeymoon is Over (5.13c; 1,000 feet) on the Diamond on Longs Peak.
“It sounds like a lot to be doing all at once, but it’s really just me focusing on the things that are most important to me,” Barlerin said. “When I was younger, I spent a lot of time on whimsical trips. I would hear about an area or route that was in season and just drive out there to check it out. These days, I’ve had to really refine my climbing and my life to what’s important. Family is first. After that, climbing and career. So I sat down after my daughter was born, and I asked myself what I really wanted to be doing with my life. Now I try to cut out all the faff and be as efficient as I can with the time I have.”
On August 4, Barlerin sent Honeymoon. By late August, his fitness and free time started to align again. His thoughts turned back to the Monolith. He wanted to go back and finish what he started. It would be his first trip away from his newborn daughter, and he knew that would be painful on its own. But going back felt important, and Barlerin’s wife understood.
This time, he called up photographer Alton Richardson and alpinist Maury Birdwell—both talented free climbers—to go with him. They trekked into the Wind Rivers in early September, intending to free the route, possibly in a day. But bad weather plagued the group. They were able to climb eight pitches up to the crux—all of which Barlerin freed consecutively—and fix ropes before drizzle turned to rain. Graupel—tiny chunks of packed snow—poured from the sky as they rappelled. Within a few days, their gear stash was buried in about four feet of the stuff. They had to dig it out by hand. A few days later, the team was halfway up the wall when a gear bag cut loose and went careening 700 feet to the ground. Between that and the still-dripping rock, they were forced to descend once again.
With just a 10-day trip, the team didn’t have that kind of time to lose, Birdwell said. “We’re all balancing work, personal life, and in the case of Max, a newborn. So we played the cards we had.”
It wasn’t until the day before they were due to hike out that the team finally got a small window.
Barlerin squinted up at the wall, streaked with water and dark under the gray sky. The rock wasn’t even close to dry. But it was now or never. He’d been thinking about this route for years, and this was his third expedition out here. He missed his wife and daughter. He wanted to get it done. So he geared up, and he started jugging.
“It was a Hail Mary attempt,” Barlerin said. “The crux pitch was still wet, but I was able to clean it up and chalk it.” After a run-through on toprope-solo, he pulled the rope and decided to go for it. And somehow, it all came together. His fingertips moved deftly up the seam, one hand after the other. He felt strong—something that, deep in the shivering pain of West Nile, he’d feared he might never feel again. And after 60 feet, when he at last pulled up to the final anchor of this massive multi-year project, he felt gratitude wash over him.
“We were initially hoping to do an in-a-day ascent or an integral ascent, and with the weather, that just didn’t happen. So, yes, we traveled a really long way just to free this one pitch,” Barlerin said. “But it felt good to get it done, and to finally have this complete route. It felt like a big relief.”
Birdwell, Richardson, and Barlerin have all hinted that they’d like to go back to do it again—hopefully with better conditions and in better style. Though, Barlerin confesses that if life gets in the way again, he’d be at peace with leaving it as is.
As for the name? Children of the Sun is a reference to Barlerin’s two-month-old daughter, Anya, who was born on the solstice.
To him the name is a nod to the fact that, no matter how hard or glorious the climbing is, no matter how all-consuming your goals, there’s always something that matters more. Back in the real world, there’s someone more important to come home to.
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