Connor Herson Opens Up About Going Viral at 15 and Sending What Could Be the Planet’s Hardest Trad Climb 

Connor Herson is one of three recipients of Climbing Magazine’s 2025 Golden Piton. The award recognizes his first free ascent of Drifter’s Escape, in Squamish, British Columbia. The single-pitch crack is likely the world’s first 5.15 trad climb. Winners were selected by a judge panel comprised of Tommy Caldwell, Kai Lightner, Beth Rodden, Kitty Calhoun, and Mason Earle.

When Connor Herson first tried Drifter’s Escape in Squamish, British Columbia, in 2024 he knew two things: that the route was possible, and that the grade, without a doubt, would be at least 5.15a. That would make it the hardest trad route on the planet.

It takes a steady mind to work any hard trad climb. Add in the intimidation factor of a longstanding grade ceiling, and you’ve got a mental pressure cooker few climbers are equipped to handle. So how did Connor Herson, a 22-year-old Stanford University student, manage to free the route, with apparent nonchalance, in just two seasons?
If you’ve followed Herson’s career for long, you probably know what most people know: that he is from a climbing family, learned to lead trad before he learned to drive a car, and got a head start on the sport that most of us can only dream of. Complimenting Herson’s pedigree is no empty accolade; his parents were the real deal. Connor’s dad, Jim Herson, did the second ascent of the original Salathé (5.13c) on El Capitan in 2003, and Connor’s mom, Anne Smith, was a competition climber in the 1990s.

But unlike many children of serious climber parents, Herson says he never felt pressure to join the family trade. Instead, they simply made climbing available to him and his sister Kara. They opened the door and then walked away, letting their kids drift toward it if they wished.

“They were willing to support, to belay me, and to take me to climbing areas,” Herson said, “but [they] didn’t force it onto me.” That gave Herson the perfect opportunity to take up the pursuit at a young age and still feel like he was discovering it on his own. It also helped him develop an enviable mindset around the whole thing. Climbing was something he could excel at, something he could put thousands of hours of practice into—but only if he wanted to. It was a recreational pursuit, not a measure of self-worth. If his family didn’t care whether or not he climbed 5.8 or 5.14, why should he?

Today, Herson seems to approach new projects with a mindset that reads straight out of a sports-psychology textbook: curiosity, joy, and a genuine love for the act of climbing without much attachment to the result. Maybe that’s a testament to the power of good parenting. Maybe it’s a testament to the special alchemy that makes Herson, well, Herson. Because while he may be quick to credit his climbing success to his parents, not all of Herson’s mental fortitude was spoon-fed to him over a highchair. Much of it was hard-fought and hard-earned.

Child star status

When Herson became the youngest person ever to free the Nose (5.14a; 3,000ft) at age 15 in 2018, climbing media catapulted him into the spotlight overnight.

“I was just working it on weekends with my dad,” he says. “And then we top out and suddenly the whole world knows about it. It was definitely a bit jarring.”

Herson would go to the same crags he’d been going to for years, but now people recognized him. They came up to talk to him. He felt like he was being watched, and that his bad days were being observed in a way they weren’t before.

“I would kind of harp on those bad days a little more,” he says. On top of that, he was going through puberty. In the years after he sent the Nose, Herson had to spend a significant portion of his time re-learning how to climb in a new body. He had to learn to accept that his progress wouldn’t be linear, even as the rest of the world was watching, waiting for him to do the next amazing thing.

That feeling of being surrounded by baited breath was especially tough because, up until that point, Herson was always doing the next amazing thing. In the years leading up to the Nose, Herson experienced what he called a “crazy linear progression” in his climbing. In 2015 he notched his first 5.13a. In 2016 he sent his first 5.13c, followed by 5.14a in 2017 and 5.14c in 2018.

“That was two letter grades a year for four years in a row. So I was kind of obsessed with trying to keep this linear progression, even though it’s in no way realistic to keep that sort of trajectory going,” Herson says. “[I had this] need to be progressing every single day, like every day I need to be stronger than the previous. That kind of narrative isn’t the most healthy.”

That hunger for perfection was in some ways compounded by Herson’s involvement in the competition scene at that time. He started competing as a young kid, mostly because he wanted to do whatever his big sister was doing. He stuck with it because of the people he met along the way. But no matter how many friends you have in the arena, competition can be brutal on the psyche.

“The highs are high, but the lows are quite low as well,” Herson says. That can be especially true in the lead discipline. “The nature of the format is that you only get one attempt.” And on that one attempt, anything can go wrong. You can train for months, eat perfectly, sacrifice social engagements, squeeze in extra workouts, say no to weekend trips, do everything you can to be in peak shape on exactly the right day and time—only to have the whole season end in an instant.

On the day of the 2022 Youth World Championships in Dallas, Herson was in the best shape of his life. He qualified in second place and entered semi-finals in a position to podium, if not win the whole thing. When Herson tied into the semis route, he felt calm and strong, like all the stars were aligned, like this was his moment—only to have a foot slip low on the route. He rocketed off the wall, plummeting into 12th place and ending his podium bid in a fraction of a second.

“It’s really easy to draw this narrative in your mind that maybe all that training was for nothing,” Herson says.

Progress over perfection

Competition taught Herson to get pretty cozy with failure from a young age, and he seems better at handling it than most. Still, this loss felt particularly devastating—and the level of devastation forced Herson to take a hard look at why he was even competing in the first place.

“I had a very distinct turning point in the fall of 2023 when I was deciding whether to compete at open nationals, or to have a full [Yosemite] Valley season,” he said. To help him choose, he envisioned the best-case and worst-case scenario for each. The best: podium at nationals, or send Meltdown (5.14c, trad), his project at the time. The worst: get stuck in qualifiers again, or spend a season outdoors trying an incredible route. The decision suddenly felt easy.

By that point, Herson had also come to accept—and even embrace—the collapse of his perfect performance trajectory.

“I realized that I wasn’t a better climber than I was [when I sent the Nose], and I wasn’t a worse climber. I was just a different climber,” he says. “And I think that’s the underlying thing that let me snap out of that need to be progressing all the time—I realized that you can’t compare yourself to who you were in the past. It’s just not a one-to-one comparison.”

Herson sent Meltdown that season, becoming the fifth person ever to free the route. Two years later, he came back to the Nose, and—using entirely new beta after having grown six inches since 2018—sent the route in a day, becoming the third person ever to do so.

These days, Herson has found a balance between climbing and everyday life. He’s still in school, but he’s taken off the last two fall semesters to focus on climbing. By the time spring rolls around, he’s so mentally and physically exhausted that it’s a relief to be back in school, using his brain and challenging himself in an utterly different way. Herson is currently on track to finish his undergrad degree at Stanford University this June, though he’ll stay on another year to complete a master’s in electrical engineering.

Between climbing and school, Herson says he doesn’t have much time for a social life, but that doesn’t seem to bother him.

“I’m not exactly going to parties,” he laughs. “But I have friends in my classes and friends at the climbing gym, so it does work out.”

Work in progress

Between classes and gym sessions, Herson says his outdoor climbing is as focused as ever. He prioritizes volume over constant projecting to keep the psych high and to maintain a wide library of movement. He’s intentional about finding moments of relaxation—mentally and physically—during sections of uncomfortable climbing. He tries to focus on the small successes in each session rather than getting fixated on the results.

“I try to remind myself of that every session,” he says. “And I talk to people about it. A lot of the people I climb with, I’ve told them flat out, ‘This is what I’m working on,’ and they’ll hold me accountable…if I’m starting to be unreasonably hard on myself, they’ll call me out on it. And that’s really helpful.”

Most importantly, he tries to take things one season—and one project—at a time. He’s vigilant about constantly checking in with himself to see what he’s actually psyched on in the moment. He’s careful not to get caught up in the narrative of what he “should” be doing next. And he’s fiercely protective of his personal experience on each route he does send.

“When I look back on the experience of free climbing the Nose, it’s really hard to separate it from the experience of being pushed into the limelight,” he says. Looking back, it’s hard to tease out the impressions of those slow autumn days on the wall with dad; the memories are all interwoven with the media storm that followed. That’s one of the reasons Herson now delays his send announcements; he waited about seven months to share news of his send of Drifter’s Escape. 

“That allowed me to separate my experience of climbing the route from the reaction to climbing the route,” he says. “So now, when I think about my time on that route, I’m thinking about the days I spent up there on the ledge with friends, hanging out, goofing off sometimes. I’m not thinking about the number.”

In the meantime, he’s already 20 sessions deep into the next project and, by the sound of it, has other send announcements coming down the pipeline. Routes he’s finished climbing but isn’t finished processing. Moments he’s still claiming for himself before he hands them over to the world. They’ll come in time, but only when Herson is ready. Because this is Herson’s life. And these days, it’s Herson—not the media—who calls the shots.

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