#121 Chris Weidner | Bonding With Dallas and Fellows Through Climbing

Episode 121 features Chris Weidner’s stories of being mentored in his youth by the legendary climber of the Cascades, Dallas Kloke. 

At 17, Chris was listed in a rock climbing directory for Christian climbers. One day, Dallas cold-called Chris form the climbing directory and Dallas arranged an alpine trip with Dallas. Chris was picked up in a rickety VW bus that was driven by none other than the 52-year-old Dallas Kloke. From that trip onward, Dallas and Chris developed a friendship, comradery and eventually it had the sentiments of a father/son relationship. On Chris’s climbing adventures, he felt compelled to write about his experiences. Early on in their climbing adventures, Dallas had encouraged Chris to pursue Chris’s compulsion to write about their trips. Over the years, Dallas and Chris would co-author articles in a local paper and eventually, Chris became a writer who has been published in several magazines like Climbing, HuffPost, The Daily Camera and more.

Through the years, Chris would begin to climb beyond Dallas’s abilities and Chris would then lend his knowledge to help Dallas. It was wild to learn about Dallas and Chris’s dynamics and how they had evolved over their lives. Check out Chris’s new guidebook for boulder canyon in Colorado

This is part 4 of the Dallas Kloke miniseries. Check out Part 1 to learn about Dallas through the eyes of one of his oldest climbing partners, Mark Desvoigne. Check out Part 2 to learn about the legendary climber of the Cascades through the stories of Scott Curtis. Part 3 tells of Dallas through the eyes of an experienced climber who one day would be a father with a very measured balance of family and adventuring into the mountains.