Sasha DiGiulian on Scaling New Heights
As children, we might dream of soaring high above with only the air supporting us. We imagine what it might be like to defy the laws of gravity. Although we can’t naturally do this, climbing might be one of the closest experiences we can get to defying gravity. At six years old, growing up in Alexandria, VA, Sasha DiGiulian attended her brother’s birthday party in a climbing gym–and has never stopped climbing since.
Soon after that birthday party, DiGiulian started climbing with an aim to win contests. At seven years old, she won her first regional contest. She won her first Junior Continental Championships at 11 and the Adult Continental Championships at 16, remaining undefeated for the rest of the Junior and Adult Continental Championships she participated in. At 17 she moved onto the National Sport Climbing Championships, competing against women of all ages, and won, setting her on the path for her later achievements in the climbing world.
After high school graduation, she took a gap year to travel and climb, becoming the third woman in history and the first woman from North America to climb a 5.14d route by ascending a wall in Red River Gorge, Kentucky at age 18. Even during her undergraduate years at Columbia University, DiGiulian never paused her climbing activities. After graduating in 2016, she continued her globe-trotting lifestyle as she made climbing her full-time job. She notched over 30 first female ascents all over the world as well as eight significant first ascents. For example, in 2017 she and fellow climber Jon Cardwell completed the first continuous free ascent of Misty Wall–with a waterfall raging near the climbers–in Yosemite National Park, CA, in 14.5 hours. In the same year, she and climbing partner Edu Marin made the first female ascent and second free ascent of Mora Mora, a 700m route in Madagascar.
“All of the places I’ve been I am really grateful for having been able to experience,” DiGiulian reflected in an email interview with me. “The Red River Gorge in KY, Yosemite in CA, and Kalymnos in Greece stand out to me as some of my favorites.”
More recently, in 2022, DiGiulian teamed up with Brette Harrington and Matilda Söderlund to make the second ascent and first female ascent on the notoriously difficult Rayu route in the Picos de Europa mountains in Spain. The adventures encountered on the Rayu route included a hurricane hovering off the coast of Portugal during their climb and thus messing with the weather and their climbing conditions.
“[T]he chaotic frenzy of being in an expedition tent during a nearby hurricane, all huddled together and trying to keep the dome tent from collapsing in on us [was a very memorable moment],” DiGiulian recounted.
Now 30 and living in Boulder, CO, she is one of the world’s most esteemed professional rock climbers. Besides learning how to figure out the practical details–like food preparation, training plans, travel and gear logistics, and figuring out expectations and backup plans for the uncontrollable aspects of a trip–that make any mission successful, DiGiulian says climbing has also given her a new appreciation for many skills that smooth our way throughout each of our journeys through life.
“I have learned a lot; including goal setting, risk mitigation, goal setting, failure, and the feeling of personal satisfaction when I achieve something I have worked really hard towards,” she reflected.
Climbing also compels her mind to become fully attuned to the present; hanging precariously on the edge of a vertical slab of rock means that her mind has to be completely aligned with what her body is doing.
Outside of climbing, DiGiulian, knowing the importance of getting the right nutrition for scoring high athletic performance, has devoted considerable time over the past decade to making her own energy bar mixes.
“I never wanted to consume the products out there because what exists are bars that are packed with refined sugar [and] chemicals I don’t want in my body,” she explained. “[And] the ones that are ‘better for you’ contain no superfoods that I pine for while on expedition — like adaptogens and greens.”
Even while she was grinding up nuts, dates, and vegetable powders in a blender at Columbia and distributing the mixes to her athlete friends from her dorm, she already had a vision for where she wanted to go with this passion when the time was right, and coined a name for her future company to produce such bars: Send Bars. She put the idea on the back burner for years until she underwent double hip reconstruction surgery–which she describes as “a series of 5 surgeries in which [her] pelvic bone was broken in 4 places on both sides, twice”–in 2020. Finding herself in a nine-month recovery period when she could not engage in physical exertion, DiGiulian finally found time to bring her envisioned company to life.
“I built a team of 3 other women, and we followed my ethos of no refined sugar, a full serving of greens, and purposeful eating–all while tasting better than all the other bars,” she said. The bars they produce are also organic, vegan, and free of refined sugars, gluten, soy, dairy, and other chemicals.
She is also the author of an upcoming coming-of-age memoir, to be released September 2023, called Take the Lead: Hanging On, Letting Go, and Conquering Life’s Hardest Climbs.
“I knew I always wanted to tell my story,” she asserted. “I just needed an inflection point for when I would begin writing my first ‘chapter’.”
While recovering from a surgery in bed, she wrote a proposal for her book idea, and a publisher bought it. She started work on it around the time COVID-19 shut down travel and various activities throughout the world in the spring of 2020.
“It’s been a LONG process but I’m so so so excited to share my honest, unfiltered story,” DiGiulian gushed about her upcoming book release.
Wherever her book and work with Send Bars take her, it’s clear that she doesn’t plan to stop scaling and perching on cliffs anytime soon. “I love the freedom and creativity that is a part of climbing,” she reflects.
To follow her journeys, check out her Instagram @sashadigiulian.
For a discount on Send Bars products, use code SASHAFAM at checkout for www.sendbars.com.
