The Nugget Climbing Podcast · Steven Dimmitt

EP 296: Dave Thompson — Early FAs in Leavenworth, Applying Your Strength on the Wall, and Personal Agency

April 7, 2026·1 hr 47 min·8 clips

Dave Thompson, a Washington legend, reveals how he climbed V14 without modern training tools.

1. Host Stephen Dimmitt interviews Dave Thompson, a professional climber and coach at Evoke Endurance, on the Nugget Climbing Podcast, covering Thompson's origin story, first ascents in Leavenworth, and coaching philosophy. 2. Dave Thompson is described as having climbed many 5.14 routes and V14 boulder problems including numerous first ascents, and is a lifelong resident of the North Cascades area of Washington State. 3. The episode's central tension is how Dave reached elite climbing levels in the early 2000s without modern training tools — no boards, no structured hangboard protocols, and no mainstream coaching knowledge. 4. Dave grew up near New Halem, Washington, spending his childhood running up glaciated peaks in the North Cascades independently, asking his mother to drop him at trailheads and returning by a set time. 5. He was introduced to rock climbing through a Mountain Madness class in Leavenworth after encountering a rock face on a mountain called White Chuck that he couldn't free-climb without technique. 6. He credits early guidance from Bob Buckley, a quiet and older climbing figure who discovered boulders in the Index and Skykomish areas and would call Dave to go clean and climb them in the late 1990s and early 2000s. 7. Dave did the first ascent of the Teacup in Leavenworth roughly 20 years ago in approximately four to five sessions, noting that Joel Campbell named it after the Coffee Cup problem by Ben Shrope because the boulder resembles an old English teacup with a handle. 8. He did not grade the Teacup himself — the V-rating appeared in a guidebook assembled by Kelly — and he describes grades as having 'never made sense' to him because what feels hard is specific to each climber's profile. 9. Dave offers a countercultural claim: modern climbers have not necessarily gotten much stronger than those from 20 years ago — a larger population pursuing climbing and a reframing of what is possible has driven apparent grade progression more than raw strength gains. 10. He credits his martial arts background in karate and grappling with giving him an innate understanding of body tension, quick power generation, and end-range strength before he ever applied those qualities to climbing. 11. Dave's coaching philosophy prioritizes learning to apply strength within climbing movement itself rather than building off-wall strength capacity in isolation. 12. He uses scapular packing as a specific example: performing I's, Y's, and T's in the gym does nothing for climbing if the athlete is not actively packing their scaps when on the wall. 13. He describes the goal of off-wall training as eventually graduating to applying the same muscular engagement during climbing, framing off-wall work as a stepping stone rather than an end goal. 14. Dave and his peers — Cole Allen, Johnny Goikichiya, and Joel Campbell — trained primarily at Stone Gardens climbing gym in Ballard in the early 2000s, where the setting team was not allowed to set problems harder than V10. 15. The V10 cap forced them to concentrate their creativity into making the hardest, most awkward V8s possible — slippery, non-ergonomic, and as rock-like as conditions permitted — which Dave credits as one of the most important developmental experiences. 16. He contrasts this with modern commercial gym setting, which prioritizes ergonomic movement, clear foot positions, and accessibility, noting that these qualities don't transfer to the constraints of actual rock climbing. 17. Dave explains core integrity as a central coaching focus: when a climber's core 'drops out' — losing tension at a critical moment — it triggers inhibitory patterns that prevent full force application, analogous to a runner stumbling forward into the ground. 18. He uses a speedboat analogy to describe movement mastery: a beginner is like a speedboat moving slowly through the water, inefficient, while an experienced climber has reached 'plane' and moves with the kind of efficiency that scales across grade levels. 19. Intermediate climbers who train mostly in commercial gyms and want to improve on rock, and coaches looking for frameworks to bridge indoor and outdoor climbing performance, will find the most value in this episode. 20. Listeners looking for specific training prescriptions, hangboard protocols, or structured periodization will find this episode more philosophical and conceptual in its approach.

As heard by us

Leavenworth history and movement theory meet in a steady conversation about turning strength into usable climbing movement.

Dave Thompson starts with Leavenworth history and keeps circling back to a practical question: how does strength turn into movement that actually works on rock?

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Why you'd press play

For when gym moves still feel different on rock, Dave Thompson offers practical answers.

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