345 episodes listed below
Climbing culture, with patience and bite.
The Enormocast treats climbing as a whole messy culture, not just a sport. Long interviews, dry sponsor riffs, road-worn stories, and serious mountain talk sit beside jokes about trad dads, offwidth beta, cliffs, and the strange business of caring this much about rock.
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The Enormocast is a climbing show with a long approach. It does not rush straight to the summit story. It circles through the culture first: sponsor bits, gear jokes, local-shop affection, old crag memories, access pleas, and the strange private language climbers use when they have spent too much time thinking about rock. The interviews cover the full spread of climbing life. Big wall ascents sit beside offwidth technique. Competition pressure sits beside Finnish climbing history. Mountain music, tribute songs, Southern Illinois cliffs, Squamish live events, and Trango Tower stories all fit inside the same world. The show is loose, but it is not careless. It can joke about trad dads, internet gear arguments, and expensive cams, then turn toward fear, grief, failure, community loss, or the stubborn patience required to keep trying when a route gets into someone’s head. That tonal pivot is part of the appeal. The Enormocast understands climbing as both ridiculous and deeply meaningful. It gives practical details their due without reducing guests to achievements. A discussion of offwidth climbing can become a conversation about precision, memory, frustration, and what send videos leave out. A story about scouting unknown cliffs can become a reminder of how different the sport felt before every area was searchable. The result is an interview show for listeners who like texture. It rewards people who enjoy the long runway as much as the main conversation. It is especially strong when guests talk about process: getting humbled, breaking out of bubbles, learning to fail publicly, finding partners, building confidence, and staying with hard things long enough for them to reveal their shape. The humor is dry and sometimes absurd. The affection is real. Under all the bits and banter, the show keeps returning to the same question: why do climbers keep arranging their lives around this strange, exacting pursuit?
Made for: Best for climbers, alpinists, gear nerds, and outdoor listeners who enjoy long conversations that move between technical detail and lived experience. It also suits curious non-climbers who do not mind insider language and a slower pace.
What sets it apart: Its signature is the mix: serious climbing interviews wrapped in digressive scene-setting, comic sponsor sketches, and affectionate subculture fluency. Similar shows may chase achievement; this one lingers on the stories, habits, doubts, and communities around the ascent.
With 35 years of climbing experience and going on 14 years behind the mic, Chris Kalous brings interviews, tributes, discussion, tears, and lots of laughs from the full breadth of the climbing zeitgeist. Rock climbing, bigwall (big wall?) climbing, alpinism, ice climbing, bouldering, and competition climbing. If it’s climbing related, it’s here. In the words of Alex Honnold, “If you are a climber, you pretty much have to do the Enormocast.”
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Chris Kalous makes climbing technique, community knowledge and the psychology of failure understandable through patient, detail-rich interviews.
Chris Kalous treats climbing as both a technical discipline and a culture shaped by access, failure and the people willing to share hard-won knowledge.
This is where your chalk bag meets offwidth precision, hard-earned humility, and the occasional rehab song.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A candid climbing conversation about failure, pressure, and letting go of the word should.
The EnormoCast uses a climbing conversation to look at what changes when a climber moves beyond a familiar comfort zone. The guest describes watching very strong climbers fall on routes they believed they should be able to do, and how that helped soften the fear of failing on…
Katie's dry-tooling story turns on trust, practice, and the communities that decide who gets to try.
Enormocast 321 tracks Katie's route into dry tooling as a series of small tests of trust. She finds a foothold in the security of a dry-tooling gym, learns to manage the strange orientation of being upside down, then brings that confidence outside while belaying Kevin on a…
A climbing conversation where chalk, cobwebs, old routes, and a memorial song carry the history.
Chum's Enormocast conversation looks for climbing where it is least polished: Southern Illinois in the early 90s, farmer's fields, a ranger's loose directions, and a wall carrying chalk and a piton. The appeal is in the uncertainty.
Climbing stories with dirtbag memory.
Climbing culture, talked over by the people living it.
Scottish climbing yarns, arguments and a buddy check to finish.
An interview with climber Alik Berg, discussing his climbing career, dirtbag lifestyle, and gear preferences.
A surreal, ASMR-style ad for the Arcteryx Alpha SV jacket, framed as a climbing emergency scenario.
An interview with legendary climber Babsi Zangerl, revisiting her career and achievements a decade after her first appearance on the show.
Anna Liina Laitinen says 8b to 8c+ took six months after she broke a mental barrier abroad.
Katie McKinstry Stylos says dry tooling felt safer than ice climbing, because bolts let her push while avoiding free-hanging risk.
Sam McElwain explains why invert offwidth demands exact beta, not just toughness.
Climbers Jordan Cannon, Jesse Huey, and Matt Segal discuss their ascent of Trango Tower.
An interview with British climber Emma Twyford about her climbing career and philosophy.
This episode features a candid conversation about climbing Trango Tower with Jordan Cannon, Jesse Huey, and Matt Segal, including sponsor messages.
A live interview with climber Helias Millerioux at the Banff Mountain Film Festival, preceded by a promotional segment for La Sportiva climbing shoes.
A live recording of the Enormocast podcast featuring Vikki Weldon and Em Pellerin at the Arc'teryx Academy in Squamish, BC, with a humorous ASMR-style ad for the Arc'teryx Alpha SV jacket.
An interview with climber Freja Shannon about her experiences and moments of glad grace in climbing.
Enormocast 233 features Chris Galoose talking with Bradley "Chum" Carter, a musician and climber he had only met in person for the interview.
Chris Calus opens this March 15, 2024 EnormoCast tweener by introducing Harvey Wright, the new album Patio Pacifica, and a March 29 show at China Cloud Studios in Vancouver.
A climbing podcast episode featuring an interview with Beau Martino, a content creator in the climbing world, with a lengthy intro about climbing history and a shoe advertisement.