Vince Day - Redpoint reflections

BAFFLE DAYS - Australian Climbing

You’d be hard pressed to find a rock magazine from 2000-2010 that didn’t have a photo or mention Vince Day. He's even on the cover of the 2010 Blue Mountains guidebook. The guy was very much in the middle of the scene for that time. He repeated some of Australia’s hardest routes and boulders, as well as putting up a few of his own. His name was synonymous with hard moves and if he couldn't pull the move on a board maybe the move wasn’t possible.

One of the amazing and inspiring things with Vince is that he wears his heart on his sleeve. You know exactly where he’s at. He admits this was sometimes not so good, but I see on the other hand that it’s a properly inspiring way to live. Being true.

In this chat, Vince is very open. He talks about the intense headspaces he found himself in while redpointing at his limit and how damaging some of these were. But also the resilience and strength he found at how capable he was to keep getting back up and trying again. Lessons he’s now taken into business and personal life. I feel like there’s a lot we can relate to in Vince’s insights here. He’s a very introspective guy who has done some deep self-discovery.

He also talks about friendly competition fuelling progress. For him, this was a huge driver for progress in his climbing and I think what drove the very steep progress in hard route development in the early to mid 2000’s in Australia. However there’s a fine line that needs to be walked here and a foot over the wrong side could be the end of friendships.

Vince is also super passionate about the environment we climb in and is pretty in awe of what it gives us. The humblings it will hand out, the space it will hold for you when you need it and he offers a little challenge for us on how we can help protect it.

He’s an absolutely ace guy and Australian climbing is richer for having him here.

We start our chat with a dive into headspace.