#40 - Grief, Risk and Freedom: Climber Brette Harrington on Fear, Loss & Flow
Today’s guest is Brette Harrington
Brette is addressing how to keep living — and performing — fully in the face of fear, grief, and events you can’t control. She’s showing listeners how to trust their own inner voice, manage real risk, and rebuild a meaningful life after trauma instead of letting other people’s fears or expectations dictate their choices.
In today’s conversation Brette Harrington explores how a life built in the mountains has shaped her resilience, creativity, and sense of purpose. She shares her journey from skiing with her parents in Lake Tahoe to boarding school in New Hampshire, discovering rock climbing, and eventually becoming one of the world’s leading trad climbers, alpinists, and free soloists — including the first free solo of the 2,500-foot Chiaro di Luna (5.11a) in Patagonia. She and Dr. Wells talk through her serious ski accident and broken neck, the years of big-wall and alpine climbing with her partner Marc-André Leclerc, and the devastating avalanche that took his life in 2018. Brette explains why she chose to return to the mountains against others’ advice, how she now manages fear on big objectives, and why moving slowly, breathing deeply, and listening to her energy are non-negotiable for both safety and performance.
You will learn how Brette’s progression from ski racing and freestyle skiing into sport, trad, big wall, and ultimately high-end alpine climbing gave her an unusually broad toolkit for huge mountain objectives. You will learn how she thinks about skill acquisition: layering disciplines over time (rock, ice, mixed, skiing) and deliberately seeking terrain that exposes her weaknesses so she keeps growing.
You will learn her practical process for managing fear on a route — starting with honest morning self-assessment, choosing objectives that match her mental energy, and then using breath, heart-rate awareness, and deliberate relaxation to prevent the “overgrip” that leads to mistakes. You will also learn how she navigated breaking her neck in a ski crash, the slow rehab and Atlas realignment work that followed, and how she used running, yoga, and core training to rebuild enough capacity to establish demanding new alpine routes like Life Compass, The Sound of Silence, MA’s Vision, and Just a Nibble after Marc-André’s death.
You will discover that calm is a trainable physiological state, not a personality trait — by choosing your days carefully, focusing on breathing, and relaxing your grip, you can keep your brain and body working even when exposure, risk, or stress spike. You will discover that sometimes the most courageous move after loss is to ignore the chorus of “shoulds,” follow the environment where you genuinely heal, and honour the people you’ve lost by continuing the work you started together.
Many people feel paralysed by fear — of failure, of risk, of what others will think — especially after something traumatic happens. Brette’s experience shows how to respect real danger while refusing to let fear or outside opinions shrink your life, giving listeners a blueprint for returning to their version of the “big mountains” after injury, grief, or setbacks.
Key take aways:
Choose partners who elevate you and share smart decision-making.
Check your energy: some days aren’t meant for risk.
Breathe, relax, then move — tension kills performance.
Training needs a purpose bigger than fitness.
Follow what truly calls you, not others’ expectations.
“I might not be the most physically talented climber in the world, but it’s my mind. My mind will bring me there.”
Today’s Expert Guest - Brette Harrington
Brette Harrington is an American professional rock climber and alpinist based between Lake Tahoe and British Columbia, and one of the most versatile mountain athletes of her generation. She gained international recognition in 2015 with the first free solo ascent of the 760-metre Chiaro di Luna (5.11a) on Patagonia’s Aguja Saint-Exupéry, and has since established or co-established major new routes including Life Compass on Mount Blane, The Sound of Silence on Mount Fay, MA’s Vision on Torre Egger, and big-wall lines on the Chinese Puzzle Wall and Neptuak Mountain. She is a North Face athlete, recipient of the American Alpine Club’s Robert Hicks Bates Award for outstanding promise, and appears in the award-winning documentary The Alpinist and the Reel Rock film Brette.
Brette’s approach to climbing is defined by range and depth: she is equally at home free-soloing long granite routes, putting up complex mixed and ice lines in the Canadian Rockies, skiing into remote alpine objectives, and crafting new big-wall routes on rarely touched faces from Baffin Island to Patagonia. What makes her stand out isn’t just the difficulty of her climbs, but the way she integrates emotional honesty, grief, and intuition into a high-risk, high-performance life — openly sharing how she chooses objectives, processes fear, and honours her late partner Marc-André through routes like MA’s Vision and continued exploration. That combination of boldness, creativity, and vulnerability offers a rare lens on what it really means to pursue mastery in an unforgiving environment.
Do a simple “readiness check” before big days or big moments: if your mind feels foggy or your body still feels depleted from previous efforts, don’t force it — save high-risk or high-stakes tasks for days when you feel mentally alert and physically charged.
On the days you do commit, move slowly and deliberately through crux moments, pausing wherever you can to breathe deeply, relax your muscles, and let your heart rate settle; that habit of toggling between effort and intentional calm will make you far more reliable under pressure, whether you’re on a steep ice wall or in a high-stakes meeting.
Follow Brette Harrington on Instagram & Linked In.
Check out her website.
This podcast contains advice and information relating to health and wellness. It should be used to supplement rather than replace the advice of your doctor or another trained health professional. If you know or suspect that you have a health problem, seek your physician’s advice before embarking on any medical program or treatment. All efforts have been made to assure the accuracy of the information contained in this podcast / interview / article as of the date of publication. The author and publisher disclaim liability for any medical or other outcomes that may occur as a result of applying the methods suggested in this material.
