Road

Based

Mountainman wrote:Based on knowledge of other climbers who have become professional by either outdoor ascent (siegriest) or by competition (sharafutinov), can someone write up a rode map or game plan for a young climber to reach the professional level, e.g join a team.

You should look up Pro Dom.

Seriously though, check out the following podcasts, which all address sponsorship.

Chalk Talk episode 42, "Finding that niche"

Enormocast episode 108, Joe Kinder (a small part of a bigger discussion)

Mtn Meister episode 167, "A look behind the scenes at outdoors athlete sponsorship"

Dont get injured

These aren't ALL strictly necessary, but they are all helpful. Every climbing pro has most of these items ticked:

• Climb really hard
• Be good at schmoozing
• Enter lots of comps and win
• Have a strong social media presence with lots of followers and lots of interaction with your followers
• Create lots of visual media (photos/videos) or written word (blog)
• Be attractive

Jon H,

Doesn't the Internet usually add a corollary there, for emphasis? "Don't be unattractive" :D