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I got it: Wfh full time, how would you all capitalize on that for climbing?
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Pretty much that - I’m wfh full time now with a decent income. Been a long time dream, didn’t think it would ever happen, going back for that engineering degree is paying off. My hours are 9-5 ish with a good amount of wiggle room aside from meetings, though having access to multiple monitors and good Internet is a requirement. My, we’ll say, 2-5 year plan is to split time between Chicago, where I’m currently located, and start looking for property at the New River Gorge to live at during fall/spring. Chicago prolly seems strange, but I’d like to be here for family reasons, at least a few more years. After that, eh. Who knows? What would you all do in my position though? Or if you’re in the same situation, what have you been doing? This is just my first thought, but curious what others would do. Maybe even get some ideas on ways to improve my plans. So have at it: what would you all do if you were untethered from a location? |
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People don’t realize/ underestimate the fact there are 7 days to climb a week and not just 2 weekend days. I would try to shift your schedule to start work at 11/noon or finish by 2/3. Just schedule fake meetings the last two hours of the day if you have to! Congrats sounds like you earned it! |
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Pretty much did exactly what you’re planning. Became engineers, mostly wfh, and moved next to smith rock. Start work early and finish early, then it’s sport in the afternoons and trad on the weekend. You won’t regret it! |
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Yeah the van life sounds cool sometimes, but I would need reliable power and internet. I’ve known people that do it, but I don’t think I’ve met someone that has done it with the power requirements I would need. Worried about costs too - vans are pricey nowadays. Though curious about campers, my car can’t tow much, but if I get a hitch - might be able to just pull off long weekends or something with a small camper. Need some careful planning but could work. And I am definitely thinking about what kinda hours I can do lol. Why I’m thinking about the New vs the Red - I love the Red, but the New is super accessible and there’s pretty easy to reach bouldering even. |
abandon moderation wrote: I can't imagine working a demanding full time professional job under those circumstances. I know people do it, but it sounds horrendous. Like, it sounds cool in vague hypothetical, but ince you drill down to the details it starts to look pretty grim. I know I couldn't pull it off. The bad ergonomics alone would end my shoulders. Having a house or apartment, with modern conveniences, a proper workstation, and fast reliable internet, sure is nice. Just put that house next to a favorite climbing area, and you're good. Short term rentals for pieces of the year seems like a nice in-between approach if you want to travel more. Here's an interview with someone doing that at a high level: https://clippingchains.com/2020/02/03/mike-doyle-a-remote-controlled-climbing-life/ For me, I'd rather just live somewhere year round with lots of climbing and a long season, and fully utilize that local area. With occasional vacations (real vacations, no work) to travel elsewhere. After some number if years, considering moving, as needed to keep things fresh. |
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My job is semi-demanding, there’s a lot of math to be sure. But if you’ve gotten an engineering degree, done a decent amount of statistics and systems modeling, and have worked in the energy industry for a while, it’s fairly straightforward. When I put it like that, admittedly there was lots of build up lol.
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JCMwrote: I’m in a very similar position to OP, and this is essentially exactly where I landed with my line of thinking. I’m not convinced that the reality of full time van life would even be close to the fantasy of it, when viewed in the context of needing to work a full time job. Just some additional advice OP, if you end up going the house route, keep location in the forefront of your mind when considering places to stay. When you’re trying to climb after standard corporate hours, I’m assuming around 4pm, the minutes to get to the crag add up fast. Check a GPS for the time from where the house is to the parking lot, then tack on the average approach time to actually get to the crag- that’s your start point for how long you have after work to climb. The remote nature of places can limit your partner pool. Even in climbing meccas (the red as an example), it’s harder than you would expect to find consistent partners who are willing to go out with this schedule. Generally you’re drawing from this potential partner pool: 1. People on a climbing trip, so they’re already out earlier in the day and starting to wrap up later in the afternoon 2. People working at local businesses, so similar to 1, they often have entire weekdays off (and are usually working on weekends) 3. People driving in an hour plus from larger metro areas, Lexington in the case of the red, so they usually stick to weekends with occasional half days off work thrown in 4. Travel nurses who are in the area temporarily, who generally have 2-4 day blocks off at a time, usually on weekdays 5. People working remote corporate jobs, similar to yourself While there are outliers, I think the vast majority fall in to the one of the buckets above. If you view it from a set theory standpoint, you’re primarily going to be climbing on weekdays with people in 5, which is definitely a minority. Of course it’s possible to meet up with a crew who’s already at a crag, but as I already said, most people are ending their days right about when you’ll be getting to the crag. Expect to be the one doing the bulk of initiating to meet up with people, especially if you’re moving areas every few months and ‘resetting’ your potential partner pool. |
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As a window cleaner, I wfh, just not my home |
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I am WFH as we speak. I moved to a place I could find a balance of a stable community (e.g. not van life) while having easy access to climbing. If you can handle a time change, the whole contiguous US is a go. Going West time-change wise is better IMO because most days I can get out at 2:30 to go climbing. |
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I work east coast hours and live on the west coast. Best arrangement I can think of if you want to / have to work a mon-fri 9-5 |
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Hey Daniel, excited to see you landed a wfh job! When I started working remote, I had a grand idea of traveling around throughout the year spending time climbing all over. After a few extended trips in various places I never ended up climbing as much as I expected. The main thing for me was finding partners while traveling. For weekends it was usually easy enough to link up with someone or a group, but to get some pitches in m-f it was much harder to sync up with a partner. I spent more time rope soloing than climbing with partners. If I were to do it over, I would probably spend some more time searching for partners with similar schedules, and decide where to go based on that. Van life wouldn’t work for me, but I was surprised at how affordable long term air bnbs have been, some places give up to a 50% discounts for stays >30 days. |
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I think you’re on the right track looking into property near the NRG. IMHO, bring mobile is a temporary fix, but long term I think you’re going to want to be housed near great climbing areas. Could be SLC, Vegas, NC/TN, Barcelona, whatever stokes you. Just saying, you may want to have a family or put down roots for some other reason. Also, the cost of being nomadic is not going down. |
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This is good generalized discussion, but in addition here is an idea for what to do in the immediate future: go to Chattanooga for the winter. It'll be ideal for an initial test of concept. Reasonable size city with housing options and amenities. Fastest internet in the country. Lots of climbers to find partners, and lots of nearby bouldering for random partnerless weekdays. A gym for rainy weeknights. And,of course, tons of good rock to climb, with a lot of variety. Get a 6 month lease in Chatt for the winter and spring, then once that 6 months is up go back to Chicago for the summer and figure out your longer term plan. That 6 months in Chatt will be a fairly easy and low commitment way to dip your toe in the water for this sort of lifestyle, and will help inform your long term approach. Or you may like it enough there that you just decide to stay. |
Noah Betzwrote: You forgot: 6. Old retired people. . But seriously, the hardest part is finding partners. In theory, I can climb any day, any time, but I am lucky if I find a partner for local climbing 2 days a week. And I'm not some social reject who can't climb worth shit (not that anyone in in this thread is). But we've all had that weird partner who overstated their experience. But I digress... There are some places where weekend partners are much easier to find, usually because of a meeting place (e.g. Miguel's at the Red) or an active internet page with a large pool of climbers (e.g., the Gunks). So I think picking the places with partner resources is a huge plus. T |
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Climb on the west coast. That way u will finish work at 2pm pacific time. |
wisamwrote: The OP didn't say where his employer is located. |
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This is pretty much the exact situation my wife and I found ourselves in. Over the course of the past year and a half to two years we switched from casually looking online at properties to seriously looking at land or a house to buy in the Red. Fast forward a bit and we have now been in our newly finished tiny house for about 3 1/2 weeks and are loving the flexibility of being able to climb after work. A few things to consider (some have already been mentioned but bear repeating): - consider what is most important for you to be close to. We prioritized distance to climbing over distance to amenities and are happy with our choice for our lifestyle. We could have gotten a nicer house or cheaper piece of land looking a bit further out, but are thrilled we chose a property that is centrally located to climbing (about 15-20 min drive from our front door to various parking lots for the main southern region crags in the red) or better yet find property with walk in access and cut out the issues of driving to the crag entirely - finding a good builder if purchasing vacant land or a property that needs improvement beyond your personal DIY skills. A lot of the people we talked to were 1-2 years out from being able to break ground when we were meeting with them back in Jan and April. - internet availability. Finding a good ISP proved difficult in this area and the best solution for us was to get a hotspot that works off cell signal since we thankfully get good Verizon signal on our property. Without that we would have been stuck with some sort of traditional satellite service which are slower and more costly, or starlink which is expensive and still a pretty big waitlist in this area. The hotspot is enough to run our security cameras and work function, but streaming video is challenging for it at times - finding reliable partners. Not an issue for my wife and I since we have each other, but as Noah mentioned above finding someone with a similar corporate work/climb schedule can prove difficult when the majority of people in the area aren't working the same type of corporate schedule you are. - is this going to be your full time residence or a 2nd home? If going full time residence is there enough in the area to keep you entertained and happy when climbing isn't a viable or enjoyable option? |
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There’s a lot to respond to do to start, my employer is west coast. Now on that, they ask you to work “regular” hours. But informally, my director has also said he’s had people work super odd hours and as long as your work is good, he doesn’t care. Just keep it on the down-low and be available-ish during regular hours for clients/meetings. And on that note again, if I wanted to work, say, 7-3, that wouldn’t be an issue at all. I’ve already done something similar so I could start my weekend early. But yeah, one thing I hadn’t been thinking enough about was availability of a gym and partners. I’ve done similar-ish when I lived in CO, though I was much busier (work + back in school), so climbing was tough after work often because, you know, homework. But yeah, I’m aware of the issue of timing as well. That’s where I’m thinking the New may shine: plenty of bouldering options for quick after work sessions, a lifetime worth of routes, and areas like the Red an easy weekend trip away. I actually do love the Gunks too, but I don’t consider that as viable an option as it’s more isolating, and I can’t split time with Chicago. As for the posted link about finding a climbing girlfriend, we can all dream lol. Admittedly, finding someone that wants to split time between Chicago and WVA, or anywhere else, and climb regularly, and live half the time in a pretty small town, is going to be hard haha. Maybe someone that wants to homestead. To van life, I see that more as fun if I had like, a year without a job. But with a job, I’ve seen people do it long term, but it’s definitely tough. And I agree with the idea that it’s never going to be as much climbing as you think. |
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I don't really get why people want to work from home. I had to do it a little bit in 2020 and I hated being cooped up by myself for 40 hours a week. Nowadays I am out and about for my job, talking and working with real people, and it is much better for my mental and physical health. |
Aaron Kwrote: Different strokes for different folks. |
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I’m fine never going back to an office lol |
