Joe and Ann Evermore live in Colorado and they take wild parenting to a whole new level. Their kids are five, eight and 10, and each of them is a skilled hiker and rock climber. In 2022, their oldest son Sam became the youngest person to climb El Capitan via rope ascent.
Joe and Ann Evermore live in Colorado and they take wild parenting to a whole new level. Their kids are five, eight and 10, and each of them is a skilled hiker and rock climber. In 2022, their oldest son Sam became the youngest person to climb El Capitan via rope ascent.
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Joe Evermore:
So, if we want our kids to have grit, we want our kids to have strength and inner confidence, we have to be willing to get them into these environments to do it. I think the same thing can happen on a Ninja Warrior course. I think the same thing can happen going to a stream, or camping with a kid. You don't have to big wall climb to do it. It's just the way we do it.
Shelby Stanger:
Joe Evermore thinks a lot about how to guide the next generation of adventurers. He's an advanced climber, a business coach, and most importantly he's a dad to three boys with another baby on the way. Joe and his wife, Ann, live in Colorado and they take wild parenting to a whole new level. Their kids are five, eight and 10, and each of them is a skilled hiker and rock climber. In fact, you might've heard of his oldest son, Sam Adventure. Yes, that's actually his middle name. In 2022, Sam became the youngest person to climb El Capitan in Yosemite, when he was just eight years old. Climbing is an incredibly important part of the Evermore family's life. By doing wild things outside together, Joe and his wife, Ann, are teaching their kids to be loving, courageous adventurers. I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living. An REI Co-op Studios production, brought to you by Capital One. Joe Evermore, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living. We're really excited to have you on the show.
Joe Evermore:
Yeah. Heck yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
Okay. So, what is your background in the outdoors? Because it's one thing to be outdoorsy, and then it's like a whole other level to take your kid to climb rocks and sleep on portal edges, and become the youngest kid to ever climb El Capitan. You guys are raising rippers. To the extreme, you and your wife. So, were you outdoorsy? Did your dad take you outside?
Joe Evermore:
Yes. My parents, they would always take us on about a three-week vacation each year, where they would fly out, usually to somewhere like Bozeman, and then we would go into the Canadian Rockies. It was usually like a road trip where we would go and see the bears. It wasn't as much climbing, but when I was in fourth grade, I began to talk to my parents about wanting to climb after seeing climbers, and they got me a pass to the local rock gym. Basically I had to promise that I wouldn't rock climb outside at the time, and that's where it started. By junior high it was getting real dangerous. I had secretly bought a rope and was getting out.
Shelby Stanger:
So, you were kind of early. I don't know how old you are, but what decade is this, where you're in fourth grade and learning to rock climb?
Joe Evermore:
This is the nineties. Yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
Okay. So, you started rock climbing really young. You get hooked. Where did rock climbing end up taking you personally?
Joe Evermore:
Yeah. I mean, it was just always just this fun thing. I got to live in Alaska for a year, and I was always interested in trying to find something else on my spare time to go climb. It's just always been a passion of mine. Then soon as we had kids, me and Ann were both climbers. We didn't know what to even do with the kids, so we had one of those backpacks to carry them, and we literally would be climbing these multi-pitch routes with a two-year-old. He'd be harnessed and clipped in, and we'd get out toys on the ledge and we'd be climbing these big tall mountains.
Shelby Stanger:
How did you meet your wife? She's also a climber, she sounds rad.
Joe Evermore:
She is.
Shelby Stanger:
She sounds like someone I want to be friends with.
Joe Evermore:
Yeah, you would like her. We met through mutual friends. Every year I would try to rally some people to go to the Cirque of the Towers. It was always one of my favorite places to climb. The Cirque of the Towers to tell you about it, it would be a place that would be as famous as Yosemite if you didn't have to hike two days to get to it. It's in Wyoming. I would always invite 40 or 50 people and five would come. Ann was one of those who said yes to this trip. Me and her and two other guys were climbing what we call Wolf's Head, and it was just we started late and I lost my way along the ridge, and it started getting dark and I couldn't figure out the route. So, I made the decision, let's just hunker down and wait till morning. We spent the night just shivering up there. As we shivered all night, that's when we fell in love.
Shelby Stanger:
I love good adventure love stories. That is so awesome, Joe. How soon did Sam come into the picture after you guys fell in love?
Joe Evermore:
When we were on that climb, I was like, wow. This girl's awesome. It was really right after that that we were dating. Dating was pretty fun. She lived in Rapid City, so I said, "Maybe I'll just come to Rapid City for a while and I could date this girl." So, I went to Rapid City, and I needed to get back to Pinedale, and there was no transportation at the time to get to Pinedale. I was making a sign to hitchhike to Pinedale, Wyoming. Her dad saw me and was like, "What are you doing, Joe?" I was like, "I'm making this sign to get to Pinedale." He's like, "Well, I'll drive you on the first leg."
I was thinking, oh, this is great. I could talk to Ann's dad about my intentions. So, I get in the car with this guy and the first 30 minutes of a three-hour drive I'm like, "Hey, Dave. I just want you to know I'm not a player. I really am interested in your daughter and I'm actually really interested in marrying your daughter." He says, "Joe, don't even think about marrying her until she finishes college." That's like four years away. Then the rest of the three hours of that drive was me asking a question and him answering it in as few words as possible.
Shelby Stanger:
Oh, no.
Joe Evermore:
Yeah. I remember getting out at Cheyenne and feeling so depressed, on the side of the road, beaten up by the situation. On that trip I just realized, I've just got to wait. I've got to wait for this girl.
Shelby Stanger:
I am seeing this really common thread in your life, just hearing this one story, that you'll go really far for love.
Joe Evermore:
That's true.
Shelby Stanger:
Maybe that's the love of your wife, the love of Sam, your love of climbing, but you're not afraid to go the distance and do hard things for love. I love that. It sounds cliche, but it's true.
Joe Evermore:
There's another layer to this story you have to hear then. At first it was three years, but then Ann changed her major, which made it four. I'm now coming up on that last year, when it's time to marry Ann. So, I came up with this idea of how I wanted to propose to her, and I basically, for Christmas I had paid for us to take the advanced free fall course to be skydivers. Each weekend I was painting 10,000 square feet of blue tarp to say, "Will you marry me?" I proposed to Ann while skydiving and it was amazing. She said yes. So, we married in 2011, and then moved to Colorado, and then Sam was born in 2014.
Shelby Stanger:
When Joe and Ann had Sam, their first child, it was clear they weren't putting climbing on the back burner. They both had climbed long enough to understand that humans, and kids especially, are natural climbers. So, Joe and Ann decided to take a unique approach to parenting, and they put Sam on the wall as early as possible. In their house, their kids learn to crawl, then walk, then climb. They start climbing before they can even run. Why did you decide to get your kids involved in climbing at such a young age?
Joe Evermore:
Kids actually naturally climb. It's actually something that I think people unlearn throughout their life. It's one of the skills that you gain and then you lose. One thing that's important to us is that when our kids climb something and they're young and we think, oh, he might fall right there, if he's not going to break his arm, we're the kind of parents that don't step in. We are very cautious about this, because we want our kids to tumble down. It's saving the kid that actually begins to build in him this very cautious child. If I think he's going to break his arm, I'm under him and spotting him. But kids naturally climb, my kids climb everything. I think it's something that if you just encourage it a little bit, they're going to climb.
Shelby Stanger:
I think it's hard for parents to let their kids fall.
Joe Evermore:
I know. You have to let it happen young, and then you walk over, you're like, "Are you okay? Can we get back up? Can we get back on it? Let's try it again. Maybe you should put your foot over here." They need that. It's part of climbing.
Shelby Stanger:
Joe, I think it's really great that you took Sam climbing from a young age and he liked it. I know a lot of parents who are surfers who take their kids surfing and they hate it. I'm sure there's a lot of parents out there who take their kids climbing and they hope that their kids are going to like climbing, but they don't like it. So, I'm curious how it all worked out for you. How did you know your kids would like it and what would have happened if they didn't like it?
Joe Evermore:
Yeah. Climbing has a bit of misery to it, and so you really have to be so intentional in doing this with kids. In our house, climbing is really a way of life. The kids like it because we do it as a family and we do it in a way that's really fun for them. What's most important to us is that our kids have big goals. After they've done their big goal of the year, we make ice cream cones that are like this big, and they could never possibly eat-
Shelby Stanger:
That's like three feet. That's like a three foot high ice cream cone. Okay.
Joe Evermore:
We usually put things through the middle to hold all the pieces together. But it's more about their visual in their mind that makes the trophy unforgettable. Then there's usually a crowd of people that are with us that we'll all eat whatever Sam can't eat. We don't do a lot of sweets, but we've made that a tradition after their big climb, that if you give the person at the ice cream stand a big enough tip, they'll make you a mountain of ice cream.
Shelby Stanger:
Sam was playing on a rope swing in the yard when I was interviewing Joe, but he did pop in a couple of times. I asked him some questions.
Sam Evermore:
My name is Sam Adventure Evermore, and I'm the youngest person to do El Capitan via rope ascent.
Shelby Stanger:
Sam, what advice would you give to other young climbers that are just starting out? If there's another kid that wants to start rock climbing, what advice would you give them?
Sam Evermore:
Start climbing at a gym, because if you fall from a tree, you could break a bone.
Shelby Stanger:
What's something you have to have on an overnight climb?
Sam Evermore:
On an overnight climb, I really love to bring snacks.
Shelby Stanger:
What kind of snacks are your favorite?
Sam Evermore:
The Sour Patch Watermelon gummies.
Shelby Stanger:
I think it's important to reward kids for doing hard things, adults too. I know that after I finish a big goal, I like a reward. A night out dancing, a day to just surf, or even something as simple as yummy frozen yogurt. When we come back, Joe talks about how he decided that Sam was ready to climb El Capitan in Yosemite, and why the family changed their last name. He also shares his advice for raising young adventurers. Joe Evermore is focused on giving his children a positive relationship with climbing and a habit of going after big goals. When his oldest son, Sam, was really young, Joe read about a ten-year-old girl who had climbed El Capitan with her dad. He was inspired and he realized that Sam would probably be ready to climb El Cap when he was eight. That would make Sam the youngest person in recorded history to summit the mountain.
For two years before they on this expedition, Sam climbed daily. In addition to regular training, the biggest thing Joe had to teach Sam about was something called exposure. On huge climbs like El Cap, you're completely exposed on the wall. There is no nook to hide in or trees to tie up a hammock. It's just you and the rock and the thousands of feet below you. Even for adults, this type of exposure can be scary. To help Sam adjust to this type of environment, Joe brought Sam on smaller climbs that had similar conditions. When it was actually time to climb El Cap in the fall of 2022, they made the ascent with a team of five people, Sam, Joe, and three of Joe's climbing buddies. Joe stayed within 10 feet of Sam on the wall at all times. So, El Capitan, how did you decide to do this and why did you think this would be good for Sam?
Joe Evermore:
I think there's a lot of actual science behind it. I had this guy come up to me at a conference and he was explaining to me that when children experience trauma and they're apart from their parents, the actual literal integrity of the brain is weak. It weakens the brain. But when a child experiences trauma in the presence of his parents, when his parents are guiding him, walking him through it, the actual literal integrity of the brain, the physical aspects of the brain, are stronger. The plasticity of the brain is stronger. It's like, that's where we learn things. When it comes to building a child's character, we can't just read in a book like, "Let me tell you today what courage is." It's not something you can just download like that. A parent has to set an environment for a child to actually learn certain things.
That's one of the things, courage, resilience, as you mentioned earlier on, those things come through actually discovery. So, if we want our kids to have grit and we want our kids to have strength and inner confidence, we have to be willing to get them into these environments to do it. I think the same thing can happen on a Ninja Warrior course. I think the same thing can happen going to a stream, or camping with a kid. You don't have to big wall climb to do it. It's just the way we do it.
Shelby Stanger:
I love how you parent and how you set so much intention and love, and dedicate so much time to your kids. Could you just take me through your climb in El Capitan a little bit? Just like day-by-day, step-by-step briefly. The CliffsNotes version of it.
Joe Evermore:
El Capitan is a five-day adventure. There's some different disciplines to move along this wall, but it's mostly about the rope ascent, climbing that rope and overcoming the exposure. The most challenging piece on the wall was really getting around what they call the Great Roof. It required some technical lowering out. You're so high on the wall and it's so massive, that it's hard to even grasp it. As a climber, I've spent a lot of time at walls, and I remember feeling like, holy cow. This is so scary. It's like you're on the moon or something. You're so far away from Earth, you can't even see it.
People are so small in the valley at that point you can't even see a person. You could see a car, not a person. You're totally exposed. The whole top of El Capitan, most people don't understand this, is basically pitched back a little bit. So, when you rope ascend, the person rope guns the rope up to the next set of anchors, they climb it. Then when we undock from our anchor, you actually swing out into space. It's almost like you're on a wing of a plane or something. I mean, you are hanging from nothing, it feels like.
Shelby Stanger:
So, are you doing this with your kid under your arm? Are you both solo?
Joe Evermore:
No. He's on his own. He's on own line. He's got to undock and swing out and start going up, and then I'm on another line that follows him.
Shelby Stanger:
How do you manage your fear? Because you have your own fear, but then your fear of your child.
Joe Evermore:
I think the same way that I'm training him. I mean, courage isn't about not having fear, it's about having fear and pushing through it. Fear is such a unique thing. It's actually this thing that keeps us alive. People without fear are very dangerous people. We're not trying to do that. We want to really be able to logically rationalize through it and say, "Even though this is terrifying, I know that what these ropes are capable of, what those anchors are capable of, what my partners are capable of." I base it on those pieces of information instead of your instinct. Because your instinct says, "No, this is not a good idea."
Shelby Stanger:
So, every single day you guys are climbing, you're doing different traverses and sometimes rope swings and just technical stuff. Every day is scary, every day is different. But then every night you're sleeping, you're eating, you're having to go to the bathroom. What is all of that like?
Joe Evermore:
It's a ton of work. It is like constant work. If we're not climbing, we're hauling. Each person drinks about two gallons of water per day. So, we're talking literally hundreds of pounds of just water have to be hauled up the wall. For a full on camping trip, has to be hauled up the wall. We have to set up these complex anchor systems to be able to haul that kind of weight. Then it's like, you get to the next camp, you have to set the whole camp up. Next morning, you've got to get up, you've got to tear the whole camp down. All doing that while hanging from anchors.
Shelby Stanger:
So, you're camping, but you're camping on the side of the wall and your tent is not on the ground, it's in the air?
Joe Evermore:
So, the portal edge is connected to anchors and think of a piece of fabric that has a scaffolding on it. We lay on that. The thing is, there's quite a bit of wind that comes up the wall. So, as you're laying there, it's like you feel this nice fluffy cloud almost pick you up on your portal edge, almost like you're on a magic carpet, and you're half asleep or asleep, and you're like, "Oh, this is rocking me." Then all of a sudden, it'll just drop you against the anchors. It's just like, well, bam. It feels like you just wake up instantly. You think, oh, my gosh. This is it. But the anchors are so strong. I mean, you could hang a truck off of them. So, you have to get in a place where you have to overcome those warning lights with your brain and say, "We're still safe. We're still okay. We're all clipped in." But, man. Being on a portal edge on a wall like that, is a totally different experience than being in a tent in the wind. This is scary.
Shelby Stanger:
What are some of the other lessons you want your kids to learn outside?
Joe Evermore:
When we go into the mountains, you really realize the smallness of your greatness. Mountain climbing, I mean when you're climbing you're so in touch with your mortality. It's so important that I talk to my boys. We talk about things like, "One day you're going to grow up and I'm going to die. One day you're going to die." That was actually the conversation we had in El Capitan, by the way. We watched the Lion King together on my phone. That was the first time Sam had ever watched it. We talked about, the father dies and the son doesn't realize that he's the king. He's out playing and he's not living like a king. He's living like a child.
Then when the pride starts collapsing, he comes back and he takes his role. Me and Sam had some amazing conversations about, "Sam. Everything I have one day is going to be yours and your brothers. You guys are going to have to lead your boys and develop your boys to be great leaders, and to have an impact on the world and to do something good." Those are deep spiritual concepts that the perfect environment to do that is laying on a portal edge under the stars talking about it.
Shelby Stanger:
After five days of pooping in a bag, sleeping on a portal edge and eating a lot of watermelon gummies, Joe and Sam successfully ascended El Cap. While they were on the wall, their story went viral. Joe and Sam were featured on CNN, NPR, Good Morning America, and in hundreds of articles and publications. It felt good to have thousands of people congratulating them. But for the Evermore family, climbing isn't about attention and accolades. For them, going outside is about chasing wild ideas and coming together as a family. The Evermores have been through a lot and have faced challenges that even led them to change their last name. It used to be Baker. I thought you were Sam and Joe Baker, but you guys are the Evermores. Tell me about your name change.
Joe Evermore:
You've heard we've had three boys. They're absolutely the most sacred thing to us. When you have three boys, the next thing you want is a girl. We hoped for her and she finally came. In 2021, we found out that we were having our daughter, and I can't tell you how excited me and Ann were, and my boys were. Then we go into this sonogram appointment and the OB-GYN basically told us that your baby is going to develop normally in the womb, and you're going to have a normal nine months here. But then after she's born, she's going to die. At first we could not hear that. We were like, "No." We were like, "F. you. That's not happening. We're going to find somebody who could do something." We began the journey to figure out what we could do. Honestly, that journey led us to, there was nothing we could do.
My wife fell into a pretty dark place. We had a guest room in our home at the time, and she basically moved down into that room and just shut the door. I was trying to figure out how to rescue Ann, and I came up with this idea like, "Hey, we are a mountain climbing family. Let's take Ember to all of our favorite places before she's born. Let's just take her up a bunch of mountains." Really, it was like I knew that would light my wife back up, get her out of the dark room. She was on board. So, we basically packed everybody up and we went on this tour and we called it the Ember Tour. Ann got to swim under Yosemite Falls with Ember, and we took our Fairview Dome and we took her up all of these really cool mountains and hikes, and we had all these campfires as a family, where we really talked about the boy's sister.
At the beginning of the journey, my hope was I literally would pray and I'd say, "God, is there a way that we could just miscarry this baby? Just have mercy on us. This is too much to bear." Then by the end of the journey I was saying, "Is there any way that just November could not come? Is there any way we could have more time or just a little more time?" When my boys got done that tour, they realized Ember was going to miss Christmas, which is a big deal at our house. They were so upset about that, that we decided to do Christmas in October. It ticked the HOA off, but we didn't care. We basically had fallen in love with little Ember. She was born on November 4th, 2021. It was by far this most transcendent and life-changing experience for our whole family, where every member of our family was there.
People had sent us, because we decided to put our journey online, we decided to go online and share this. The reason we put the journey online, I'll tell you, is because people would come up to Ann and they'd say, "Congratulations." We could only tell people our situation once per day without losing it. Little Ember came. She lived for an hour and six minutes. We always referred to her with this heavenly name. It was like Ember Moonlight Evermore, as though we would see her again. It was a two-year journey of us talking to our parents, talking to Ann's parents, really walking through this journey, that we decided we're going to change all of our names to Evermore, and forever remember our boy's sister. Our boys still talk about Ember almost every day. They will, even littlest one, will mention Ember and talk about her. Because they have all these memories of all these places that they experienced talking about their sister growing in Ann's tummy. That whole experience, it was so profound that we just felt like changing our name, locked it in.
Shelby Stanger:
The Evermores are expecting their next child in December this year. They're excited to welcome this little one into their climbing family. I am just curious how you've learned to just continue to be patient regardless.
Joe Evermore:
Well, having children is what makes you patient. If you want to find patience in your life and discipline and time management skills, have kids. Before I had kids, me and my wife would binge-watch Battlestar Galactica. We haven't done that since. I mean, kids make you patient. Kids make you disciplined, they make you manage your time better. If you don't, you go out of business. Then taking kids in the mountains is like another level of care and patience and intentionality and focus. I mean, we were climbing Moonlight Buttress and Sam shit his pants. What do you do? "That's interesting, Sam. You could have told me about that, but you just did it and we're 500 feet up and a long way from anywhere, but we'll figure this out."
Shelby Stanger:
So, what did you do?
Joe Evermore:
I think we hucked his underpants off the mountain. But I don't know if we should have done that.
Shelby Stanger:
We're not perfect. We just do the best we can do. I would've probably done the same thing.
Joe Evermore:
I've spent a lot of time doing, Leave no Trace, and that was not a time of Leave no Trace. That was a trace.
Shelby Stanger:
We talk about this a lot, but there is scientific proof, evidential proof, that when you're side-by-side outside in nature, people tend to open up and be receptive to things more. Any advice to parents listening who want to raise adventurous kids?
Joe Evermore:
I think that thing I said before, first of all, there's some different pieces. One, you've got to let them fall. You've got to let them fail. It's okay to push your kids. We need to push them out of their comfort zone, they need to be uncomfortable sometimes. When you actually learn to be uncomfortable and have a good time, man, that is as good as it gets. But it's hard for parents to do that. Then I think there was a Forbes magazine, they interviewed thousands of people that stayed together through their marriage, that had families that stayed together. They said, "These are the things that are unique and similar about all these families." The number one thing on the list, they camped together. Families that went camping-
Shelby Stanger:
They camped together.
Joe Evermore:
... together was the number one singularity of families that stayed together. That's because when you go out in the mountains, shit goes wrong. You forget something or something happens, and you have to solve it as a family. You know what I mean? You have to deal with it. It's those environments where you really grow and learn. I mean, that's where you learn deep, profound, true things.
Shelby Stanger:
There are so many life lessons that kids can learn from adventuring outside, like getting out of your comfort zone, setting goals and dealing with failure. Maybe you're not quite ready to take the children in your life on a climb up El Cap, but they can get a lot from going on a short hike, playing in small waves at the beach, or trying out your local climbing gym. As for Joe and Sam, Sam just finished his next wild idea, to climb Matterhorn in Switzerland. Pretty dang cool. To follow along with their adventures, follow Sam on Instagram, @SamuelAdventure, and you can follow Joe @TheEvermores. That's spelled T-H-E E-V-E-R-M-O-R-E-S.
If you liked this episode, you might also like our parenting episode about raising adventurous kids. It features ideas and advice from a handful of our past guests. You can find the link to that episode in the show notes. Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, produced by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas and Sam Peers Nitzberg of Puddle Creative. Our senior producers are Jenny Barber and Hannah Boyd. Our executive producers are Paolo Mottola and Joe Crosby. As always, we love it when you follow the show, take time to rate it and write a review wherever you listen. Remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.