Listen to “Picaflor” Dirtbag Diaries Podcast Episode

When a bad breakup sent him spiraling into a deep depression, Tom Ireson fixated on an unconventional way to get his head straight. “I really needed something to focus my mind on to pull me out of that,” Tom says, “and about the biggest thing I could think of was to try and do a new route on a big wall.”

Not just any big wall, a big wall on the other side of the world in the remote and wild valley of Cochamó, Chile. When he latched on to the idea, Tom had never been to Cochamó and never climbed a big wall, much less established a new route on one.

Today, we’ve got one for you about how, if you find yourself at the bottom of an impossibly deep hole, sometimes it takes an equally impossible goal to pull yourself out of it.

If you want to hear more from Tom, check out his 2014 Short, “Go For It.” And for more on Cochamó, read Patagonia ambassador Patch Wilson’s trip report from his visit in 2014.

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