Jackie Hueftle's passion for climbing led to her company Kilter Grips but what is it about writing and animal gifs that help her navigate life?

Hi, I'm Dhruti Shah. And this is my podcast Have You Thought About. I'm a writer, a journalist and a poet. And I love to find out about what passions people are pursuing, especially if they manage to blend together skills in unusual ways. Each edition, I'm going to chat with someone I find particularly interesting, and has managed to fit things together in their life or profession

Jackie, we've known each other quite a little while and we met when I was working in Colorado on some animal stories. So I'm never going to forget that you picked me up and you had this huge truck. And you introduced me to the first Malamute I've ever seen it in real life. And you also showed me some really amazing climbing tech. So it made me go actually, what's this climbing stuff really all

Yeah, so I just want to speak to really quick the, the huge truck. My truck is not that big for America. It just looks big to you. It's actually a smaller truck for here.

It was like, yeah, tell me like - I had to literally lift myself up onto like this little step thing, but I am quite small. So I will give you that caveat.

And they give you a handle. So that helps you know to pull you in. I grew up in Reno, Northern Nevada, it's near Lake Tahoe. And there's a fair amount of rock there. So there actually there's a climbing scene in Reno even back in the 90s. And one of my mum's friends started taking my brother, my mum climbing, I didn't want to go because I was like, you know, early high school age

So there is quite a bit of lingo. You talk about the route setting, but how do you learn all the climbing lingo? Is it purely being immersed in it? Or have you been involved in creating climbing lingo? Because you are a trendsetter with the climbing from what I understand

That is nice of you to say. I've been doing it since 1998. So that's sort of long time at this point in climbing - well over half my life. Well, yeah, well over half my life. Some of the lingo that you get in climbing very common lingo are things like crux, which means the hard part, ugh route, a climb is referred to as a route. So you might look and say, oh, I want to climb this

late 90s, early 2000s, it was a lot different when I was competing. And I transitioned from that into becoming the person that puts the climbs on the wall for competitions and for like a climbing gym. So if you were to go into a climbing gym, you'll see there's like tonnes of coloured climbs all over the place. And you can just climb, you can use all the holes, or you could be like, I'm only going

So you've already given us that have you thought about in terms of the art of it, that trail can be there for like, a couple of weeks, and then that's it's gone? It's something I've never thought about, because it's like when I see pictures, or you know, having gone near a climbing wall or a boulder wall? Is that what it is like, you're like, Oh, I always thought they were there

Yeah it's called, it's called Kilter Grips. My partner Ian had another company in the early 90s, that he then sold, so that company still exists as well. But Kilter is our company. Now we've been going for about 10 years, we make a product called the kilter board. And what that is, is it's a climbing wall. But the holds are, they don't get moved all the time. So we set them up, and

Climbing and tech, like it's also something I hadn't actually considered to to work together. But that's what you actually work in. It's climbing and tech as well. So that's pretty cool. And not just that having seen Kilter Board up face to face when we first met in Colorado. There's art so it feels like climbing, especially maybe for you climbing geeks climbing nerds, it's not just

Yeah, I think so. Because climbing is a pretty natural, intuitive thing to do like you have in yourself. When you first climb, you told me you climbed right to the top of the thing you were put onto, and then you regretted being up there. But you did climb straight up it. And that's not an uncommon experience.

I'm going to interrupt. Yeah, so I was in Laos, and I was with a climber professional, semi professional. Anyway, he knew what he was doing. Let's face it. If anybody knows me, if you don't know me, I am the most clumsiest person on earth. I'm glad that an attempt was made to make me try something. And yes, I went very much up, it sort of felt like a cliff face wall. Unfortunately,

You know, people do do it as a hobby that you have to release, people just do it for fitness. And so in a climbing gym, you have, you know, hundreds of climbs in any given climbing gym where you have designed climbs for every level of climber that comes to the gym to be able to - it's called warming up. So do the first easier climb to get your body moving. And then to climb on and

holds, or I just have to grab the purple holds or which one is a purple hold. So when the holds light up on the kilter board, it makes it very obvious kind of what you're supposed to do. And you can also change the angle of the wall. So you can make the angle something you're comfortable with, or something that's uncomfortable for you if you want to try the same movement even at different angles.

The person I went climbing with, one of the things that really stood out and I was like this is quite interesting is it was seemed like quite a visceral experience for them. So they would talk about the scent of that which they were sort of climbing. And they were more an outdoors climber, I think, from what they were saying. And bearing in mind, from what you're saying go back to that

How does it make Jackie Jackie? I've been an avid reader my whole life like so many of us that end up writing as adults. So when you read a lot, you just get a sense for how things should be on paper. Until then you become kind of pedantic and you also think you enjoy editing. And then you also enjoy explaining things in a way that you think they make sense, which means you want

Going back that creative writing, you studied it, what is it that you return to again and again - this really stood out for me when I was a kid I you know, for me, it's White Fang, you know, I've spoken about that before. And White Fang is this book by Jack London and it's about this wolf dog that is having a coming of age season because clearly that's what I'm like. But for you what is

I don't tend to be a person that reads over and over and over the same book. When I was younger, I had a really good memory for books so I can read a book and I can open the book to find like a specific sentence or section pretty quickly, pretty easily pretty consistently. Now that I run a small business and I've been running this whole business for 10 years, that ability is gone

like because, you know, especially now that there's so much written work available online, that's barely edited, if at all. You know, you're susceptible to reading garbage, or really poorly edited, poorly constructed - do the work to try to clean up your your work. Because, you know, when you're writing a book, or like I'm working on a couple different books series is like my sort of hobby,

I think there might be in the charity, my understanding is that there's a significant number of them that end up in the charity shops. But, you know, I guess each to their own. I will definitely say that I ended up reading both but purely because everybody else was reading them. So it was more like, what is all this fuss about? And sometimes I actually don't enjoy doing that. Like

Yeah, no, I often don't read things that people really push for. Because I'm not that I did. I'm just maybe I have different tastes. And a lot of people that a lot of times when I am reading something that's very popular, I don't like it. That's not always like there's some things that are very popular that I really, really do enjoy reading. But there's some authors that just

And that's why we get on. One of the things that we do is every so often message me a wonderful gif, and they're often very animal related. That's something that we have in common here. So tell me more about your love of animals. Like where does that come from? What's that about?

Oh I think it's because I was like a pretty anxious kid. Like I had friends and I just always more comfortable being outside. So I just liked being outside and I just always liked animals. And so I always would want to try to, you know, win over whatever animal was nearby basically. So I just always loved animals growing up, but I think it's common nowadays. So I think a lot of

And that was the wonderful Jackie Hueftle who brings together climbing business and more. Do you have an interdisciplinary life? I'd love to hear from you. And maybe we can chat on this podcast that goes with my newsletter, which is called Have you thought about can be found at www.dhrutishah.com. Please join me next time for a fun conversation with another guest who likes to mix up