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In October 2015, 14-year-old Zach Galla sat with his teammates on a blanket at the Heritage Green Outdoor Amphitheater in Atlanta, Georgia, and watched a screening of Reel Rock 10. The highlight of the night, for Galla, was the “High and Mighty” segment in which Daniel Woods makes the first ascent of The Process, a skyscraping V16 on the 55-foot-tall Grandpa Peabody boulder in Bishop, California. Galla was only bouldering “like V9” at the time, he says, but he nonetheless remembers feeling certain that he, too, would someday climb The Process.
Last week, nine years and two months after Woods topped out the boulder by headlamp, Galla, now 23, stuck the wild dyno to the lip, held it together in the slabby no-fall-zone above, and claimed the problem’s long-overdue second ascent.
The Process is just the latest in a stunning string of sends for Galla, who, having narrowly missed an Olympic ticket at the Pan-American Games, recently decided to shift his focus away from competitions. In September, during his training deload before the Games, he ticked Sound of Violence (V15) in Joe’s Valley, Utah, not far from his current home in the training hub of Salt Lake City. After the Games, he took advantage of his newly open schedule to nab ascents of Paint it Black (a V15 in Colorado), Doors of Perception (a V15 in Utah), Southern Drawl (a V15 in Tennessee), and Sleepwalker (a V15/16 in Nevada).
Climbing caught up with Galla by phone last week to chat about The Process—and about his decision to step away from competitions. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The Interview
Climbing: Congrats on The Process! Many of us have been wondering when that thing would finally see a repeat. Why do you think it’s been so long?
Galla: I mean, it’s scary. The crux is up there, just near the lip. But I think the biggest reason it went unrepeated is how difficult it is logistically. You can’t go on an impromptu trip to Bishop and decide you want to try The Process. You need to go with the intention of trying it. You need to source enough pads, and you need to make sure that you have a ladder or a good rope setup, and you have to figure out all these funny tactical things in order to try it in the first place. I think all that stuff turns people away. If that crux was lower, or if the landing was all tiered and you could pull onto the crux off the ground, I’m sure it would have more ascents by now. But it’s been a big year for Bishop, with a lot of new hard ones going up, and there’s been a resurgence of stoke for those hard highballs this year. So it’s not going to be long before we see a third. I don’t think we’ll have to wait nine more years.
Climbing: What was your experience on The Process like? When did you first start trying it?
Galla: My first trip was in December 2022, when Tim Kang was doing his big highball linkup day. I was part of his support crew, and watching Tim do all those boulders inspired me to try a big highball. I realized The Process really fits my box, so I did some recon, and I ended up flashing the first boulder to the flake. [The Process is an extension of a four-move V12/13 drop-off called Social Distortion, which was first climbed by Matt Birch.]
After that I used a rope to rehearse the moves after the lip, but, since the boulder’s so steep, I never tried anything under the lip with the rope, and the ladders I had access to could only get me to the flake where Social Distortion ends. From there, it’s like a three-move V13 or V14 to get to the lip. Learning that part was difficult because I wasn’t able to try those moves in isolation; I had to learn them on link. But I did it from the flake to the lip on my third session, and after that I knew it was going to come together. After that it sat in my mind for a while, but I was caught up in comps. I made a quick weekend trip last April, but the conditions weren’t all there.
So this last trip, I was on a mission. I had made sure I had all the right resources and people around. I drove down with a van full of pads, and we met some locals who tossed some pads in. But there are other logistics too. I tried one-day-on one-day-off because of skin. And the boulder bakes in the sun until just after 4:00 p.m., after which there’s this hour-long window where the sun goes behind the mountains but it’s still bright enough to climb without a headlamp. So I was pretty much climbing exclusively in a one-hour window every other day. I’ve never had to try anything that little before, which made it hard. It felt like I was just hanging out all the time. I mean, I probably gave 15 or 20 send attempts this trip—but that was spread out over two weeks.
Climbing: What’s the boulder’s condition? I remember hearing that Daniel Beall broke the crux hold. Did he glue the hold back on? Or does it go with the broken hold?
Galla: Yeah, the right hand that you grab before you do the iconic jump to the lip—that’s the hold that broke off the wall, and it’s definitely the crux grip of the boulder. From what I’ve heard, originally, before Daniel Woods did the FA, the hold was quite good. Then it broke to the state that Daniel did the boulder in. Then, right after Daniel did it, Dan Beall was sending, but on the swing out he snapped the hold off the wall. And I guess when the hold hit the ground, it crumbled a little more, so Dan Frankensteined pieces of the hold together and re-glued it to the wall. I never felt it pre-break, but from what I hear it was a decent amount better than it is now, partially because now when you touch the hold you touch some glue, and that makes it a bit slicker. I don’t think it’s enough to change the grade, but I guess it’s a little bit stiffer.
Climbing: Has it been tried a lot? I haven’t really heard of people working it much.
Galla: It’s mostly been sitting and waiting. This year we literally had to knock the cobwebs off the holds because nobody had played on it in so long. But I had a crew of strong climbers climbing on it with me on this latest round of attempts: Shawn Raboutou and Pablo Hammack are both in town. It was nice to try with other people and make sure that the method I was trying was the best one for me.
Climbing: Because you were working the crux without a rope, I assume you took the fall from the last move quite a few times. You’re like 18 feet up at that point. What’s that fall like?
Galla: Honestly, it’s scarier than it is dangerous. But it’s definitely scary. Your feet go from like 3:00 to 9:00 on the clock—from straight out in front of you to straight out behind you—and it’s pretty scary thinking about what could happen if you lost it in a weird point of that swing. It was hard to get myself to commit to it, but I only fell a few times when actually trying the move but not doing it, and, luckily, I always landed on my feet. But the more I tried the boulder, the more comfortable I was taking the fall, and that made me more comfortable going for it when things didn’t feel 100%, which is what allowed me to send.
Climbing: How hard is it above the lip, V10?
Galla: That was the original grade. I found a new method for the top that’s a lot more secure than the method Daniel used, but I think it’s at least V8 up there, and with that much air under your feet, you’re certainly trying V10 hard. I thought it wouldn’t be an issue, but I definitely climbed the first couple moves over the lip a little sketchy on link and almost lost it there.
Climbing: Have you done a lot of other highballs?
Galla: Yeah, I’ve done some highballs before, but most of them were well below my limit, so this was the first time that I’ve combined being comfortable off the deck with something truly hard. It was a really cool experience. When we got to Bishop for this trip, I got out of the car and did Evilution Direct right away. I just wanted to get comfortable topping out the Peabody, to get an understanding of what it feels like to have so much air below my feet. I feel like that was like a really smart move, a really good way to start my trip.
Climbing: You’ve also been on something of an outdoor tear recently. Since the Pan American Games you’ve done Southern Drawl, Doors of Perception, Sleepwalker, and Paint it Black, which is a pretty awesome tick list. What does life look like for you these days, and how do comps fit in?
Galla: I still have a good love for comps. My ride into climbing was through the comp scene, so I still have a big appreciation for it. And my primary goal for comps in recent years was qualifying for the Olympics. But I always kind of felt like I had a one-foot-in-one-foot-out perspective, especially towards the end of this qualification series. Comps have changed so much from what initially got me psyched on them that it has been hard for me to maintain that same motivation. Plus I always had this passion for climbing outside, and comps were getting in the way of that. But I figured, if there’s a chance you qualify for the Olympics, there’s no point in not trying. So it was tough not qualifying, but it was also, in a weird way, a weight off my shoulders. I was like, Okay, I’ve done World Cups; I’ve had the competition achievements that I was looking for; I’m satisfied with what I did there; now it’s time to focus on what I want to do, which is outdoor bouldering. It’s been nice to feel like I can just travel around and climb on the stuff that gets me the most psyched.
Climbing: Do you feel like the training that you put in for comps is paying off outside? Or is it just mostly that you have the time to climb outside now?
Galla: I think it’s mostly that I have the time to climb outside. I’m able to just lock in on projects and not worry about having to be back soon to get ready for a comp. Before Pan Ams, I was training like a madman, just doing super high volume and trying to get as strong as possible, but one reason why I’ve lost motivation for comps is that they’re far removed from the types of strengths that you need for climbing outside. If I was training for one, I was almost always becoming worse at the other one. Whenever I felt really really fit on rock, I would have bad competition performances; and whenever I was really good in comps, I’d struggle outside. So I was tired of not being able to do both. In the past, as a youth climber and in my first years on the open circuit, my competition results were always directly correlated with how hard I was climbing outside. And I really enjoyed that. I could do well on a boulder with a comp coming up and feel like I had some good momentum, some motivation. But that wasn’t working with this new competition style, where it’s not so important to be strong in your hands. It was frustrating not to be able to control my results with strength. I still have love for comps, but it would definitely take a bit of a style switch, a resurgence of an older straightforward style, for me to return to the IFSC circuit.
Climbing: I feel like that’s a common complaint.
Galla: And it seems like there’s a new World Cup winner every weekend, and you forget last weekend’s winner as soon as the next comp happens. The longevity of doing a boulder outside gets me really psyched. Being able to submit your name to a list of climbers who have done a certain boulder like The Process—or putting up a first ascent of my own, something that’ll last longer than me—that’s a really good feeling.
