“It’s crunch time,” 24-year-old Drew Ruana says in between classes at the Colorado School of Mines engineering school in Golden, Colorado, where he’s working double time to balance hard bouldering with completing his degree by next winter. “I just have to grind through this year and take a bunch of summer classes. That way, I can graduate in December,” he says.

Before switching majors, the Washington native studied chemical engineering but now studies computer science. He switched degrees due to his new interests, but also with computer science, which he can do remotely, he can work from anywhere in the world. If he wants to post up in Switzerland for a month to project a V17 — Alphane in Chironico, for example — that’s an option. Once he’s out of school, he plans to take a break from studying or work and climb full-time. Then, “I’ll get a career and continue balancing that and pro climbing as long as I can,” he says.

We caught up with the senior this February while he had free time due to a chemical leak at the school. Everyone had been evacuated. For thirty minutes, we chatted with the child-sport-climbing prodigy and one of today’s top boulderers about balancing his dedication, plans after graduation, and future.

Golden is tucked up against the Front Range of the Rockies, where dozens of climbing areas surround the town. He lives right under the “M” up on Lookout Mountain in Golden — the M stands for Mines, and the university’s home team is the Ore Diggers — where he looks down on town and campus. To his east is Denver and an expanse of flatland. North is Boulder, perhaps the most climber-filled city in the U.S.; west is the Rockies, home to Mt Blue Sky, Ruana’s local alpine bouldering spot.

Early Days

Ruana’s parents met at Smith Rock, Oregon, the birthplace of sport climbing in the U.S. “Smith Rock has always had a pretty special spot in my heart,” he says. “I mean, they wouldn’t have met otherwise.” After Ruana was born, his dad, who picked up the sport at age 19, continued while his mom took a break until Ruana began competing with his climbing team when he was 8. They trained at Vertical World in Seattle, the first climbing gym in the U.S.

His parents supported his growth with the sport while they climbed, too. “He never stopped,” he says of his dad. “It’s just been in our family for a while and obviously a very large part of my life growing up.” Ruana began climbing at age 3. He also has two siblings, Jono and Sarah, who also climb.

“My dad belayed me on Just Do It,” Ruana says of his send of America’s first 5.14c on the east face of the Monkey Face in Smith Rock. “He and my mom belayed me on many of my hard sends. They were very good climbing partners for me to have.”

Just Do It at 15

“Oh, my God. It is so manufactured,” he says of the route. “That was the style at the time.” He’s referring to the early days of sport climbing in the U.S., where the route was established in 1989 by Alan Watts and freed by J.B. Tribout in 1992.

“There weren’t too many ethics at Smith Rock while everything was being created,” Ruana says. “There was a period at Smith where it was very much not ok, ethics by today’s standard.”

For example, there’s a specific manufactured hold on Just Do It. Ruana adds, “There’s a hold that’s completely made out of glue, like not like a glued on an edge or something. It’s literally just made out of glue. I remember the first time I went up there, I was like, what am I grabbing right now?”

Though he enjoyed the climb — one of the most famous sport climbs in the world — he tried to imagine what it would be like in its original state. “Just Do It has amazing climbing. But part of me also wonders what it could have been without the manufacturing.”

Late Teens

From Just Do It at 15, Ruana just grew stronger. Next, he ticked three 5.14ds: the first ascents of The Assassin, age 16, at Smith Rock, and Brave New World, age 18, at Little Si, where he brought 9a to Washington. In Brave New World, he connected the hardest sections of the 150-foot tall wall, which has three V10 cruxes with V8 to V9 sections in between. “It’s very consistent and doesn’t let up ever,” he says. The routes took him 75 tries over several years. During a trip to Céüse France, when he was 16, he ticked his next 5.14d, Le Cadre Nouvelle Version, on his fifth go. During that trip to Céüse, he sent 5.14b Chronique and 5.14c Le parte du Diable within three attempts.

At age 16, Ruana hiked two 5.14s at the Red River Gorge on his first go: Omaha Beach and Transworld Depravity. In 2020, he began focusing on bouldering exclusively.

Ruana continued competing, ranking second in Open National sport and twice coming in third in the U.S. Open Bouldering Championships and eighth in the 2019 World Bouldering Championships. He’s a former World Cup competitor on the Olympic climbing team, making it to within a whisper from competing at The Games. Then he stopped.  Before dropping out, he competed for a decade.

“I was one spot out for the 2020 Olympics,” he says. After that, “I just decided to stop competing. I don’t really enjoy it too much compared to outdoor climbing. I’ve never felt as good at competing as I do when I’m climbing outside. I have the most fun doing that and am better at it anyway.”

“I haven’t done any new 14d’s for six years now,” he says. “There are hard sport climbs in Colorado, but not many. And I just haven’t been in rope shape for a really long time. There are just so many hard boulders here to do. And I’m stuck here with school.”

He says the nuances of fiercely hard bouldering, with comparatively few moves, and sport climbing, which relies on endurance, are so different that he has to do one or the other at the highest level.

“It’s better to keep focusing on what I’m good at instead of losing a few months to training for, you know, a couple of climbs. It doesn’t seem worth it right now. Soon, I’ll have the opportunity to travel and do a lot of rope climbs, like in Spain or France or other areas where there’s just a higher concentration of them.”

Hard Bouldering

All that focus on bouldering has paid off. Today, Ruana has ten V16s under his belt, thirty-five V15s, and ninety-one V14s. (That’s more than 100 lines over V14.) Considering the vast number of hard climbs he’s fired off, it’s no surprise when he says he doesn’t do the same line more than once.

“I just check it off and am like, cool, been there, done that one. Let’s go on to something else.” He’ll start the season with 50 climbs on a list, focus on the top 10 he’s most psyched on, and session them. “As soon as one goes, another boulder takes its place.”

He says after school, “I’d like to do some bouldering in Switzerland. There are a lot of areas overseas and even in the States where I haven’t been able to make a serious trip. Sometimes I have a week and a half here or something, not enough time to try a hard boulder.” (Ruana means V16 and above, as it’s not uncommon for him to send a handful of V15s within a week.)

“As soon as I graduate, it’d be very nice to hit the road for the first time in five years.”

Though he plans to take a break from his studies for an undetermined duration, Ruana imagines returning and earning a Master’s in Machine Learning. “If you’re a software developer and you’re not using AI, you’re going be replaced by someone who uses it,” he says.

He Trains at Home and Doesn’t Go to the Climbing Gym

Speaking of replacing, Ruana canceled his gym memberships and traded that routine for training at his home wall. He has a spray wall in his garage, and between sessioning on that and climbing outside, he gets his fill.

“The gym is nice, but there is something about being outside alone in nature. The colors always seem brighter. I don’t listen to music when I’m outside, either. It’s special to hear the wind through the trees and the wildlife. I feel happy when I’m out in the woods. I don’t feel that same feeling in a cramped, dusty gym.”

Video & Books

For years, Ruana has partnered with friend Alton Richardson to make YouTube climbing videos, plus additional content for their company LLC Golden Climbing Productions.

“Right now, there’s so many projects that I’d like to be able to film. We’re probably sitting on multiple days of footage to put out a movie or other shows. But it’s hard to do that right now with all my studies.”

“I’ve been working on a couple of different training books. I’m mostly done with the content of one and still have work to do with the other. It’s hard to find time to do that as well and find energy at the end of the day. Especially after I’ve been staring at my screen for about 12 hours. The last thing I want to do is stare at it more and write a book. You know. It’s just, I feel brain-fried.”

His Two Year Plan

After school, Ruana plans to project hard boulders and sport climbs. “I’m drawn to just seeing how far I can push myself in bouldering, especially because in the last couple of years, I have not been able to give it as much attention as I wanted to, and I’m still doing hard boulders. It’d be cool to have a few V17s under my belt at that point and maybe even be close to some harder boulders as well. Just have to see what happens.”

“I used to put too much pressure on myself and finally learned how to take that pressure off, and it makes me enjoy climbing a lot more.”

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