Sasha DiGiulian, CC ’16, hails from Washington, DC, but she’s scaled the globe as the reigning US National Female Champion in outdoor climbing. Join us as we make more bad puns and attempt a double entendre or two about the sport of mounting large rocks… 

Bwog: How did you start rock climbing?

Sasha: I first started climbing when I was 7, so in 1999, after I was first introduced to the sport at my brother’s birthday party at a local climbing gym.

Bwog: What do you find to be the most fulfilling thing about rock climbing?

Sasha: I’ve always really liked climbing because it’s really an input-output system. Your success is completely derived from how much energy and passion you want to put into what you’re doing. The harder you train the more success you’re going to have, in general.

Bwog: Where’s the most interesting place that you’ve been able to travel?

Sasha: I went to Southwest rural China to an area called Guiyang. Actually, the area was called Getu Valley, but it was in the Guiyang province of China. We were developing sport climbing there. It was just a completely impoverished Third World section of the country that really opened my eyes to kind of what else is out there in the world and how fortunate we are.

Bwog: Which would you prefer to work out to: Party Rock Anthem by LMFAO, The Climb by Miley Cyrus, or Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata?

Sasha: The first one! Party Rock all the way! I like to party, too, so that would be a good thing.

Bwog: If there was one building on campus that you could climb, what would it be and why?

Sasha: Oh, boy! The thing is, I need to learn more of the building’s names, but I think that climbing, like, the huge library—What’s that called? The Low Library? The one by the steps—yeah, that would be Low. Climbing something really…  bam, out there, proud, would be cool. I like exposure.

Bwog: What is the hardest thing you’ve ever had to climb on top of?

[Sasha was unable to give a comment due to certain contractual obligations…]

Photo that looks fake but is real from Sasha’s official site