Climber, Transcending: Kai Lightner
from Alpinist Hosted by Alpinist Magazine
Growing up in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Kai Lightner learned to climb before he could walk. One day, when he was six years old, a passing stranger saw Lightner climbing a flagpole and handed his mother the address of a local climbing gym, and he hasn't stopped climbing since. The winner of twelve national climbing titles, Lightner is a familiar face in the climbing competition circuit. Then in 2016, Doug Robinson—an outspoken voice of the clean climbing revolution in the 1970s—invited to take Lightner climbing at Stone Mountain, a trad climbing destination in North Carolina. Lightner wrote about the experience for Alpinist in Issue 55. "Before [that] trip," Lightner reflected, "I'd never really thought about—or appreciated—the evolution of our pursuit from the traditional techniques of his generation to the sport I first encountered as a child." In November 2019, deputy editor Paula Wright spoke to Lightner about the trip to Stone Mountain, and how his discipline as a climber transcends aspects of the sport.
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