Tristan Chen does The Fly (9a) post cancer

Tristan Chen comes with the great story that he has done The Fly (9a) in Rumney (NH), only nine months after receiving a bone marrow transplantation due to leukemia. "Consider it chopped, I did it without a rope and I had cancer." Dave Graham made the FA back in 2001 with a rope but later more and bigger crash pads have made ropeless ascents possible. (c) Jordi Llauvi

Can you tell us more about the ascent and your leukemia treatment?
The send was not too bad, I fell on the last move on a rope a few times back in 2019, but hadn’t tried it since then. This time around I wanted to do it in better style, which meant bouldering/soloing it since it’s not very tall. So I borrowed some pads from a friend in town (I don’t live here anymore), and carried them up to the crag with some small help. One day to rehearse, one to weanie out, and then first try today thankfully to grab that sweet 9a free solo.

This comes just under a year since I was diagnosed with Leukemia, and nine months since I received a bone marrow transplant. Considering I didn’t think I’d be back to climbing ever again I’m quite excited. Getting back into climbing has been a bit of a process, and now I’m more focused on enjoying all aspects of it and not being so wrapped up in sends. I repeated Esperanza this winter, but this is the first new hard climb I’ve been able to do, and I’m positively oscillating that I was able to send in good style.

How come you had to go for a bone marrow transplantation and for how long have you been able to train hard?
Cause of the type of leukemia I had, and with it being refractory (still present after the first round of chemo), my oncologist said there was not a doctor in the country who wouldn’t recommend a BMT. In terms of process, it involved another round of rather intense chemo, another month in the hospital, plus some full body radiation. In terms of difficulty, I’d say relative to the other chemos transplant was harder then those chemos were to having no treatment. For instance after the first rounds of chemo I could still climb v10 fairly easily, and function sort of normally day to day, but after transplant I could barely do two pull ups, and walking around the block was quite difficult. And for at least a few months I was sleeping well over 12 hours a day.

I started weight training around Halloween to put back on the weight I’d lost, around 20 lbs, but didn’t start climbing again until around thanksgiving I’ve been climbing quite intensely again since around the New Year, and have been working quite hard to get back to my old strength level, particularly since I realized I may actually be able to. Plus I’ve been more psyched on sport climbing so I have some new challenges in climbing to work towards.