Wills Young

Co-founder of The Synergy Project, Wills Young was raised in England, and learned to climb there, holding leader falls with a waist belay long before climbing gyms existed. He honed his lead climbing skills through traditional climbing on local gritstone “edges,” the mountain crags of Scotland, and the dicey sea cliffs of Wales, climbing half a dozen years before he ever clipped a bolt.

A move back to his native California saw Wills develop hundreds of boulder problems at climbing areas in Southern California, and elsewhere, becoming a significant leader in the bouldering boom of the 1990s and early 2000s and leaving a legacy of first ascents, many of them recognized as some of the finest boulder problems in the country. Wills wrote passionately about the climbing scene for Rock and Ice,  Climbing and Outside magazines among others.

After a spell behind the desk as an editor at Climbing magazine, writing about and traveling with the world’s best climbers, Wills moved to Bishop, California, with wife-to-be Lisa Rands. There, he authored one of the country’s most popular climbing guidebooks, Bishop Bouldering, climbing nearly all of the book’s 2000 boulder problems in the process. In his role as coach, Wills pushed Lisa to improve her technique and propelled her to wins at international competitions, training with her through countless gym sessions and thousands of days out on the rock.