What Climbers Can Learn From a Farm
Farm to Crag's Seattle gathering connected a morning in Index with an afternoon at Carnation Farms: a farm walk, whole-animal cooking, regenerative agriculture, and a table that quickly felt like community.
By Chad Walker, Sustainability Coordinator, New Barn Organics
The Day Began at the Crag
Index granite is steep, technical, and unforgiving. Cracks taper into blank faces, footholds flatten into smears, and sequences that look impossible begin to make sense after enough time on the rock. Climbers return to the same walls for years, seeing things a little more clearly each time.
Farm to Crag began its July 11 gathering there, with a morning climbing session before the group traveled west to Carnation Farms in the Snoqualmie Valley. I joined the farm portion on behalf of New Barn, arriving as climbers, farmers, chefs, food producers, and advocates gathered for the afternoon.
Farm to Crag co-founder Kate Rutherford grew up on a homestead in rural Alaska and built a climbing career that includes the first all-woman team free ascents of Moonlight Buttress and El Capitan's Freerider with Madaleine Sorkin, a team free ascent of the Regular Northwest Face of Half Dome, and new routes on Fitz Roy and in Venezuela, Kenya, and Mozambique. She is also a longtime Patagonia climbing ambassador.
Climbing took Rutherford through rural communities where farmers, cooks, and food producers were part of what made life on the road possible. When Patagonia challenged its climbing ambassadors in 2019 to consider how they could respond to the environmental crisis, her first answer was a crowd-sourced map connecting climbers with farms, farmers markets, and local food near climbing areas. Events followed. Farm to Crag now takes farmers climbing and climbers farming.
Food as Medicine, Then the Farm
At Carnation Farms, Farm to Crag Executive Director Esther Smith opened the afternoon with a Food as Medicine workshop. Smith is a doctor of physical therapy who has worked with professional climbing athletes, and she began with something climbers already understand: food affects recovery, strength, and the ability to keep doing what we ask of our bodies.
Smith connected the way climbers think about nutrition—fuel, recovery, and longevity—with the conditions under which food is produced. Soil, pasture, livestock, farm labor, and access to regional food all shape what eventually reaches an athlete's plate.
Eric Popp, Carnation Farms' Director of Regenerative Agriculture, then led a regenerative grazing walk through the farm's vegetable production and pastures. Carnation occupies more than 800 acres in the Snoqualmie Valley, with certified-organic crops, livestock, forest, kitchens, classrooms, and gathering spaces across the property.
Carnation sits in the Snoqualmie Valley floodplain, where seasonal flooding shapes crop choices and grazing plans. Cover crops are chosen partly for how they respond to flooding and, in some fields, for whether they can also feed grazing animals. Livestock move according to forage, soil conditions, weather, and the recovery time a pasture needs. During the walk, each principle came with a decision Eric and the farm team had to make on this land.
As a nonprofit farm and education center, Carnation can test practices, observe the results, and share what works in the Snoqualmie Valley. The farm tour put us beside the crops and cattle while the person responsible for the farm's regenerative program explained the choices behind them.
The Power of Meat
At 4 p.m., Russ Flint of Rainshadow Meats led The Power of Meat, a demonstration on cooking meat on and off the bone. He broke down a leg of lamb in front of the group, explaining the cuts as he worked and showing the skill involved in using an animal well. The lamb later returned at dinner as kebabs.
Happy hour arrived with vegetables from the farm, local meats and charcuterie, and mussels and salmon from Patagonia Provisions. Proceeds from the silent auction went to Farm to Crag's Soil & Sustenance fund, supporting farmers through subsidized CSA shares and small-farm grants.
The gathering was sponsored by Patagonia Seattle, Patagonia Provisions, Rainshadow Meats, Dragon’s Head Cider, and the Shawnee winery.
Chef Matt Dillon and producers from M&P Ranches then brought the group together for dinner. By then, guests had discussed health, walked the fields, watched cattle on pasture, and seen the lamb prepared. Everyone sat down knowing more about who had raised, grown, and cooked the food in front of them.
The Community Was the Point
The table held people who rarely share a meal: climbers, farmers, chefs, athletes, food companies, and nonprofits. The climbing and regenerative-agriculture worlds are both small enough that introductions quickly uncovered shared friends and former colleagues. Conversation moved easily from routes and farms to food businesses, funding, and the practical work of supporting each community.
Climbers exchanged information about everything from what gear to bring on a climb to where to buy food on their next trip through the valley. Conversations turned to regional sourcing, farm projects, volunteer work, ways to keep connecting, and reasons to return. Dinner turned into dessert, then music, drinks, and conversations that continued beyond the final course.
A Day Worth Repeating
Climbers do not remember Index as a checklist of routes. We remember the granite, the moss, the weather, the river, the train, the sleepy little town, and the characters who shaped the place.
The folks who gathered that evening will not remember Carnation Farms as just another farmstand on a random back road in rural Western Washington. They will remember walking the pastures, learning the farmers' names, watching a leg of lamb become dinner, and raising glasses with the people responsible for it all. They will remember Farm to Crag as the reason they came.
Perhaps you will join Farm to Crag and New Barn at the table someday soon. Until then, use the Farm to Crag local food map to fill your own table with this kind of abundance.
