From Gym Rat to Guide: A Conversation with Climbing Instructor Patrick Becerra

Patrick Becerra remembers the exact date he started climbing. “It’s Monday, June 22nd — this coming Monday will be 13 years of me being a climber.” He said it casually, glancing at his calendar mid-conversation — the kind of detail only someone who genuinely loves what climbing did to their life would bother to track.

Patrick is a climbing instructor based in Michigan. He didn’t grow up a climber. He grew up a skateboarder.

How did you get into climbing in the first place?

“The girl I was seeing at the time had invited me. She told me, ‘My climbing gym does this Groupon thing. Next time it rolls around, you should buy this package’ — it came with the belay lesson and I think like two day passes for like 40 bucks. So, yeah, it was like a pretty good deal.”

That deal was at Planet Rock in Pontiac, MI, and Patrick walked in ready. “I came in, I was just like, hey, what’s up, guys. Here to learn how to climb some mountains. This is sick.” He laughs recounting it. He kept going back. Bought shoes, then a harness. By the gym’s Black Friday membership sale, he was all in.

Were you into athletics before climbing?

“When I was a teenager, I was very much into skateboarding and rollerblading and BMX. I was never one for ball sports. I didn’t like the rigid structure — I didn’t want a coach telling me, you need to stand here and shoot free throws for an hour. And also, as a kid, I was very small, like skinny. Tall, but I weighed 135 pounds. So I just wasn’t physical enough with other kids to play football or basketball and get roughed around.”

Climbing fit the same mold as everything else he’d loved. “It was like, oh, this is cool because it’s physical, but like, there’s nobody trying to stop me — just gravity.”

How did you make the jump from the gym to climbing outside?

Planet Rock back then was a tight-knit community — Patrick estimates maybe 50 regulars, give or take. Word got around about the Red River Gorge, and a loose group of gym friends organized a trip. Patrick and his then-girlfriend came along.

“We had no idea what we were doing. They were like, meet us at Muir Valley. And we’re like, okay.”

Cell service was nonexistent, they couldn’t find the crag, and after hours of wrong turns they finally bought a guidebook at Miguel’s Pizza and made it to Muir Valley. “I want to say we left home at probably 9:30 in the morning and got to Muir Valley at like 7 in the evening.” (Detroit to the Red River Gorge is usually a 6 hour drive) They got one route in — a 5.7 that felt much harder than advertised. “Those routes are harder than they look on paper. You get there and it’s polished and the holds are broken off and it’s covered in chalk.”

Next, we talked about what it is like learning to climb from friends.

“When you do something recreationally, you’re just used to — oh, I do it this way, and I know all of these little things: don’t do this, make sure you do that. But when you’re teaching a new person, you really need to make sure you’re mentioning the obvious stuff that they might not think about or even be aware of.”

The rappel was a good example. His friends showed him the motions but skipped a critical step. “They didn’t specifically say: make sure that your rappel is weighted and holding you before you unclip these things [your personal anchor system]. They just showed me how to rig a rappel. They probably did that [the weight check] themselves — just didn’t mention it. Or maybe they didn’t know.” It shaped how he teaches now.

How did you learn trad climbing?

Slowly, deliberately, and with a lot of homework.

Planet Rock’s small but experienced community helped. Patrick watched a young kid jam her whole arm into the wooden crack trainer in the gym. “I just looked up and was like, that looks so badass. I want to learn that.” He asked questions. Then someone pointed him toward a book.

“Somebody told me, if you want to get into trad climbing, buy Climbing Anchors by John Long — it’s like the Bible of learning to trad climb.”

He read it more than once. Cover to cover. Then a climber named John recognized him from Reddit and invited him to Kentucky — the start of a 12-year and counting climbing friendship. On those early trips, Patrick didn’t lead. He followed, placed gear on top rope, and learned the margins. “I would flip a sling to a piece and stand in the sling and be like, okay, that cam is holding and that nut is holding. Or — oh, that cam’s creaking around. I don’t think that’s so good.” By late 2015, he was leading 5.7 and 5.8 trad routes with confidence.

How did you pursue formal instructor training?

Patrick enrolled in the SPI course expecting to test a few days later. The course changed his mind. After a focused mock exam session with his instructor, the feedback was blunt.

“If you don’t pass this exam, it will be because you die the death of a thousand cuts. There’s not one thing you’re catastrophically bad at. It’s just that there are all these little things you’re not dialed on, and they’re going to add up.”

Patrick delayed the exam, went home, and spent the summer drilling. “I had an anchor set on a tree in my yard. I would constantly be practicing hitches and munter mule overhands. We have two deck posts in our yard — so I would just build a flat anchor on the ground. Pick a spot, like, the master point needs to go here at this patch of grass. Build the anchor so it equalized right there.” He came back in the fall and passed.

“At the beginning, I was like not an instructor [I was] a recreational climber who wanted to teach people. By the time I got to taking the exam, I was an instructor.”

How does your teaching philosophy change indoors versus outdoors?

It mostly doesn’t. The goal is the same either way.

“My big picture goal is I want those people to leave and think — that was awesome. I really liked that. I would do that again. Like, if they’re driving home and they’re talking about what they just did that day, that’s a win to me.”

From there, it’s about reading each group. “I’m trying to figure out from the minute I meet my clients — what do these people want? Do these people just want to go out top roping with their family and have fun? Do these people want to learn how to trad climb? What do these people want to get out of this?”

The one real shift outdoors is hazard awareness. “Guys — helmets on. At Grand Ledge [a craig in Michigan], non-climbers are walking up to the cliff edge trying to see what’s going on. They might kick off a stick or a rock. Holds break. People drop gear. Mid-route ledges — if you were lead climbing above that, that would be the ground, essentially. It will still break your ankles.”

What’s your favorite thing to teach?

Lead belay he can do in his sleep — and he means that as a compliment. “I can basically roll out of bed and do it. Those days just always go well. I’ve never had a lead climbing day where I felt like, oh, that didn’t go well.”

But trad is where his heart is.

“A very specific, narrower set of people wants to come out and learn how to trad climb, because they’re usually super stoked about climbing. They know what trad climbing is. They’ve wanted to do it for a long time, and today’s the day. They’ve read the books. They’ve watched the videos. There’s this big anticipation.”

His trad method: lead the route first, then have the student top rope it and place gear, then belay from the top so they can rappel down together and review each piece side by side. “When you’re side by side, I can be like, look and see how the two lobes here aren’t the same as the two lobes there, or it’s not fully engaged. Or — hey, this was a really clever nut placement. You just get this very in-the-moment feedback on your gear. That gets people to where they want to be faster.”

Do you have a student story that’s stuck with you?

He thinks of Evan. Patrick taught him to trad climb over two sessions, watched his placements carefully, and after 30 solid pieces with no consistent errors, told him he was ready to lead. Evan ran the route on top rope a couple of times, then led it clean. Patrick was at the top with a camera.

“He clipped the chains and was just doing this yell. You could just tell — this is a moment in his life [that is important]. And he goes trad climbing now.”

A mentor once gave Patrick a phrase for what that feeling is. “He [his climbing instruction mentor] said, ‘You know, you go around, you work with all these people — they go out and do things with the skills you taught them. I know that I’m casting a long shadow.’ And I was like, whoa. That’s a really beautiful metaphor.”

“You got these people started on this path, and it’s cool — almost like having a kid. You’re like, I held your hand while you learned to walk, and then you learned to run. And this is sick.”

Patrick Becerra is a climbing guide with Detroit Climbing School based in Michigan. Want to climb with Patrick? Download the Adventurtle app to get started with him and other guides for an entire range of outdoor adventures.