Meet Scott Johnston

Scott Johnston came of age in Boulder, Colorado in the 70s. A rebellious teen living in a rebellious town during a rebellious age, I was drawn to climbing as an outlet for the rebellion.

Balancing that wild streak I was also part of a group of young swimmers selected to live and train at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. Many a work and climbing hiatus stretched my college career out seven years finally earning me a degree in Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Mathematics at the University of Colorado.

During college, while still climbing my focus shifted from swimming to cross country ski racing and I quickly realized that the aerobic fitness developed training put me ahead of alpine climbing partners. The seed for my later work with Steve House was already being planted.

Training for skiing piqued an interest in the science and application of endurance training and prompted me to seek answers which I could apply broadly to other sports. The more knowledge I acquired, the more curious I became.

As I continued to learn and teach myself about the intellectual framework surrounding training, my climbing and skiing careers progressed in parallel. When I wasn’t skiing, I was out in the mountains climbing. I was consumed with a passion that drove me to partner with some of the best American climbers of the era.

In 1978 I was badly injured while soloing a route in the Alaska Range. After a protracted recovery, I went on to climb routes in the Himalaya and Karakoram ranges. But this accident caused a major reset of my alpine dreams.

Years later a mutual friend introduced Steve House and me. My alpine climbing background and my understanding of training theory proved to be the key to my eventually working with Steve.

While I was coaching Steve I also had a 15 year cross-country ski coaching career that resulted in several national championships culminating in four of my skiers making the 2012 Olympic team.

During this period, Steve engaged in the same type of training program I would apply to an elite level skier. The methods of training were varied only slightly due the special demands of alpinism. With Steve’s skills as a climber we immediately began to see the results of his training. Over the next few years, Steve went on a streak of big climbs and new routes all over the world. We worked together closely during that period, applying the techniques and training programs I had been developing for more conventional sports to the world of alpine climbing.

From this partnership was born our first book, Training for the New Alpinism.

At the time we had no idea how well received and influential that book would become. Our aspirations for the book from the start were really just to share what we had learned through our experiment with Steve. We knew we had a successful system for training for alpine climbing that could be replicated by another motivated climber, so it was natural for us to want to share what we had discovered. From that out coaching business Uphill Athlete was born

Shortly after the book went on sale, Kilian Jornet contacted us and asked if we would be interested in partnering on a similar book, applying the same principles to mountain running and ski mountaineering. Kilian and I collaborated closely during the writing our second book, Training for the Uphill Athlete.