Jeremy Collins might be the most prolific climber-slash-illustrator in the world.
His drawings and maps have graced the pages of outdoor magazines like National Geographic, Outside, Alpinist and Trail Runner for almost two decades, and he’s authored more than 300 new rock climbing routes around the world in that same span. After you’ve seen his “lines-between-the-lines” style once, you begin to recognize it everywhere.
Starting in 1996 when he mailed a book of sketches to Prana and “Rock & Ice,” Collins has produced illustrations for outdoor companies and publications and built animations for outdoor film festival videos, but he’s far from content to sit at a desk. Now 38, Collins has spent the past five years dreaming up climbing trips going north, south, east, and west from his Kansas City home. On those trips, he’s notched first ascents in Yosemite, Canada’s Vampire Spires, a tepui in the Venezuelan jungle, and Keketuohai National Geological Park in China. He’ll tell the story of those trips in a film-and-book project called “Drawn,” premiering on the big screen at the 2014 Banff Mountain Film Festival and in print in a book published by Mountaineers Books in 2015.
Taking off from his family’s home in the Midwest and adventuring around the globe, Collins says, energizes his work, and gives him the source material to create visuals and tell stories. His 2011 film “The Wolf and the Medallion” (winner of the 5Point Film Festival’s Best of the Fest and the Banff Film Festival’s Creative Excellence Award) grew out of a trip to Keketuohai National Geological Park in China to explore unclimbed granite domes, and was conceived as a letter to his son, Zion.
“When I have been away from climbing, or nature in general, I see my creative energy wane,” Collins says. “I know that being out having authentic experiences gives me the juice to keep going. I’m acutely aware that making the films, writing the essays, and crafting the art to my satisfaction takes substantially more effort than the climbs themselves.”
The climbs, however, do take a lot of effort. Collins still onsights up to 5.12+. In 2009, he and partner Tommy Caldwell won the 24 Hours of Horseshoe Hell, an endurance climbing competition in which they climbed 222 routes in 24 hours. His adventures for the “Drawn” project have included routes free climbed at 5.11, 5.12c and 5.13. In 2012, he and Caldwell climbed three of the biggest faces in Rocky Mountain National Park—the 900-foot 5.12a Stone Monkeys on Spearhead, the 1200-foot 5.11 Birds of Fire on Chiefshead, and Arrowhead’s 700-foot 5.11d route Airhead—in one day.
Collins’ latest venture is centered more around providing for his family. After two friends died in an avalanche, he started brainstorming a way to, as he says, build something bigger than himself. The result is “Meridian Line,” a collection of his National Park and climbing area maps, and his art applied to a clothing line, all of which will be in stores beginning in summer 2014. To see more of his work, visit jercollins.com.
Photo credit: James Q. Martin.