Tanner Wanish and Michael Vaill Are Ready for Rock Climbing’s Limelight
My favorite scene from the new adventure film Nobody & Goliath involves cigarettes.
Having completed most of the gargantuan Goliath Traverse in California’s Sierra Nevada—a 32-mile ridgeline that passes over 60 summits—rock climbers Tanner Wanish and Michael Vaill are dizzy with exhaustion. They’ve spent the past eight days climbing in the no-fall zone. They’ve gone long stretches of the trip without water or food.
To celebrate almost being done, Wanish and Vaill spark up a couple of lung darts and puff away at 12,000 feet, giggling and backslapping like a couple of high schoolers.
“We were just daydreaming about all of the food and comforts we wanted once we finished, and Mike randomly said he could go for a smoke,” Wanish told me recently. Both he and Vaill sometimes chew nicotine pouches for an extra burst of energy on the crag, he added, but never puff cigarettes.
“I’m not a smoker, but that one was quite enjoyable,” he added.
Look, I’m no smoker either—tobacco products of all forms make my stomach turn. But I still love the scene. It hammers home the film’s primary thrust, which is to introduce mainstream audiences to Wanish and Vaill, alongside an intoxicating message: Climbing’s newest superstars are a different breed.
And no, it’s not just because they enjoy a cig every now and then.
Speedy Ascents in Yosemite
I called Wanish and Vaill recently to talk about the film and their newfound stardom in rock climbing.
“We do still feel like outsiders,” Wanish told me. “I do have this really significant sense of imposter syndrome when I’m with these professional climbers. But it’s starting to change.”
Don’t feel bad if you’re unfamiliar with their names. The duo has built a following within rock climbing circles for their speedy ascents of the biggest walls in Yosemite National Park. Nobody & Goliath, which is touring theaters across the U.S. in 2026, is their first big film project.
Outside has written about them once before. In October 2024, they became Yosemite’s new power couple with a speedy finish on the so-called Yosemite Triple: El Capitan, Half Dome, and Mount Watkins. They did it faster (17 hours, 55 minutes) than any team in history, surpassing times set by some of the valley’s greatest climbing duos: Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell, Dean Potter and Timmy O’Neil, Brad Gobright and Jim Reynolds, among others.
A week after the triple, Vaill and Wanish did the route again, and then tacked on a fourth climb, the south face of the Washington Column. They called this pioneering test of endurance the “Yosemite Quad.”
Lost in many of the news stories about their fast climbs was an eye-popping datapoint. Neither Vaill nor Wanish had been climbing for very long. At the time, Wanish had been in the sport for less than five years. Vaill, similarly, had started climbing in his mid-twenties.
“Christmas Day, 2016, that was the first day I ever touched rock,” Vaill, who is 34, told me. “I’d seen pictures of Yosemite, but had no idea I’d end up doing those types of climbs.”
Prior to becoming full-time climbers, Wanish served in the Navy SEALs, while Vaill was a scientific researcher with a PhD in biomedical sciences. They grew up in the southeastern U.S.—Wanish in South Carolina and Vaill in Georgia. Both guys told me their early twenties revolved around booze and school and attending college football games—not pushing their bodies on vertical faces of rock.
“I was partying way too hard,” Wanish said. “Bars every weekend, drinking with the guys. That lifestyle.”
Plenty of late bloomers go on to achieve lofty goals in climbing, but few become the focus of the feature-length films. It’s no secret that climbing’s marquee documentaries tend to focus on athletes with long and storied histories in the sport: think Girl Climber‘s Emily Harrington, or Dawn Wall and Caldwell, Honnold and his many films, and even more recent movies about wunderkind Connor Herson.
Even more core climbing filmmakers train their lens on the sport’s child prodigies, like Adam Ondra or Chris Sharma.
Wanish and Vaill recognize their outsider status amongst climbing’s biggest athletes. Ondra and Herson tackle routes rated 5.15. Vaill and Wanish, meanwhile, hit their limit on routes in the 5.11 or 5.12 range.
“We haven’t spent the last 20 years training on a campus board,” Vaill said. “One in a million people has the genetic potential to climb a route rated 5.15, and we’re not those guys. Our story is about simple things that every single person out there has. Our story is about how we tapped into it.”
Unlikely Climbing Superheroes
The secret sauce behind Wanish and Vaill is their climbing partnership. Neither guy, on his own, is anywhere near being crowned the world’s best rock climber. But when teamed together, the duo push each other to climb harder and faster and longer than even Honnold and Caldwell.
“I don’t think we would be able to do this stuff without each other,” Wanish said. “Both of us have this ability to really commit to something—like a big climbing objective or to the micro moves that get you up a single pitch.”
Nobody & Goliath, which was made by filmmaker Joshua Noll, shows what this actually looks like. Footage captures the two egging each other on as they zip up big walls in Yosemite at 2 A.M. They coach each other as they grab at tiny holds on the side of El Capitan.
They move fast on the rock wall and rarely stop to rest. When one guy is exhausted and the other is still going strong, they use this imbalance to push on until they reach the top.
“There are times when you’re climbing and you get tired, and you think, ‘This kind of sucks. Should we just go down?’ And if your partner agrees with you, then you’re probably going to bail,” Vaill said. “With Tanner, I know he’s going to want to keep going, which means I am, too. And after talking it over, I know we’re going to be 100 percent ready to rage.”
The first half of Nobody & Goliath showcases how their partnership propelled them from anonymous dreamers to the pinnacle of Yosemite big wall climbing.
The two met on a Mountain Project message board after Wanish, who had just become obsessed with the sport, was looking for a climbing partner with equal levels of enthusiasm. At the time, both guys were at that very special period in one’s relationship with outdoor recreation, when all you want to do is practice your specific sport, all day, day every day.
When they found each other, their mutual desire to push one another led them to progress from local crags near San Diego to El Capitan in under a year.
It then propelled them to take on the valley’s speed climbs. As Wanish said, their ability to push each other “pulls every second of slack out of these walls.”
“If you look at the way a normal person climbs a pitch, they look up, look down, think about what they’re going to do, and then maybe make a move,” he said. “We are able to commit to these moves without thinking about them. We’re not hesitating or pausing because we’re not scared. And when you do that, you’re able to take these walls that take people three or four days and do them in five hours.”
Vaill called his partnership with Wanish a “cheat code.”
“I feel like Tanner and I have been on this rocket-boosted trajectory through rock climbing because we tapped into the power of partnership in climbing,” he said.
An Outsider’s Perspective on Adventure Storytelling
Stories come and go about famed duos in the world of adventure, and the tales usually include platitudes like the ones Wanish and Vaill have expressed about teamwork and commitment. To see a world-class climbing partnership actually take shape on film gives Nobody & Goliath mainstream appeal that other climbing movies don’t always capture.
I’ve watched most climbing documentaries that have attracted casual audiences, and many have a similar structure. A prodigious climber becomes obsessed with a mountain or route, and commits all of their energy to completing the goal. The climber can’t move on with his or her life until they reach the summit.
Nobody & Goliath is different. After their Yosemite exploits, the two take on the Goliath Traverse, a brutal trek across the Sierra Nevada’s highest peaks, hoping to become the second group to complete it behind climber Vitaliy Musiyenko, who first did it in 2021.
But at no point during the arduous trip do Wanish and Vaill seem singularly obsessed with the accomplishment. Sure, they want to complete it. But the trip isn’t a life-altering mission, à la Harrington free climbing the Golden Gate route up El Capitan in Girl Climber.
Instead, Wanish and Vaill commit to each other. Cameras capture them as their strength and stamina ebb and flow over eight days of punishing climbs. At times, Vaill is totally depleted—the result of a recent climbing injury. Wanish must navigate the strength imbalance, and eventually finds ways to pick him up.
In other scenes, the guys find humor in the sucky repetition of climbing loose and dangerous pinnacles and then rappelling back down, only to face another tricky ascent. Wanish and Vaill come across as guys you’d want to grab a beer with—a quality that lifelong elite climbers don’t always possess.
The camaraderie and friendship is what ultimately help them finish the route.
In some ways, this story is more relatable to the average outdoor athlete than that of uber-talented pro climber taking on a lifelong dream that mere mortals will never approach. Wanish told me the film’s name originates with this idea.
“That’s why they call it Nobody & Goliath, because we are the nobodies,” Wanish said. “We’re just two guys who are willing to try hard and commit. And in a way, it shows that most people are capable of doing something like this. You just need to be willing to go all-in, and you’ll be shocked what you’re capable of.”
Vaill echoed the sentiment.
“We’re living proof of that,” he added.
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