KING OF THE MOUNTAIN
Little Rock Native Climbs to Fame.
By Dwain Hebda | Photography Courtesy of Cole Medders
Before he was known to millions of Survivor fans, before being discovered at an L.A. restaurant, before his wanderlust took him to Wyoming to become a natural guide, Cole Medders was just another Central Arkansas kid with a thing for the outdoors.
“Growing up my family was very outdoorsy, lots of camping trips,” he said. “Every Memorial Day weekend we’d be up on the Buffalo River staying in Jasper or Ponca just exploring that area. I grew up going to Horseshoe Canyon Ranch all the time to rock climb, horseback ride.
“When I was about 12, we moved out to about 40 acres of land. We had horses, ATVs, all that good stuff. A lake for fishing and I’d go on fishing trips all the time with my dad. We go fishing a lot of times to Lake Maumelle. Just always fully immersed.”
Medders’ climbing jones turned serious during his high school years at Little Rock Christian Academy where he became obsessed with scaling anything The Natural State had to offer.
“We were always climbing around the Jasper area, Boxley, any of those areas,” he said. “We’d find the hidden little climbing areas off the beaten path, the kind you have to be a climber to know. We would go on Google Maps and try to find new cliffs and new rocks we’d never climbed before. Go out, find them, clean them, set them and bolt new ropes.
“I’ve always been kind of the black sheep of the family in that regard, the one who was super outdoorsy.”
He made it a little more than halfway to a college degree when he decided a change was in order. He packed up and moved to Wyoming where he enrolled with National Outdoor Leadership School.
“It’s a three-month program, basically a semester in the Rockies, where we do backcountry camping in the winter building snow huts and backcountry skiing, avalanche rescue, getting our search and rescue UT certification, rock climbing, high-angle rescue,” he said.
“I called my parents, ‘Hey, I’m actually not coming back. I got an internship here so I’m just staying in Wyoming.’ The internship led to a full-time job and then just kinda went from there.”
From there, Medders joined Star Wilderness Guides, an immersive program for troubled youth set in the wilderness. The intensive program left as much of an impact on him as it did his young charges.
“They’re out there in the wilderness for up to 280 days straight. No contact with their family at all. We’d hike them from camp to camp every day where we built and set up a new camp,” he said. “Some of them were suicide risks, some of them were run risks, but we told them, ‘If you run, we are in the Utah desert about 80 miles away from the closest civilization. Good luck.’
“Eventually we were trying to build them up to the point where they could go on a wilderness solo. We’d drop them by themselves with minimal supplies and they’d survive for about four days on their own. That’s their graduation. A lot of these kids had never been forced to learn skills for themselves, so that’s what we’re driving home. It’s about taking responsibility for their actions and realizing they have inside of them what it takes to survive in the real world.”
During this time, Survivor talent scouts discovered him over dinner at an L.A. Chipotle, while visiting a friend over Halloween 2015. In 2017 he appeared on the 35th season of the show, set in Fiji.
“For the first half of the show, I was already used to sleeping in the dirt next to a fire,” he said. “I love a good suffer-fest in the mountains, freezing, wet, soaked, tired, hungry. That was actually really amazing, we call it Type II fun. Some of these people, meanwhile, had never camped a day in their life.”
Medders didn’t fare as well with forming alliances and backstabbing political foes and was eliminated on Day 24, the ninth contestant voted out. Now living as a personal trainer in Marina Del Rey, he’s built an impressive list of climbs around the world, including Denali, Aconcagua and Mount Blanc. Even with that resume, he insists he still finds his greatest highs climbing in Arkansas.
“Arkansas has some of the best rock climbing I’ve ever climbed on,” he said. “There’s something for everyone. Southeast sandstone is incredible; it’s tall, it’s steep, it’s difficult. It’s a really powerful, interesting style of climbing. For the last five years I’ve been going to the 24 Hours of Horseshoe Hell.”
Medders said long-term he’d like to launch a nonprofit aimed at getting more people into the outdoors.
“Fitness and outdoor sports have been important for my mental health and making me feel good about myself, too. I like giving that to other people,” he said. “But outdoor sports have a pretty high price of entry a lot of times. Equipment is expensive and I feel that a lot of underserved communities or minority groups don’t get to experience the joys of outdoor sports, so I’m trying to make that more accessible to everyone.
“To me the outdoors is the great unifier. It’s where we all started. That’s where our ancestors started and that’s where I feel like our roots are.”
Find Cole Medders:
Instagram @jcolemedders
Faccebook @cole.medders.1
TikTok: @jcolemedders
