Ellen Meets a Baby Rock Climber

- Our next guest learned how to rock climb when she was just eight months old. Two months later, she learned how to walk. From Flagstaff, Arizona, please welcome one-year-old Ellie and her parents, Rachel and Zach. Hi, Ellie, hi. There's a lot of people here, huh? Hi, precious. Okay, so you are both rock climbers. - Correct. - We are, yes. My husband Zach's been climbing for about 20 years, and I've been climbing for 14 years. - Okay, and so-- and she's your only child. - Right. - She is, yes. - Okay, so when and how did this start? That she would just climb a wall? Ellie's really been in the rock climbing gym since she was born. Her first outing was at about two week's old, and we took her to the climbing gym, and then shortly thereafter, she would come and join mine and Zach's training sessions and climbing sessions and got to know the climbing community pretty well. And then, since then she has-- - When you say "got to know the climbing community," what does that mean? - Zach. - Well, that means watching a bunch of guys with their shirts off in the climbing gym grunt really loudly as they go up the walls. - Oh. A lot of women are gonna start climbing soon. - Yeah come on. Join me. - All right. And she--and she didn't even walk at that point. both: No. - She started climbing when she was about eight months old. I think we got her, like, actually grabbing holds and feeling out the wall at about six months old. She was climbing on her own at eight months old, and then she walked at the later part of ten months. She was solid by 11 months walking. - Well, it's amazing when I watched this for the first time, she literally will get stuck and realize, and to be that young to realize she has to go backwards and grab-- to be able to grab another-- - Yeah. I think that Zach and I always knew that kids are natural climbers, but to see her actually go through the thought process of figuring out where to put your hand, where to put your foot, and taking her time and not getting frustrated and coming off the wall was really impressive to me personally. - Yeah, that would be frustrating for her to-- God, I love that little outfit. So, and no helmet, no pads, and--and but she has a rope, right? Isn't-- - Well, it's a little bit different. So, she has pads. She does what's right now called bouldering. Bouldering is climbing closer to the ground without ropes, but usually you have mats. So like in the gym, a lot of the videos that we have of her, there's usually a mat that's probably 12 to 16 inches thick, so it's a pretty beefy mat, and we're always there behind her to spot her. - Yeah. - So it--it's one of those things that, you know, we're always behind her, always there, so if she does fall, we're there to catch her, and then she has the mats below her if she--if she needs it. - Yeah. Um, well, I hope you're there to catch her, yeah. You don't just go off and grab a coffee or something. - No. - Not usually, no. - Yeah. She's so bored by this. So let's, um, and she-- is she-- her crib, 'cause she climbs, you can't even have her in a regular crib, right? - Well, yeah, I mean, early on with one of her early videos, she was climbing-- I built a wall for her in her bedroom right next to her crib, and so she's had that in her room since she was probably, you know, four weeks old. - Yeah. - We just keep the climbing to a controlled environment on the climbing wall. - That's amazing. She's so advanced and so-- and bored. [laughter] All right, so she's gonna climb, right? - Yeah. - We would like you to climb, Ellie. Do you want to climb? - Ellie, do you want to climb? - Yeah. Whoo. - All right. All right. Let's go climb. - All right. - Climb? - Good job. - I would offer, but she just-- - All right. - There's a dinosaur up there. - There's a dinosaur for you right there. [growling] Go get it. Good job. - Here. Come over in the middle here. Daddy's right behind you. - There you go. Good job. - Da-da. - Yeah, da-da. - You're doing awesome, Ellie. - Yeah. - Yay. - How you doing? - Go get that dinosaur. - You going up there? Here, I'm still right here. - Get your feet up. - Climb. - You get the foot-- Yeah, you're climbing. Here. You got that one? - Good job. Feet up. - We're going to go right to that one. Perfect. - Nice. Awesome. High step, yep. - There we go. - You got it. Yeah. Nice, Ellie. That one there. Good job. [cheers and applause] Good job, sweetie. Foot. - She's--she's-- - Hand. Get that dinosaur. It says, "Rawr." [cheers and applause] - Okay, well, we got you a-- we got you a gift because we realized her bed is an issue, so... - Oh. Thank you so much. - So she can-- - Oh, that's awesome. - Thank you so much. That's beautiful. - Climb. - Ah, this is gonna-- this is--you may not thank us for this.