Kaya Lindsay: climber, gym owner, ex-dirtbag

Kaya Lindsay is a 32-year-old climber, filmmaker, vanlife veteran, and accidental gym owner in Moab, Utah. (onechicktravels.com / @onechicktravels)

In her early twenties, Kaya fell in love with bouldering at a Santa Cruz gym, met a tattooed vegan woman with a Sprinter van, and realized she could climb full-time. She built out a van, hit the road, and spent four years chasing perfect weather and fleeting friendships from Bishop to Squamish to Indian Creek. Along the way, she hustled together a dirtbag media career: filming, blogging, scoring gear deals, and slowly building a name with her One Chick Travels YouTube series, which spotlighted the unseen women shaping the climbing world.

Kaya talks about living on $1,000 a month, the hidden privilege of trust fund dirtbags, and the unspoken rules of social capital in the outdoor scene. She describes what finally pushed her off the road: constant vigilance, repeating the same small talk, and never knowing if her community would stick around when the rain came. Kaya also describes why settling down in Moab felt like upgrading to a bigger container, not a smaller one.

We get into how a base jumper literally fell out of the sky and became her business partner, what it’s like running Moab’s first climbing gym, and how building a rooted, weather-independent community has changed her life. Kaya also opens up about the neurodivergent undertones of dirtbag culture, the bittersweet question of what happens to aging climbers, and how it feels to finally walk into the grocery store and see someone who knows your name.

Full transcript: dirtbagrich.com/kaya