Meet our Sponsored Athlete, Jesse Dufton. You may already know him as the first blind person to lead climb the Old Man of Hoy. This gained him a Guinness World Record and was the focus of Alastair Lee’s multi award-winning documentary ‘Climbing Blind’.
Impressively, Jesse has multiple climbing disciplines under his belt, including Alpine Climbing, Ice Climbing and Sport climbing.
Partnership with SWATCOM
We first began working with Jesse back in 2018 when he and his team were looking for a communications kit that went above and beyond! We sent him the SWATCOM Multicom to trial and it has since been his go-to piece of kit to bridge the communication between him and his ‘caller’.
The beauty of the Multicom is that they’re full-duplex, which means that all communication is real-time. It’s like you are having a conversation with the person sitting next to you, but they could be 400m up a craggy incline.
The team can quickly alert each other of any danger like falling rocks or an unstable handhold in real-time. This is also necessary for when Jesse competes in his Indoor Competition Climbing. His category means he has to be completely blindfolded, so he relies solely on his caller to direct him along the route.
With no delay in communication thanks to the Multicom, the calls are made in real-time, increasing Jesse’s climbing speed and efficiency.
Reaching New Heights Together
We have since upgraded Jesse and the team to the Multicom 3 with new and upgraded features. He has recently been testing them out in Morocco and catching up on his journey over on his social channels and watching the Multicom in action! We are proud to play a role in his team’s epic adventures and his sporting feats.
“Communication is a massive part of my climbing and I’ve been using the SWATCOM Multicom 1 for years; it works amazingly well for both indoors and outdoor climbing. The Multicom 3 is their latest model which comes with both a helmet and harness mount. I can’t wait to put this one to the test! I’m hugely grateful to SWATCOM and am honored to be an ambassador.” – Jesse Dufton
For anyone in need of seamless and immediate communication, whether that’s a blind climber traversing sheer rock faces, medics on the side of a football pitch, or contractors on a building site, give the SWATCOM Multicom a look.
– Image of Jesse Dufton taken by Jordan Frier –