Mark Melvin (he/him)

Mark and Debra Melvin co-founded Touchstone Climbing in 1995 with the help of several dozen passionate climber investors. Mark spent 15 years in the corporate world, which he credits with a sense of how not to run a company. He has a M.S. from U.C. Berkeley in the school of Engineering and a California Contractor’s license. Yosemite is his happy place, where he’s climbed El Capitan over 30 times, including the Girdle Traverse, and finally nabbed Widows Tears several years ago. He’s pretty familiar leading WI5, and knows non-8000’ meter mountaineering very well, like Denali’s Cassin Ridge. Mark’s completed a half dozen 100 mile endurance runs, including HardRock, Western States, and Wasatch. He’s gone over the handlebars of his mountain bike too many times, and is not a stranger to local emergency rooms.