HALEY LOOKS LIKE ANY other fresh-faced student on the brick-and-gothic University of Washington campus. He's five-foot nine, 150 pounds, with broad shoulders, curly black hair, and a wide smile framed by perpetually flushed cheeks. A geology major, he rides his cheapo mountain bike, spray-painted theft-proof orange, at full tilt to classes, running yellow lights in the rain and slaloming through throngs of coeds shuffling along with umbrellas. He's a popular guy, continually stopping for conversations, but few of his fellow students have any clue about the feats he performs in the mountains. "Usually, I just give up on explaining climbing to a non-climbing friend," he says. "I'm just like, 'Oh, yeah, I climb.'"

Haley is good in part because he got started early, with a focus that bordered on obsession. His father, an experienced recreational mountaineer, introduced him to difficult alpine climbing at age 12. Haley started climbing frequently in the Northern Cascades with family and friends, tearing through classic mountaineering books in his free time. "I was reading about all these big mountains, and of course I knew that if I wanted to climb these peaks someday, I'd have to climb, climb, climb," he says. "I remember thinking, when I was 13 or so, If I climb one mountain in my life, I want to climb Cerro Torre."

By 14, Haley was already leading most of his partners, even older ones. When he got his driver's license, at 16, he started spending almost all his weekends in the mountains. His skill level skyrocketed, and at 17 he began taking on really serious challenges—like a solo climb of Peru's 19,511-foot Alpamayo and the second ascent of the north face of Graybeard Peak, in Washington, which he also did alone.

By the time he was 20, Haley could match skills with climbers a decade older. Disarmingly intelligent—he yawned his way to a 1420 on his SATs—he also showed an innate talent for planning his climbs, mapping out every piece of equipment and every bivouac with a focus that allowed him to take less gear and climb more quickly, summiting and retreating before bad weather blew in.

"I'm not a very strong rock climber," he says. "I'm not a very strong ice climber, compared to people who are at the top of those games. I think most of my climbing successes have to do with strategy, from thinking about a climb and making small adjustments to gear or route selection that add up."

But in the mountains, know-how doesn't always translate to summiting, which depends as much on the capriciousness of the weather as anything else. At the outer edge, the odds are almost always against completing a climb. Haley's approach was simple: Get out there as often as possible and go for it. "He's not a Tiger Woods kind of talent," says House, "but I don't think you can emphasize enough just how motivated he is to go alpine climbing."

When the country's best climbers found themselves short a partner for their major projects, Haley would drop everything—rearranging travel plans, canceling an entire quarter of college classes—at the mere hint that he could accompany them. In the 16-month period from December 2006 to March 2008, Haley spent a dizzying nine months climbing in Patagonia, Pakistan, Alaska, the Canadian Rockies, Yosemite, and the Cascades. This winter, he's headed back to Patagonia with Garibotti, and then, postgraduation, he's planning an extended expedition to Alaska, with an eye toward alpine test pieces like Mount Hunter, Mount Foraker, and Mount McKinley.

"He's been back to back to back to back," says Westman. "It's hard to sustain that level of motivation and energy to keep traveling and keep climbing, but he's got it."

To do all this takes cash, and there, too, Haley has demonstrated his trademark guile. Though his well-to-do parents cover his college tuition, they don't fund his climbing—at least not directly. Haley has paid for it himself, by cramming in hours at two Seattle outdoor gear-stores, by inheriting used clothing or scavenging equipment other climbers have left behind, and by old-fashioned dirtbag scrimping. "He's an incredible miser," says Tim Matsui, 35, a friend and climbing partner. To save money for his 2007 Alaska trip, Haley spent his junior year sleeping on the floor of an assistant professor for $100 a month, pocketing most of the $600 his parents gave him each month for the dorms.

After Haley graduates this spring, he'll be on his own to scrape together a professional career. He makes some money selling photographs of his climbs and has a small stipend from Patagonia that covers about a quarter of his expedition costs, but once he leaves his parents' rent-free nest, he'll face the true test of a professional: finding out if he can generate enough publicity for sponsors, so that he'll be paid enough to continue climbing full-tilt.