by Hannah Perlkin Rose
Chapter 1: Men
I was 20 years old, a sophomore at UCSC when a classmate, a guy from a marine bio prereq, took me to the local climbing gym for the first time. I signed up for an annual membership on my way out. I took to the walls, the movement coming naturally. I was challenged but not overly so. I was cruising up through the grades, the steady progress of beginners’ climbing keeping me hooked. I was 20, strong, confident, and getting plenty of attention.
I was constantly in touch with guys at the climbing gym. They were my bouldering crew, my belay partners, they asked me out for pints after a climbing session, they were offering to take me outside to climb. I was in constant ‘will they won’t they’ relationships, wondering if we were going to date, sleep together or become platonic belay buddies. I didn’t mind. In fact, after a guy left a note in my street shoes while I was on belay, I texted the number and before I knew it, we were dating.
Zac was a pivotal figure for me. A backpacking guide turned self-taught alpinist, he was a trad enthusiast in a little band of brothers, all trad dorks who took their craft seriously. The first time Zac drove me into Yosemite valley I felt tears prick my eyes. It was as sacred a place as I had ever been. We pulled into the parking lot, roped up and climbed route after route of trad multi pitch, eventually moving to the high country of Tuolumne and down to Joshua Tree. I climbed SO MUCH multipitch, cruising up stellar granite under vivid blue alpine skies. Sitting around campfires with Zac and a couple of his guy friends, I adopted the snobbiness of an alpine purist. I was strong, I was tied in and I was climbing. I, however, had never led a single pitch of outdoor climbing.
At the gym I cruised up technical routes. I climbed slab, steep routes, crack and stemming corners with finesse. When I pushed Zac to help me get the technical proficiency to lead trad, he had me build anchors on the ground (rightly so). And then more anchors, and more and more and critiqued my placements beyond the point of helpfulness. I doubted I’d ever be able to untangle the web of knots and carabiners that made up a safe alpine anchor. He frequently said he’d better lead this next one because of the technical crux, in what I now understand was a patronizing tone. He picked the objective and I followed because I didn’t have what it took to lead it. I believed him. He knew what he was talking about – after all, he led trad. I continued to follow.
On a road trip we climbed The Grand Teton. Not typically a crier, I cried through most of the experience. It was the loneliest I’ve ever felt, following behind someone who rarely looked back. Unable to get out of the position I’d put myself in.
Our breakup was ugly and difficult. It set me free and also felt as though a door was closing. I thought that when I said goodbye to Zac, I was saying goodbye to the mountains, to the granite, to the blue skies of the high country. A friend, Patrick, saved me from this grim view. A mountaineering guide, he wasn’t as strong on rock as I was though he was far more proficient with rope systems. His knowledge seemed encyclopedic. Patrick took me out to a well-known crag in the Sierra, pulled out his rack and put me on lead on a 3-pitch 5.5 and said I was good to go, let’s head to The Valley. There I led climbs I’d followed. I smiled, I drank beers in the parking lots, slept in Camp 4 and sat around the fire with strangers, also there to test their mettle leading on the hallowed walls. As Patrick’s life pulled him deeper into the mountains, I once again said goodbye to my mountain access. Leading 6 pitches on someone else’s gear gave me some confidence, but logistically, I didn’t see how I’d move forward from here.
I made more friends, more male acquaintances. One of them, Blake, became my climbing partner. Our relationship also carried the conflict of semi-romantic involvement but this time, we were eye-to-eye. We swapped leads, me tentative at first but gaining confidence as things continued to go right. Eventually, if a tough pitch was ahead we’d rock-paper-scissors for it. I bought my own rack. I climbed harder, nearer to my limit, on gear. I was proud of myself, talking myself down as my shaky hands tried to pull the trigger on a camming unit, later setting up my hanging belay, grinning at how I’d arrived at this mythical destination. I identified myself as a trad leader. I got myself up these cliffs of my own volition. Of course complications in the romantic aspect of our relationship ended this egalitarian climbing partnership but it was around the same time a new member of our climbing friend group, a classmate of mine from grad school, decided to take up climbing outside.
My current life-partner, Rusty, came into my climbing sphere as a noob. He hiked down into Owen’s River Gorge and joined my friends and I, tearing the tags off his brand new climbing harness and immediately tying into a toprope. He was game, he had no ego about it. He tried as hard as I’ve ever seen anyone try, coming off climbs smeared with blood and drenched in sweat. He smiled through it all. Most magically, he looked to me to teach him the ins and outs of trad. He found nothing remarkable about following me, a girl, up a climb. He accepted my lessons and explanations with curiosity and stoke.
It wasn’t until this gender topsy-turvy experience that I had the realization that I had exclusively climbed outdoors with men. For the most part, there was an implicit understanding that they were in charge. They held the knowledge and the reins. I was always waiting for another person to come into my life to move myself forward in my climbing. I didn’t have a place to look outside of the group of men in my life to get knowledge and experience enough to have the confidence to take someone out on my own.
After a road trip that took us through Red Rocks and Moab, where Rusty led his first route and we started swapping leads on moderate multi-pitches, I got two positive lines on a pregnancy test. Excited, a little nervous and very naive, I thought I would enjoy months of climbing while pregnant. Instead I was a fatigued mess, exhaustion and joint laxity keeping me grounded for 9 months. Just as I was starting to get back in the gym postpartum, it was shut down as the Covid-19 pandemic struck. I became depressed, my body unrecognizable to me in its weakened state. I felt lethargic, heavy. I didn’t go outside much, and when I did it was nearly always with a stroller. I began referring to climbing as something I used to do, something in my past.
Chapter 2: Women
News of a new state-of-the-art climbing gym in the area reached me. My daughter was now three years old. I found the website for the new gym, still under construction, and signed up as a founding member, committing to an annual membership. The first time I drove to the gym for the soft opening, I cried with relief alone in my car, dance music turned up to a loud thump, the sky a vivid blue I’d forgotten.
I kept climbing. I slowly regained strength, moving back up through the grades as I first had ten years prior, this time each incremental improvement so much sweeter. I made friends with a couple of supportive guys. Dads themselves, we discussed parenting along with beta for the brawny overhanging routes they favored. One of them referred to our regular meetups as sacred, his church. I agreed.
Several months later he ghosted me and I came to find out he’d developed strong feelings for me and another woman he climbed with in the gym. I felt a deep betrayal. In my previous climbing life, a man developing a crush was the natural progression or our climb time together. I almost expected it. It never occurred to me that was still an option, still a risk. I felt too weak to boulder and knew too few people to get a belay during my limited hours of availability. It felt like my access to climbing was still linked to a man.
I kept going to the gym and within a week was approached by the woman I knew to be the other focus of this man’s infatuation. Alé and I discussed what happened and the betrayal we both felt. For both of us, climbing was more than exercise – our sense of self was knotted and twisted up in our identity as climbers. We set up a long-standing climbing date and soon my sacred climbing sessions were shared with her.
Alé was the center of a climbing community at our gym, the Women’s Lead Club. Originally a text thread for women to meet up with other female-identified climbers at the gym, it had morphed into a 150 person WhatsApp beast. She gently moderated and supported this community. I was astounded and at first, sort of put off. It was a classic ‘I don’t want to be a member of any group that would have me’ situation. Maybe I won’t stack up in this group. Maybe I can’t do the things I say I can do. I felt self-conscious, unsure how to proceed. I joined the group but stayed quiet.
My climbing sessions with Alé became joint climb-confessional marathons. Between routes we shared our fears – falling, failing. We discussed how dependent on boyfriends we’ve been to get outside and learn new skills. How we’d been protected and patronized, cared for and sexualized. We expressed our desires and fears to be self-sufficient female climbers. How we felt we had to do it all perfectly, and how this held us back. We top-roped hard routes and led well below our limit. We questioned why we limited ourselves this way, taking time chewing on this question, as it went deeper than the climbing. We shared podcasts and articles by female climbers. We started discussions about the belays that would help us feel secure to try hard on sport leads. We shared videos of complex anchor systems and gear fail-test videos. I built new styles of anchors with my daughter next to me, sending proud photos to Ale, who zoomed in on each knot, each piece and always noticed the oddity, always asked the pertinent question. I’d found a dream climbing partner, a best friend, a confidant. We kept egging each other on, equal parts carrot and stick.
My first climbing trip in 6 years was the first Women’s Lead Club trip. Driving down the 395 to the east side of the Sierra to meet a dozen women, I felt the familiar prick of tears in my eyes. After we pitched the tent, the tears spilled over. I stood looking out at the snowy peaks and told Ale, “I thought I’d lost this, that it wasn’t mine anymore.” She knew exactly what I meant and gave me a hug.
The Women’s Lead Club trip was a revelation. We were all there as protagonists of our own stories. First timers, old hands, slab climbers, sport climbers, budding trad climbers, a dozen different professions and home situations. We were out there on pause from our home lives to commune with nature and with each other. To test ourselves doing something we all loved and try hard in a safe space.
No routes were going up, no anchors being cleaned, no ground school gear placed unless a woman was doing it. The communal shared knowledge was ours, the experience ours. Women got on the sharp end for the first time. Women perfected their lead belays, pushed their grades. We made minor mistakes and learned lessons from them. We got to know each other better. We laughed, we cried.
I came home and when my partner, Rusty, asked me how the trip was, I cried some
more as we hugged and I thanked him for giving me the gift of these four days to find this missing piece of my heart. He held me and he cried himself because he saw the spark reignited in me that he also had feared was gone.
Yesterday I went out with a girlfriend and climbed trad for the first time in 6 years, swapping leads. To my relief, it wasn’t terrifying, it felt like coming home. In a few days Alé and I will leave for Yosemite Valley. As we plan our routes and sort through the gear, I realize I have arrived. My climbing is my own, not dependent on a boyfriend’s confidence or a male friend’s gear. My daughter is growing up taking for granted that two women going out on their own into the Sierra to seek granite peaks is a totally normal occurrence. And for me, I see the sky is vivid blue once again.
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