In honour of The British Mountaineering Council’s #WomenOutdoors week, this week I’m looking at some of the women who have led the way in outdoor climbing. The six climbers featured below are women I feel have helped break new boundaries in climbing. Some you may have heard of and others may be new names to you, but all deserve a place in climbing history.
Let me be clear from the outset. When I’m talking about breaking boundaries, I’m not talking about female first ascents, girls keeping up with the guys or even (shock horror) climbing better than the guys. This is about breaking boundaries in climbing. Period. This article just happens to feature women. Perhaps next time it’ll be men, because we should all be inspired by these feats, whatever our gender.
Lynn Hill
Considered by many as the greatest rock climber of the 20th century, Lynne is proof that being a short-arse doesn’t mean you can’t climb. (Yup, there’s your excuse gone next time you can’t reach that hold at the climbing wall). She was the first person to free The Nose on El Capitan, a feat that went unrepeated for 13-years until Beth Rodden and Tommy Caldwell tackled it in 2005. Not content with taking it easy after coming down from this groundbreaking climb, she went back and did it again. In 24 hours. Her (much-quoted) words when she came down? “It goes, boys.”
Alison Hargreaves
If you’ve heard of Alison Hargreaves, chances are it was in the context of the controversy that surrounded her career as a climber: a career that the press widely saw as incompatible with raising children, particularly following her death. But set this aside, and Alison is still widely regarded as one of Britain’s best mountaineers. She was the second person to reach the summit of Everest, solo and without oxygen and the first person to scale the six famous north faces of the Alps – the Eiger, Grandes Jorasses, Matterhorn, Dru, Cima Grande and Badile – solo and in a single season. Her favourite saying sums her up perfectly: “One day as a tiger is better than a thousand as a sheep”.
Beth Rodden
Although she grew up as a competition climber, Beth is most well-known for her outdoor climbing achievements. With a string of hard climbs to her name, perhaps her most ground-breaking achievement was her 2012 ascent of Meltdown – widely regarded as one of the hardest (if not the hardest) single-pitch trad climbs in America. To this date, it hasn’t been repeated. Since giving birth to her son, Theo, Beth has become a great advocate of promoting conversations around children and climbing – there are some great interviews, tips and personal thoughts on her blog.
Silvia Vidal
Spain is often thought of as a hotbed of sport-climbing talent, but this Barcelona-based climber is most well known for her solo aid-climbing achievements. These include the first ascent of Naufragi: a 1050m route up an unclimbed wall in the Kinnau valley in India. Having only seen a photograph of the wall before she set off, Silvia spent 25 days on her own working her way up the wall, which is graded A4+/6a+. Naufragi means “shipwrecked” in Catalan; a name that is particularly apt given she had only taken food and water for an 18 day climb.
Ashima Shiraishi
The teenage climbing ninja with a love of chocolate. At 13 Ashima became the youngest person to climb a route graded 9a+ (for those who aren’t climbers, that’s basically one of the hardest routes in the world). At 15 she became the youngest person to boulder V15 (yup, you guessed it – one of the hardest boulder problems in the world). Give her a few more years and she may just become the best climber – male or female – of all time.
Eva Lopez
Another hard-cranking Spaniard, Eva makes this list not so much for her climbing achievements (which include climbing 8c+) but her rigorous, scientific approach to training. Having completed her PhD thesis on finger strength training, Eva then set about designing the perfect fingerboard to give you tendons of steel. Even if you don’t agree with all ideas, her blog is a mine of information on training and injury prevention.
Feeling inspired? Whether you want to climb first ascents, or just make the jump from indoor to outdoor climbing, now is the time to start.
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