On the Ascent

Looking for inspiration for your spring adventures? You could do worse than come hang out with the Front Range Adaptive Climbing Club. “Adaptive” is the preferred term for what used to be called “handicapped” or “disabled.” It applies to people who are missing part of what a human body normally rolls off mother nature’s factory floor with—like a box of LEGOs missing a piece.

On a recent weeknight at Earth Treks in Golden, Maureen Beck, 27, is alone on a wall, about 15 feet above the ground, without a rope. Her left arm is truncated; it tapers and ends about four inches below her elbow. She was born that way. She has, in fact, adapted.

If the body is a tool, then whereas most of us have vice grips and needle nose pliers on our left arms, she has a ball peen hammer. She uses it like a blunt instrument. She can shove the stump into cracks, wedge it under holds, push herself up with it. Like many of the adaptive athletes here, she does not see her stump as a “disability.”

“I think it’s cheating sometimes,” she says. “I don’t have any fingers to get tired.”

She took third in her division at the American Boulder Series National Championships in Colorado Springs in late February. She hopes to compete in the Paraclimbing World Championships in Spain this fall.

Many find what she does inspiring. Personally, she just makes me worry. I’m an acrophobe; I don’t even like ladders. Beck on the wall puts me in mind of a runaway puppy in the middle of a highway median. Climbing is hard enough with a full compliment of phalanges; Beck should be wearing a helmet and an airbag vest, and climb above a mound of bubbles on top of a mountain of cotton balls resting on a pile of baby duck fuzz.

Or, you know—use a rope.

Beck is affiliated with Paradox Sports where she works with over 100 adaptive athletes in more than a half-dozen sports. It was founded by Boulder’s Timmy O’Neill, a renowned climber whose brother Sean was paralyzed in an accident. Among other accomplishments, the O’Neill brothers found a way to climb Yosemite’s famous El Capitan. Sean, essentially, did 3000 pull-ups in order to summit. Media outlets including National Geographic documented the brother’s adventures, and love to document all the Adaptive Climbing Club’s adventures, because when climbers like Sean ascend something, it is uplifting, even for spectators.

Many also find it curious. Of all the sports for a one-legged or one-handed person to pursue, why climbing? Why not bowling? Ultimate Frisbee? Running? Beck says she did play soccer—but she was a goalie.

The athletes say they like the challenge. They like to prove they can do it. They like to prove people wrong. At Earth Treks, 12 feet up on a wall, Scott Land reaches his hand up for a hold. He has all his limbs and fingers. But he brushes his hand across the climbing surface in an arcing motion, like your aunt Windexing the glass patio door.

Land is blind. And so, to find the next hold, he has to swipe his hand over the wall the way you look for a light switch in a darkened, unfamiliar hotel room. Remember how frustrating that can be? You know the light switch has got to be there somewhere, but the switch refuses to be located, and you have to keep skimming your hand over the drywall, and you can’t move on with your life until you find that switch.

Now imagine that the light never comes on, that it never will come on, and that you’re 25 feet up in the air while you’re looking for that switch, and that finding the switch does not solve all your problems—all it does is give you the opportunity to look for the next switch. Wouldn’t you be tempted to just go back to bed? Life for these dudes is one long struggle in the dark. And there is a real feeling of joy when Land summits, touching the gym ceiling 35 feet up. “Scott Land is like magic,” says David Schmid, regional director of Adaptive Adventures.

There’s a real buoying effect for everyone in the room when Jim Pilkington, 54, a novice climber, summits. “Not being able to see how high you are helps,” Pilkington says. “There’s no fear of heights if you can’t see the ground.”

Craig DeMartino, on a different night at the Boulder Rock Club, easily summits an overhanging route, despite missing part of one leg, which he lost in a climbing accident. He easily clambers 35 feet up, something I could never do. Fear grounds me. And so it’s possible to say that while these folks are missing some piece that you and I probably have—some part of some limb or some component of their eyes—they have a larger portion of something intangible you and I might lack: willingness.
The bicep on Maureen Beck’s left arm, for instance, is smaller than the one on her right, full arm. She built that right bicep up, just by using it. Maybe willingness is like that. You just do it.

“How do you tie knots?” I ask Beck.

“Correctly,” she replies.

If someone offered to magically give her a full left arm tomorrow, Beck says, she’d stick with her stump. “It made me not be a boring person,” she says. Also: “Halloween is fun.”

Anyway. Spring is here, and maybe if you’re having some trouble getting out of bed and motivating yourself to get outside because it’s a little cold or dark or windy still, remember Beck, and remember the image of Land and Pilkington, the dudes with the white canes at Earth Treks. Remember that, even at one of the most badass climbing gyms in the world, there are handicapped parking spaces, and they are often full.