Back in the fall of 1999 I sardined myself into a sedan full of good-natured geeks and a huge load of our university’s climbing and camping gear, and blasted off toward the New River Gorge for my first ever climbing trip. We were thrilled to be out of classes and out on real rock instead of the plastic holds of our home gym in South Carolina. I carried my video camera everywhere and video-taped the entire weekend—from our trembling legs on the requisite newbie crack “Easily Flaky,” to our loud emphatic coaching of each other, even our nocturnal prowling inside a former mine in the depths of Kaymoor. I was hooked. Unsurprisingly, my then-boyfriend—who I caught on camera half-jokingly calling out for his mother as he quivered on that first real rock climb—and I soon went our separate ways. I left behind weekends spent at cafés and punk rock shows for weekends on the rocks with friends who held my life at the end of a rope.
Within a few days of returning to South Carolina, I won a job at my local climbing gym. Every week I felt stronger, more confident, and more impatient to leave town for new places. Even better, I was surrounded by people who encouraged me to be strong, to try hard, and to see how far I could push myself. Several years later I was working at a café and going to college four days a week. I’d high-tail it out of South Carolina as soon as I locked the door of that café on Thursday night and drive straight to the New and Roger’s Campground. There, every climber I knew congregated to mime climbing moves, wait out the rain, engage in stupid human tricks like one-arm pull-ups and slack-line walking, and drink bad coffee. I’d get home early Monday morning just in time to slide into a chair in the rear of my first class. After spending several summers between school stints in Fayetteville working and climbing, I made the New the place I officially call home.
There are a lot of women who have decided, like me, to make the New River Gorge their home crag and carve out a life here. Recently I went climbing with two of them. We chose Junkyard Wall, named thusly because it used to be a favorite local trash dumping ground. One of my companions was Elaina Arenz Smith, who is slight and quiet—both qualities that are no indicator of her climbing ability. Elaina moved to the New with her husband Kurt Smith (who put up some of the hardest first ascents in the U.S. and Mexico) because, as she says, “there’s nowhere else in the country you can affordably live within 5 minutes of a National Park and a world class climbing destination.”
Smith donned her helmet and began to lead a traditional 5.10 (traditional climbing, aka “trad” climbing, involves carrying gear of various sizes that you can temporarily place into cracks and holes in the rock to protect yourself in a fall. It’s generally more intimidating than “sport” climbing, where you clip into pre-drilled bolt hangers). She worked her way up slowly and methodically, ensuring that every piece she placed would keep her off the ground should she slip. Smith calls the New “the thinking person’s climbing area” because solutions to routes are often not obvious at all. She carved out a life here by starting a climbing guide service that she runs in the summer. In the off months, she and her husband travel to climb. They recently spent a few years on the road visiting virtually every climbing area in the U.S. on a fund-raising tour for the Access Fund, which helps purchase and maintain access to our favorite climbing areas.
I watched Smith make a flawless ascent and eventually arrive at the anchors at the top. As she lowered off the route, one of her two Weimeraners ran up with a deer leg in its mouth. Laughing, we accepted the gift graciously and stuck it in a low crack, hoping the next climbers who happened upon it would picture the valiant deer had failed an attempt at escape through the rock wall.
Then it was my turn to pick a climb. I decided to have a go at a nearby sport route that I have tried before and fallen on. Our other climbing buddy Rachel Melville stood near me and waited to belay. Melville is a former collegiate-level soccer player who now pushes 5.13 routes (a rating very few climbers ever attempt). Knowing this route would challenge me, she offered, “Lydia, if you need beta, just say so. I remember this route pretty well.” Melville is here because the New “has all the basics: overhanging pump fests, dead-vertical test-pieces, brilliant splitters of all sizes, deep water soloing, and excellent bouldering, all on perfect stone. Throw in the view, solitude, miles of undeveloped rock, rich history, a killer town, and you’ve touched the tip of the iceberg.” She sustains her climbing travels working as an environmental engineer, but she’s through and through an athlete—equal parts obsessive climber and walking love-fest.
“Remember, Lydia, you’re practically the strongest climber I know,” she tells me before I step on. “I have no doubt you can crush this route.” Though untrue, it was nonetheless motivating. The crux was a series of moves up open-handed slopers on an arete. I tiptoed, barely breathing, and gripped tiny holds. I felt like I would pop off the rock face with the slightest breeze. After approximately fifteen minutes of reaching, high-stepping, and contorting myself into bizarre positions that would never occur to me on flat ground, I clip my rope through the anchors. Surprisingly, I hadn’t fallen once.
New River rock climbing attracts a special sort of female. Most chicks who climb here are less interested in the career track or settling down with a partner and a sedan, 2.3 children, and picket fence. Career often works its way into the picture eventually—climbers here, many of them national caliber, have also become teachers, guides, graphic designers, nurses, writers, and artists. Women climbers who choose the New remain intent on testing the limits of their strength and endurance. We prefer approach hikes on the way to a route to walks on the beach—even hikes on trails with rocks, fallen trees, and potentially venomous hurdles. We find this terrain a lot more interesting, especially because it leads us to vertical terrain that makes our hearts flutter.
And we are good at living without much in the way of luxury. A lot of us may dig clothes, but if it isn’t comfortable and functional we’re a lot less likely to spend the money. Most of the women who ultimately planted themselves here spent months or years traveling while living on a tight budget, sleeping in the backs of their vehicles and eating out of cans, all so they can wake up to the sunrise and clean air that promises a day of stellar rock climbing.
For more than a few of us, climbing teaches confidence. Tracy Martin, another local climber, first came here seventeen years ago when it was much more difficult to find work. She figured it out for awhile, moved away for more than a decade, and then returned recently to a real job here in her favorite area. Martin says she never felt athletic, but she found that “climbing was different. It involved nature and solitude and appeared to be super personal, and yet was a chance to develop trusting relationships.” Time and again girls with confidence issues find that rock climbing awakens them to a new person within. “I had terrible self-esteem growing up and was sure I had nothing to contribute,” says Tracy. “Climbing opened my eyes to all that I’m capable of.”
Another New River Gorge climber is Elissa Colley Williams, who first started road-tripping here in her teens. While she believes that “rock climbing in general attracts intelligent, interesting people,” the New in particular draws climbers who enjoy problem solving because the holds are often less obvious, making the climbing more cryptic. Originally from Richmond, Virginia, Williams says when her dad introduced her to climbing at the age of fourteen she started to transform from a wallflower who felt entirely out of place in school and sports into someone who earned better grades and learned to be comfortable socially. After meeting her future husband and favorite climbing partner here she began working on her Masters degree in teaching. She now teaches math full time and is one of the strongest female climbers the New River has seen.
Jessa Goebel and her partner of several years, Pat Goodman, recently moved from North Carolina and bought a house in Fayetteville after traveling here to climb for over a decade. Since she started climbing at nine her life has almost completely revolved around the sport. She and Pat have traveled around the world, often with climbing companies footing the bill. Jessa tells me that rock climbing puts everything in her life in perspective while helping her build bonds with other women.
This is a common sentiment among female climbers. Climbing attracts women who have trouble identifying with your average Cosmo-reading, push-up bra-wearing urbanites, offering something rare and precious to us—an outlet that encourages us to build strength both physically and mentally. Even women who never found themselves playing sports before are often surprised at how easily they excel at rock climbing. Women who are trying out climbing tend to move more naturally than men on rock, not relying on brute power to muscle their way up routes, keeping their strength in reserve for the hardest moves. (Bonus: men who rock climb appreciate women who do, too—for not only being able maintain a firm grip on overhanging 5.12 but who is grounded in reality and her place in it, cool under pressure and determined to attain her goals.)
Another climbing friend, Karen Domzalski is a transplant originally from Austin, Texas, who loves to dance as much as climb. Her talent in dance reminds the rest of us, both female and male, to embrace the feminine grace that some of us have long suppressed while trying to just be “one of the guys.” Domzalski recently became a full-time nurse and purchased a home here several years ago. She and her partner built an indoor climbing wall that’s a training ground for many climbers on rainy days and a social hub.
There are many great things about living and climbing here: we have a town with fabulous restaurants, a couple of grocery stores, gear shops that serve as congregating areas/welcome centers/verbal guidebooks rolled into one, a well-developed local climbing advocacy group (New River Alliance of Climbers, newriverclimbing.net), the most fun annual climbing festival I’ve ever attended, and a community that sincerely wants you to stay. Though jobs are somewhat scarce, land here is cheap and the community is growing steadily. New River Gorge routes are renowned for their difficulty relative to other climbing areas, but this is a factor that for the locals is more compelling than off-putting. There aren’t night clubs or chic shopping venues or ample career opportunities. However, the impeccable Nuttall sandstone that composes the walls that tower over the second oldest river in the world simply makes for some of the best climbing in existence.
I first came here because I love to rock climb, and I stayed here because of the people who came here for the exact same reason. One of the best things about this place is that the people who wind up living here are used to being not all that normal. I live among women who don’t sweat the small stuff, fight the powers that be, and resist refinement while somehow also maintaining a self-possessed cool. Climbing here is the best reminder I know of that there is strength and beauty in finding your own way, and that’s what keeps me trying a little harder than before at everything, not just my favorite sport. ◆
Photographs by Mike Turner
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