Emine - Women's Climbing Symposium 2017 speech - Telling women's stories

I was excited when the Women's Climbing Symposium got in touch and wanted HoldBreaker to be a part of the 2017 event to encourage women to be more involved online, be a part of important conversations as well as telling more women's stories. So in the spirit of sharing our stories, here's the speech I wrote. 



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Patrick - Why I love climbing

What I think about when I climb:

• Don't look down
• That's going to hurt if I fall
• I don't like heights
• I'm up, how do I get down?

I am Patrick and I am a scared climber.


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Rob - Why I Love Climbing

Climbing saved me from a downward spiral which, when I look back on it, worries me how it could have ended. I had just gone through a very messy break up with a girlfriend of seven years. My heart was broken, I was angry all the time and I was drinking far too much and far too often.

I was also suddenly quite lonely living in London. I knew I had to get away for a bit, so I phoned a good friend who had recently moved to Bristol and asked if I could come down and see him for the weekend. He didn’t have any plans apart from climbing, which he said I was welcome to come to. What did I have to lose?

I headed down and got my first taste of climbing in the Wye valley. I know that these days it is probably rare to climb outdoors before you ever climb indoors, but that is how it happened for me. We top roped a few routes at Ban-y-gor and then did a four pitch severe at Wintour’s leap.


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Gogarth, School Bullies and White Horses

I visited Gogarth this weekend, for the first time in over 30 years. This place holds special memories for me; climbing here as a teenager for the first time was one of the most exhilarating and terrifying experiences I have ever had. It is a special place. Beautiful, iconic, intimidating, atmospheric, one can feel the climbing history of the place and to climb here is both an adventure and a privilege.

My partner for the day, Alison, and I had planned to do a route called A Dream of White Horses. Neither of us had done this iconic route, a route which is surely on the tick list of every trad climber in the UK if not the world – that is how famous this route is. I’ve wanted to do it ever since seeing the famous Ed Drummond picture from his first ascent, the waves (or white horses) crashing below him as he makes his way airily across the Wen Zawn slab.

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Ellie West - Just Let Go

It feels like a bit of a taboo subject, to be a climber and suffer from vertigo.

I've always suffered from vertigo, a debilitating if fairly rational (to a certain point) fear of falling and heights. Put me on a precipice and watch me tremble. Even writing this makes me feel a little strange. I feel like I am coming clean and admitting to a drug addiction. My work counts on me being able to cope in and be at ease in mountainous areas, so vertigo is my dirty little secret that I keep hidden away, buried deep inside.

At the time in my life that I decided to learn to climb I was looking for something - I hadn’t a clue what, maybe it was a challenge I needed, something to take me away from a job I was disillusioned with, in a city where I was feeling increasingly alone. I needed something to make me feel alive. Confronting my fear, I decided, was a sure fire way of hitting the nail on the head - plus much cheaper than alcohol.

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Sarah - Facing The Wall to Conquer Your Fear

This time last year I had never been on a climbing wall. I heard a talk from mountaineer and climber Bonita Norris, and she said she got into it because she went with a friend to try out climbing and didn’t know whether or not she would enjoy it. She advised that if anyone wanted to climb Everest, the climbing wall was a good place to start. Seems simple enough but I have always been afraid of heights.

Now I’m not saying I want to climb Everest but I did want to conquer my fear. It’s something I’ve been battling with as long as I can remember; I’ve done charity abseils, skydives and bungee jumps all in aid of this, but never have I been able to shake it. A friend persuaded me that I should try bouldering because they weren’t comfortable with heights either but they were surprised at how they didn’t notice it.

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David Webster - Getting high in the low countries

Middle-age, it seems, is full of surprises. Of twists and turns that befuddle attempts at prediction and sense-making. These thoughts run through my head as I fiddle with my harness at the base of the ‘Excalibur’ climbing tower in Groningen, Holland. I glance at my companions. My climbing partner, D, is, carefully, checking the 80-metre rope we have borrowed from the friendly, laid-back staff. He’s not looking very laid-back though. My teenage son has his harness on, in seconds, and is taking in his surroundings seemingly unaffected by the rising ‘why did we agree to this madness’ sensation that I am failing to ignore. Further away, a non-climbing friend readies a camera and offers vaguely encouraging gestures.

The journey to this tower began years before. In my 30s, my path seemed marked out. Work. Marriage. Two young kids. Pretty amazing. Happy. I hadn’t exercised since my teenage pushbike was stolen in the 1980s. Good living was incrementally swelling my bulk, but I barely noticed. Until I did. A predictable late 30s male turn of events – albeit somewhat startling to me. Whether it was merely shock at failed-to-avoid-mirror reflections, or an existential foreshadowing of mortality, I started my mid-life crisis slightly ahead of schedule, and traded the pleasures of sloth, booze, cake and cigarettes with the pleasures of exercise-generated endorphins, and even more cake. I even ran (if that’s the right word) a marathon in the year I turned 40. Fairly predictable in terms of demographics and mass behaviour, but, as I say, exceptionally startling to me. It was a change of direction, but one where I felt I could accurately envisage the road ahead. As usual, I was wrong.

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