In a sport of many shoulds and should nots, rules and taboos, the climbing Cholitas of Bolivia could care less what you think. The reason may lie in the word “cholita” itself. It’s originally a derogatory term stemming from the Spanish slur “cholo,” meaning mixed race or Indigenous with defamatory canine undertones. But the Indigenous Aymara women of Bolivia have chosen to reclaim and rebrand the slur. Today, there are skateboarding cholitas, fighting cholitas (wrestlers), and climbing cholitas.

Several years ago, I saw a picture of these women ice climbing in their traditional dress, their bold colors striking against the bluish white of frozen water. Climbing with crampons in a wide pleated skirt seemed like a massive challenge, though they appeared unbothered by their non-technical clothing. Considering my own challenges poking holes in the hems of the ski pants I first climbed in before acquiring gaiters or ice climbing pants, I was duly impressed. And I had questions.

How did these women manage to climb mountains and water ice in those beautiful yet bulky skirts? How did they wear harnesses with their polleras? And what led them to get into climbing in the first place?

My curiosity led me to message a leader in the movement, Cecilia Llusco, on WhatsApp. Llusco doesn’t speak English, so I texted with her using my mediocre Spanish. She told me that she established what was the first of several Cholitas Escaladoras movements in Bolivia. Soon after, I found Manuel Seoane, a Bolivian bilingual photojournalist based in La Paz, about a 45-minute drive from El Alto, where Llusco lives.

In May, Seoane met up with Llusco and a fellow cholita, Natalia Tarqui, to record an interview and film them climbing up the Bolivian peak Huayna Potosi. A decade ago, this peak was Llusco’s first summit. One day, when she can save up enough money, she hopes to finally stage a proper wedding with her husband atop the mountain, surrounded by her cholita companions.

Here, Llusco shared the moment she first began to dream of standing on a summit, the logistics of climbing in a skirt, and how climbing has changed her life for good.

Cecilia Llusco’s Story

I am the founder of the first group of cholita climbers. We are a group of Indigenous Aymara women who wear a pollera (skirt). We founded the Cholita Escaladora in 2015 because there was a lot of femicide and discrimination against women in pollera.

I was born in the Chucura Community in Murillo Province, a tourist destination. I left my hometown a long time ago, but sometimes I visit. When I was eight years old, I went to Huayna Potosi for the first time. I saw a very beautiful mountain that was all white with snow. I said, “Why can’t I climb it? How does it feel to be up there?” It became a dream I had as a child. I worked with my father then, so I did not know anything. It was just a dream.

But then I grew up and I worked as a porter. I met many women along the way working as porters, as cooks. It was not easy for us to climb a mountain. It has always been complicated to get equipment. I would have started climbing earlier, but we did not have the equipment.

In 2015, I said, “Why can’t we women climb to the top of mountains—with our clothes—and share a message of empowerment for women?”?

On Establishing the Group Cholitas Escaladoras?

I founded the group Cholitas with Lidia Huayllas, who is a cook in the tourism industry. We got the women together to share the dream that each one of us had.

We climbed our first mountain on December 17, 2015: Huayna Potosi (6,088m). There were 11 women. It was very beautiful to share this with them. We never imagined that we were going to be on television or in other countries.

When we were at the high camp, we received a lot of criticism from male guides, who questioned us about what we were doing on the mountain. They were saying that because of us, it was not going to snow on the mountain, or that we are going to have accidents because of our skirts.

We have received a lot of criticism and a lot of discrimination. But we have “covered our ears” and moved forward with strength. We reached the top without any problems. As 11 Indigenous women, we reached 6,088 meters. When we crowned the summit, we promised that we will not leave this achievement here. We will continue climbing more mountains. As we have conquered Huayna Potosi, we will continue conquering more mountains.

How and Why Cholitas Climb in Pollera (skirts)

I had the idea of putting the harness on the inside [of the skirts], through the seam. We pull the harness up through the top of the skirt, through the inside.?

To climb an ice wall, the skirt is a bit complicated to use with crampons. We pull the front of the skirt around and over our waist, so that we don’t trip.?

Of course, it was difficult at the beginning for each of us to use the crampons and the skirts, because it is not easy, as many say. But even though it is not easy, nothing is impossible for women. We can achieve anything we set our minds to. We have always managed to do everything with our clothes.

Many people think that we take our skirts off [when we climb] and put them back on at the top, but we don’t. I have been used to it since I was a child. I have already adapted to it. With the crampons, it has been a little difficult, but we have already learned it.

Now as a high mountain guide, I have much more experience moving in the skirt. People want to go climb with the cholitas climbers. For me, it is a pride to wear my dress, and to represent the Indigenous Aymara women and all women.

So we continue to wear our skirts. We don’t want to take them off for any reason.?

When people ask us, “Do you have to take off your skirts to climb Everest?” I say, “We are not going to take off our skirts.”?

[They ask:] “But how are you going to put them on with the down overalls?” We know how to put them on and we will never take off our skirts.

Now we are trained to handle our skirts, because on Illimani and on Huayna [Potosi], we broke many petticoats with the crampons. Suddenly, it would get caught and break. It’s a thin fabric, so it rips easily. I have destroyed two sets of skirts to get to know the mountains in Bolivia. After that, we got better [at climbing in skirts] and now we don’t break the petticoats anymore.

The Gear Crux of the Cholitas

We cholitas have never had equipment, because it is difficult to get it here in Bolivia. We have always rented the boots, the crampons, and the harness. All those things are very important in the mountains for us, but we don’t have the equipment. For myself, I have a helmet, which I got from the film [the 2019 documentary Cholitas]. The rest, we don’t have.

The boots, the crampons, the ice axes, the helmet, and the harness are the most important things that we need. Also the screws, the ATC, the rope—all that we still rent.

The Eight-Mountain Project

We made a project to climb eight mountains of more than 6,000 meters and we committed.

We were thinking about being accompanied by our husbands, since most of them are mountain guides. They also helped us learn. They were the ones who supported us and told us: You are strong and brave women. You can also conquer mountains outside the country and climb the highest mountain in South America. We were already dreaming of leaving the country, but first, we had to climb all the mountains in Bolivia.

Our second mountain was Acotango [6,052m; on the border of Bolivia and Chile]. The third mountain was Illimani [6,402m; Bolivia]. The fourth mountain was Parinacota [6,336m; on the border of Bolivia and Chile]. Then Sajama [6,542m; Bolivia]. Finally, we climbed [6,959m; Argentina] outside the country, which is in the documentary film called Cholitas. For recording or filming any stories, they come from outside the country. It is very sad that in Bolivia, we do not have that support.?

It has been very difficult, but we have broken many barriers and we have become very empowered. Nothing and nobody is going to stop us. We are going to keep going, keep climbing more mountains.

Llusco’s Guiding Work

They [clients] contact me directly through and tell me they want to go with me personally. As I do not have equipment, I have to rent for me and for the clients, too. Many of them do have equipment.

In Huayna Potosi or [Peque?o] Alpamayo, I usually guide alone. On Illimani, I need some help, but now I am training myself with some courses in first aid, rescue, and high-altitude mountaineering.

When I go as a guide, I do not miss [the opportunity] to train on the glacier of Huayna Potosi. The ice wall has an inclination of about 100 degrees, and it’s about 30 or 40 meters high.

“Un Sue?o Más Grande”

After Aconcagua, we had a bigger dream, which is Mount Everest. That is my big dream. Someday I plan to achieve it with at least one companion, to carry the name of the group. I hope someday I can fulfill my dream.?

Our goal is to climb Everest on the Nepal side in 2026. We will have a crowdfunding account so people can support us there. I have to train constantly to go to the highest mountain in the world.?

This year, I have my climbing dates already planned. I have to climb the French route [up Huayna Potosi], which is the direct route. It has 450 meters of climbing with different techniques. Then I am going to climb the most difficult mountain in Bolivia—Illampu [6,368m]—in the middle of June. It is usually done in seven days, but I will do it in two days.

So that is my dream that I have—let’s say, my project.?

The Next Generation of Cholitas

The new generation for us is a great joy, because the years do not pass in vain. We are getting older, so we are motivating the young girls who are now the new generation. There are also 16-year-olds and 18-year-olds, who are now coming with us and learning from us.

My daughter Camila, for example, I climbed with her when she was 13 years old. Her first mountain was the small Alpamayo [5,425m], which is a little more technical. She had learned with her father before that and now she manages very well. I would say she is better than me.

One day, we were filming with a German channel, and my little girl wanted to go. “I want to know the mountain. I want to see how they climb,” she said. She was curious, the six-year-old girl. So we took her to the glacier.?

I like the young ones to come with us, so that there is a new generation and that we continue to move forward. It would be incredible for us to have a bigger group.

How Climbing Has Changed Llusco’s Life

Among the group of cholitas who have already left the country, we have left our fear on Aconcagua. Now we know how to express ourselves a little bit. Before, we were afraid to express ourselves on television. “I might speak badly,” we thought. But now we are no longer afraid.?

It has also changed our family. Now, for example, in my family I say: “I am traveling. I am going to travel, I am traveling to Spain. I am going.”

Then I went to Aconcagua again. I told my husband: “I am traveling—you have to support me.” Without thinking about it, I signed up for a project for women of the world. So I said, “I have to travel and you stay with the children.”?

Before it was different. It has changed my life and that of each of the cholitas as well. I have seen it, but it has been incredible, for the good of all women.?

Also, because my husband is very good, thanks to him, I’ve learned many things. He understands me, he teaches me. He tells me: “Go on, good luck, enjoy yourself.” And my children also say: “Good luck, mom, good luck. You are going to bring us the medal.” And the medal, for them, is to reach the top of the mountains and to say, “Here I am. I made it.”?

Watch Llusco and Another Cholita Climbing This Past May on Huayna Potosi in Bolivia

You can find more information about Llusco’s goal of climbing Everest in 2026—and how to support her and the Cholitas Escaladoras—. The Cholitas are also looking for gear sponsors for Everest and other climbing projects.

About the photographer/videographer: is a Bolivian freelance photojournalist and hydrologist. His work has reached the final rounds in World Press Photo Contests. Since 2018, he has been part of the National Geographic Explorers program. He is a Reuters and Pulitzer Center fellow who has worked on projects with Bloomberg, The Guardian, and more publications. He studied photojournalism at DMJX in Denmark.

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On July 8, nine-year-old Veronica Aimee Chik became the youngest person ever to send 5.14b (8c) with her ascent of Fish Eye in Oliana, Spain. She dethroned the , French climber Théo Blass, by one year.

“I believe in myself! I can top the route!” Chik repeated to herself as she worked the sustained overhanging wall. More than the crux moves themselves, the route’s length of 50 meters (164 feet)—her longest climb to date—proved the biggest challenge. “Endurance was a critical issue for me,” she says. “During my trials, my coaches and I realized that I would be exhausted after climbing 35 to 40 meters.” Time management became a top priority as she tried to limit resting to avoid burning out.

Originally in 2009, Fish Eye also required Chik to make up her own beta, given her 4’7” height, wingspan, and gripping power, which varied dramatically from previous ascensionists like Sharma, , and . “She had to be creative,” her father Alan Chik told Climbing. “There are some moves that were quite tricky and difficult.”

In Spain, the Chik family enlisted the help of two coaches—Toni Arbones and David Gambús—to belay and provide guidance. To practice her self-styled beta, her coaches had Chik repeat the moves four or five times per burn to commit each sequence to memory. All in all, she spent 14 days practicing the route, with one or two burns each day, before her successful redpoint.

When she arrived in Spain in June, Chik didn’t have her sights set on a specific route. “She tried nine routes in five days, including Fish Eye,” her father says. “We believed that Fish Eye seemed to be the one Veronica could possibly send due to her height and arm span.”

Each day, before hopping on Fish Eye, Chik warmed up with about an hour of stretching. Then, according to her dad, she would tell herself to be “calm, focused, and try her best” before tying in. During her rest time, Chik watched videos her father had recorded of her trying the route. While watching this footage, she observed that the shorter her rest times, the better her performance. She ended up topped out in 25 minutes, five minutes faster than her coaches had predicted. As she was sending, Arbones, one of her coaches, commented on how effortless she looked cruising up Fish Eye. “She is literally walking up the wall!” Arbones cried.

In October 2024, Chik that she was overcoming a fear of falling. But when Climbing asked her if she struggled with this fear on Fish Eye, she responded, “Not at all. I am already used to it, so I have no fear of falling anymore.” Chik made it clear that she feels pretty fearless while sport climbing at the moment. “I fear no challenges, no heights, and no falls,” she told Climbing. “Nothing on this earth can deter my progress.” Needless to say, we believe her.

After sending Fish Eye and celebrating with a dinner with her dad, coaches, and a couple friends who watched her send, she spent a few more days trying hard routes in Spain. She has a climbing trip planned to the Red River Gorge with her dad later this summer, then she’s headed back to Hong Kong for school in fall. She prefers in-person schooling over homeschooling because she really likes her classmates. So her parents plan out her training schedule and climbing trips around her academics.

Although Chik’s dad is not a climber, he is now learning to belay so he can support her on future climbs. Chik got her first introduction to climbing thanks to her godfather, who runs six climbing gyms in Hong Kong. “I started to take climbing lessons when I was five-and-a-half years old,” she says. “I love this sport so much, so I’ve stuck with it ever since.”

While her parents still don’t climb—nor does her 13-year-old brother—her little sister happens to be a budding climber. According to Veronica, her three-and-a-half-year-old sister can lap their gym’s 30-foot autobelay six times in under 20 minutes. “She told me she likes climbing very much,” Veronica says. “I’m sure she is going to be a very good climber in the future.”

Already, Chik says she is “ready for the next challenge”: an 8c+ (5.14c) route. Perhaps in Spain, over Christmas, when her father plans to take her back to Oliana. Eventually, she dreams of competing in the Boulder and Lead disciplines in the Olympics. But she won’t be old enough for the 2028 Games—she’ll have to wait until the 2032 Summer Games in Brisbane, Australia, to conquer that particular dream.

Chik is excited to take on more competitive climbing in China this year, along with trips to the Red River Gorge and back to Spain. (Photo: Toni Mas Buchaca / Siurana Today)

Watch Chik send ‘Fish Eye’ in this short film by Spanish filmmaker César Garcia:

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Alex Honnold is the most accomplished and daring rock climber since the invention of the chalk bag. He grabbed global attention for his free solo ascent of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, immortalized in the Academy Award?-winning documentary Free Solo. This monumental feat solidified his status as a superstar of the climbing community and a guru of staying calm in objectively terrifying situations. But…how? That is exactly what Shelby Stanger, host of REI’s Wild Ideas Worth Living Podcast sponsored by The REI Co-op Mastercard, set to find out on stage at the 国产吃瓜黑料 Festival in Denver, Colorado. Turns out, Alex Honnold can push fear aside in order to achieve his goals, whether that’s climbing a sheer towering wall or advocating for conservation causes.

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A fallen hiker in the mountains of Washington found himself in dire straits: badly injured, alone, and approaching hypothermia this past Monday, July 14.

According to a from the U.S. Navy’s air station on Whidbey Island, the hiker, 31-year-old Ryan Polkinghorn, was climbing the Chickamin Glacier on the northern slopes of 8,440-foot Sinister Peak, a remote, rugged mountain in the North Cascades. That’s when he lost his footing and tumbled roughly 200 feet down the steep ice field.

Luckily for Polkinghorn, he didn’t lose consciousness during the fall. And when he came to a stop, Polkinghorn began screaming for help.

The yelling likely saved his life.

Hikers across the canyon heard his cries, and although they could not see or reach Polkinghorn, they sent out a distress call using their Garmin inReach. Emergency responders received this SOS at 1:38 P.M. according to a .

Once they’d called for help, the other hikers navigated tricky terrain to reach Polkinghorn. “After traversing glacial and rocky terrain” they finally located the fallen climber, and saw that he “had sustained head, neck, and shoulder injuries … and was showing signs of early-stage hypothermia.”

After reporting this to the sheriff’s office, Chelan County contacted the Naval Air Station at Whidbey for a hoist-capable helicopter, which airlifted Polkinghorn off the mountain that afternoon. The injured hiker was then taken to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle for further treatment.

The rescue highlights the importance of carrying a satellite emergency device or a phone equipped with off-grid SOS functionality when adventuring solo in the backcountry. It’s also proof that, when all else fails, a powerful scream or loud noise can save one’s life in a backcountry emergency.

In its published guide?,?the Colorado-based Mountain Rescue Aspen advises readers to blow a whistle and yell “HELP,” and not to give up if you do not hear a response. “Rock walls and valleys play strange tricks with echoes and you may lose your potential rescuers by attempting to locate them,” MRA writes.

“No matter how faint his or her yell may be, stay put and keep yelling,” the group adds.

The rescue on Sinister Peak has also ignited the debate about who should foot the bill for search and rescue operations: the victim, local taxpayers, or nonprofit rescue outfits. On the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office Facebook post that reported the Sinister Peak rescue, one of the top comments was, “Send him a BILL!”

Earlier this summer, another Washington sheriff’s office considered an ordinance that would charge hikers fines for rescue, if they’re found to have behaved recklessly, such as venturing off trail to take a photo on the edge of a slippery gorge. In late June, five separate distress calls on the same trail in a single week prompted the responding rescue organization, a volunteer group, to encourage hikers to use more caution when recreating outside.

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You could traipse all over the country looking for great riding, hiking, rock climbing, zip lining, and stargazing. Or you can park yourself in this Ozarks paradise and do it all in one place. And these are only a few reasons to check out Horseshoe Canyon Ranch in Arkansas—where adventure never ends.

The Arkansas Department of Parks, Heritage, and Tourism protects and promotes the state’s natural, cultural, and historic assets, contributing to a thriving economy and high quality of life. The Division of Arkansas Tourism strives to expand the economic impact of travel and tourism in the state and enhance the quality of life for all Arkansans. The division manages 14 Arkansas Welcome Centers and employs more than 60 staff members across the Natural State. Learn more at?.

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I. Every Second Counts

It’s 10:15 P.M. when the white van rolls into El Capitan Meadow in Yosemite National Park. A nearly full moon illuminates the 3,000-foot monolith against the ink-blue sky. Twenty people cluster by the fences, the June night too warm for jackets. As the van’s headlights dim, two colors inside become visible—pink leggings for climbers Kate Kelleghan, red for Laura Pineau. The crowd begins to shriek in a charged-up wave.

Former Yosemite Search and Rescue (YOSAR) member Jack Keane steps out, all business: “They’re going to rack up first. Then we can cheer them on.”

The crowd falls silent. Kelleghan and Pineau jump from the van and start clipping cams to their gear loops with the frantic velocity of two people trying to win a carnival race. Pineau looks exhausted, but has time for one joke.

“Just one more wall!” she says, then corrects herself: “Two more walls!” She shakes her head as if the thought is too heavy, and switches her focus back to the gear.

The duo has just returned from climbing the South Face of Mount Watkins. For most climbers, Watkins is a multi-day adventure in its own right, but for Kelleghan and Pineau, it’s the first of three routes in the Yosemite Triple Crown: a legendary, one-day linkup of Yosemite’s three largest formations.

Pineau, a crack climber, has never done more than one of those formations in a day, but Kelleghan, a former YOSAR member and speed veteran, has linked the other two: the Regular Northwest Face of Half Dome and the Nose on El Cap. Only ten pairs of men—plus Alex Honnold alone—have completed the Triple Crown in the 24 years since Dean Potter and Timmy O’Neill first established it.

Tonight, even though they’ve shaved 40 minutes from their personal best on Watkins, Kelleghan and Pineau have zero minutes to spare in their pursuit of becoming the first women to achieve a Triple Crown. When Kelleghan’s head snaps up from arranging her harness, her former YOSAR teammate Katy Stockton wordlessly steps forward and opens her empty backpack. Both Pineau and Kelleghan stuff their harnesses into it and pull it closed.

Finally, Kelleghan flexes her fists toward the ground, takes a breath, and releases a single power scream. Twenty voices multiply it, adding yodels and monkey noises, the sheer volume making up for the pep talks the crowd doesn’t have time to give. By the time the cheer subsides, the two women and their volunteer porters are power-walking into the redwoods, barely holding themselves back from running.

Fifteen minutes later, two bright pinpricks appear on the bottom of El Capitan. For the past two weeks, Pineau has rehearsed the four-pitch sequence of the Nose in her head, move by move, every night before she went to sleep. But she’s never tried the sequence after another wall, let alone one as big as Mount Watkins. From the Meadow, the first little light can be seen beginning to wobble upward.

II. The Yosemite Triple Crown: 2001 to Present

The Yosemite Triple Crown is nearly as famous as its roster of victors. Before 2021, the list included Dean Potter and Timmy O’Neill, and Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell—who, incredibly, freed all 71 pitches. Just weeks after his free ascent with Caldwell, Honnold upped the ante by rope-soloing the Triple, which no climber has done since. The pre-2021 list also includes Dave Allfrey and Cheyne Lempe, as well as Brad Gobright and Jim Reynolds, who set the Triple speed record in 2018 of 18 hours 45 minutes.

As a 7,000-foot vertical test involving 18 miles of hiking in between formations, the Triple represents more than just an ultra-style event. It’s also a mental challenge that requires accepting the risk of massive falls under sleep-deprived conditions. Pitches in Yosemite average about 100 feet each; the average trad climber places 12-18 pieces of protection per pitch. Pineau estimates that, to save time, she leaves just two, which would leave regular trad climbers wide-eyed with shock.

From 2021 to 2023, the climbing community bagged a Triple a year, largely by the YOSAR team: Jordan Cannon and Scott Bennett in 2021; Danford Jooste and Nick Ehman in 2022; and Tyler Karow and Miles Fullman in 2023. In an Instagram post after his final topout, Fullman called it the “final exam for a Yosemite speed climber and a lifetime achievement,” adding that five of the eight Triple triumphs (including Honnold’s solo) had included a YOSAR member.

But in the last two years, the speed game has increased in popularity. For some, it’s become almost casual. Two noteworthy partnerships rocked the Valley in 2024. In late June, Ima Amundarain and Cedar Christensen biked between the three formations for a “human-powered Triple,” bringing along canteens of red wine for extra fun. Then, last October, Tanner Wanish and Michael Vaill at 17 hours 55 minutes, returning one week later to add a fourth wall, the South Face of the Washington Column. They .

This spring, a record three teams converged on the Valley with hopes of completing the Triple. Jacob Cook, who became the seventh person to send the route Golden Gate in a day last fall, teamed up with Brant Hysell, who holds the rope solo and team speed records on a route named Lurking Fear. Hans Beuttler and Noah Fox, who last year completed the Double—El Cap, plus Half Dome—in 22 hours and 49 minutes, also joined Kelleghan and Pineau in their single-minded quest. The 2025 Triple hopefuls formed a group chat called “Triple Triple Threat.”

“Honestly, the group chat was my favorite part of the season,” Beuttler told me earlier this week. “All three teams were just all so supportive of each other.” Throughout April and May, every time one of the teams did a training lap on a formation, they would text in their times, or “splits,” to the group chat, building off each other’s momentum.

According to Kelleghan, most prior Triple teams have made their attempt within three days of the summer solstice in late June, enduring oppressive heat in exchange for maximizing daylight. However, this year’s teams decided that late May and early June was hot enough. Last week, Beuttler and Fox’s attempt ended halfway through their second formation, the Nose, when Beuttler accidentally pulled out a #4 cam and took a 20-foot fall, spraining his ankle. Two days before, Cook and Hysell pulled off a 22-hour ascent that Cook noted was harder than he expected.

But with stormy weather on the horizon, Kelleghan and Pineau kept pushing off their ascent, hoping to avoid getting caught in a thunderstorm on Half Dome and Mount Watkins. Even a speed climber’s frugal rack contains enough metal to attract lightning. Finally, they set a start date and time when the weather looked clear: 4 P.M. on Saturday, June 7, 2025.

III. The Elusive Search for a Female Partner

Kelleghan has been meticulously plotting for this one 24-hour window for the past three years. In fact, ever since June 16, 2022, when she topped out Half Dome on the Double, Kelleghan—now 32 years old—has been scouting for a female partner that could match her speed, stoke, and risk tolerance.

But in June 2022, that partner didn’t yet exist. Laura Pineau, then 22, was sleeping at Miguel’s Pizza in the Red River Gorge, Kentucky, and didn’t consider herself a trad climber. She’d gotten spooked on Yosemite’s Munginella (5.6) two years prior and sworn off trad. Then, in September, Pineau met Brittany Goris at a climbing festival and spent the next two months learning crack technique from her in Indian Creek. By the end of the season, Goris recommended that Pineau aim for Freerider on El Cap.

In 2023, both Kelleghan and Pineau spent extensive time in Yosemite, but they never crossed paths. Keeping her eyes out for a solid Triple partner, Kelleghan dialed her Nose beta in the spring by climbing the route multiple times, hitting her personal best at eight hours and 38 minutes with Danford Jooste.

At the same time, on El Cap, Pineau backed off Freerider, taught herself how to big wall, and attempted the Nose, bailing at the Great Roof due to weather. That summer, Pineau went to Squamish and launched an intensive training program to get in better free climbing shape. In August, Kelleghan got the call to fill an empty YOSAR roster spot. The two didn’t cross paths in the fall, either, but Pineau sent Freerider and started looking for a new goal.

Finally, in April 2024, Pineau fell into Kelleghan’s speed climbing world. Pineau was chilling in a van in Camp 4 with her then-boyfriend Michael Vaill and his speed partner Tanner Wanish—the same duo that would (and ) six months later. Wanish mentioned offhand that a female YOSAR member was looking for a female speed climbing partner. Pineau got curious and asked for her name.

“When Laura messaged me, she was super nice,” says Kelleghan. “I told her, yes, I’d like to climb, but I’m only climbing three routes.” She knew Pineau had climbed Freerider, but had never speed climbed—not even the Nose in a day (NIAD).

But Kelleghan was running out of options. “If I can’t find a woman next year who wants to train for the Triple, I’m just going to do it with a guy,” she said at the time. “I’d rather do that than not do the Triple at all.”

A few days later, Pineau went for her first Nose in a day with Vaill, completing it in 12 hours, 42 minutes. Kelleghan still wasn’t entirely convinced. “When Laura said she hadn’t led the first four pitches and had given up the lead at the wide crack, part of my brain was like, she’s not risky enough,” she says. “But at least she was a personality fit.” By this, Kelleghan meant that Pineau could at least be goofy—a must-have attribute in a partner for a 24-hour suffer fest.

In October 2024, Pineau finished up her hardest trad project, Greenspit, in Switzerland, then flew to Yosemite to meet Kelleghan. They warmed up on the North Face of the Rostrum, where Pineau sent the Alien Finish, then switched into speed climbing on the first eight pitches of the Nose to Dolt Tower, also known as a “Dolt run.” Kelleghan carefully evaluated Pineau’s ability. “I was kind of metering her against my times to Dolt,” said Kelleghan, who estimates someone’s “Dolt time” to be one-fourth of their expected NIAD time. “We were both at Dolt in two hours and 30 minutes. That’s decently fast, and it was only her third time leading it.”

Kelleghan realized that Pineau, as the stronger free climber, could lead the first block of the Nose. “She’s fast enough, and it’s November,” she remembers thinking. Spring, the ideal time to send the Triple, was just a few short months away. She finally had a partner who could dedicate all her time to this goal. “If we’re going to do it, the commitment time is now.”

IV. “Get That 24”

At 7:15 A.M. on June 8, Kelleghan and Pineau sprinted into the El Cap picnic area and dropped their harnesses outside the parked van. The gray light was slowly sharpening, but this time, there were only a handful of friends, rather than crowds. Both Pineau’s red leggings and Kelleghan’s pink ones were smeared with black dirt. With tousled braids and solemn faces, they knelt on the ground and tossed gear back and forth into piles. It was the start of their second and final transition.

They’d spent the entire night climbing the Nose. “The spiders in the Great Roof were horrendous,” Kelleghan said later. “You shine your headlamp up to see where to place your piece, and you see their eyes.” Pineau raged through the first four pitches, but still, each climber had added 10 minutes to her block. The extra 40 minutes they’d earned from Watkins was now just 20. They were on track to finish before 24 hours, but only if they didn’t bonk.

Kelleghan looked openly worried. Pineau had stopped smiling, but hadn’t changed her tone. “Yeah, girl, we’re going to get that 24 [hours],” she said, throwing her newly racked harness back into the van. There was zero doubt in her voice, but the time pressure was palpable. Pineau passed Kelleghan, who was carefully putting in contacts, and shot her a reminder: “Five minutes. We’ve got to get going.”

V. Like an Ultramarathon

The week before her Triple attempt, Kelleghan sits on a checkered kitchen table in her friend’s house near Yosemite Village. She hands me a spiral notebook full of topo drawings in ballpoint pen. Her notes could rival a private detective’s. One page, which summarizes her and Pineau’s second training lap on Mount Watkins, lists seven data points about the weather, four remarks on clothing, and 12 additional conclusions, including: Only black totem on pitch three: fix rope over bush, Put oval carabiner on higher 11b bolt with tat, and Extend pitons on pitch five.

Compared to other Triple teams, Kelleghan says that she and Pineau are much more data-obsessed. From tracking their sleep quality with COROS watches to measuring out their electrolyte calories, they wanted to use any small optimization they could to be faster.

When the team arrived in the Valley around April 12, they had exactly two months to prepare for the Triple.? “We’re training for it like an ultramarathon,” Kelleghan said, explaining that ultramarathon runners, apparently, don’t practice for ultras by running regular marathons, but instead prepare with shorter laps. Their favorite ultrarunner is Courtney Dauwalter, whose film they watched at the No Man’s Land Festival. “Courtney says, every minute you spend in the pain cave, you’re making it more comfortable,” Kelleghan observed. “We’re joking that we’re adding couches to the pain cave.”

The plan was to practice each formation until they could get their Watkins time to five hours, Nose time down to seven hours, and Half Dome time to six hours. Then, they’d take a full week of rest and go for all three at once. They’d skip the Double, opting to save energy and rely on the support of friends and family to keep energy levels high.

But it wasn’t only the encroaching summer weather constricting their timeline. Kelleghan had recently developed turf toe: a sprain of the main joint in the big toe, in her right foot. “It’s getting worse every day because we’re not taking breaks,” she said. “Climbing chimneys on Half Dome and hiking down are antagonizing it.” If they couldn’t get ready for the Triple quickly, each extra week of training would hurt Kelleghan more.

The first few weeks were brutal. They started with the Nose, which Kelleghan had the most dialed from years of NIADs. “I think I burned 1,000 calories just telling Laura Nose beta,” says Kelleghan. Their first April 19 attempt took 12 hours 53 minutes and was freezing cold. Five days later, they got their time down to under nine hours, but Pineau got emotional trying to work a slippery groove on pitch three. Then, on April 30, Pineau got food poisoning for a full week.

By April 30, they’d only done two Nose runs together in one month, and were nowhere near ready for the Triple. “Compared to the boys, they’ve been hitting their goal times on the first and second attempt, and we haven’t,” said Pineau. On May 5, with heavy winds and a not-quite-recovered Pineau, the duo hit seven hours 39 minutes on the Nose—closer, but still not goal time.

They switched over to , heading up on May 8, Pineau’s birthday. After a nine-hour, three-minute scouting sesh, Kelleghan surprised Pineau by sneaking up a candle, which she stuck in a mini Scratch bar on the summit. After the second Watkins lap—five hours 57 minutes—Kelleghan and Pineau celebrated being three hours faster, but realized they needed to try it again to get more dialed. A third attempt on May 15 resulted in Pineau’s first whipper: a 10-foot fall onto a black Totem cam that protected another 60 feet of airtime.

“I screamed a lot,” said Pineau. “It made this day really shaky to me. My mindset is to never fall.” Kelleghan explains that Watkins is particularly slippery and glassy. Pineau fell at one of the safest places possible, but still whipped 10 feet with rope stretch. “I knew it was bad because she took the whip and then the next pitch, a 5.10, she usually frees,” says Kelleghan. “But this pitch, she was yelling curse words in French and not freeing it.” But their time was still faster: five hours, 15 minutes, nearly within range.

Finally, the team tried Half Dome. The first lap on May 19 was “just sussing” the moves, according to Kelleghan. They came in at nine hours, four minutes, but weren’t worried; it was a practice run. The second lap presented the real speed test. Pineau took a “daisy whip,” where she fell onto her own adjustable tethers before the rope caught her, after a .1/.2 offset cam popped out. Even so, the day was a success: the women climbed Half Dome in six hours, five minutes, just five minutes past their goal time. It was the closest they’d gotten to their target number on any formation yet.

To reduce their times on the Nose and Watkins, Kelleghan and Pineau took one more practice lap on each, eventually landing at seven hours, five minutes for the Nose (acceptable), and four hours, 47 minutes for Watkins (better than acceptable). Though they still hoped to shave off a bit more time on Watkins to get a buffer early in the 24-hour push. After the final Watkins practice lap, their COROS watches showed both women at 4 percent recovery. Kelleghan based her recovery schedule around those numbers. By the time they started their Triple attempt, she wanted the watch to show 100%.

Some Triple teams take 30-minute breaks between formations; others head up knowing they’ll have plenty of time to spare. But if Kelleghan and Pineau could repeat their best performances on each formation in a single push, it would still barely be enough. “We’re right at 24 hours if we have our current times and the transitions go perfectly with no rests,” said Kelleghan. Both clarified that their main goal was to do the Triple in a single push, and getting sub-24 would be a secondary goal. But the idea of barely missing the 24-hour standard set by the speed climbers before them was too uncomfortable to dwell on.

VI. A Little Rain Won’t Stop Us

Thunder rolled through Yosemite as Kelleghan and Pineau had made their way up Mount Watkins. They had started at 3:58 p.m. on June 7, which meant that their 24-hour cut-off time would be 3:58 p.m. on June 8. The 28 members of the Triple Queens Support Team group chat wondered if thunder meant they’d bail, but a selfie from Pineau resolved all questions. “A little rain won’t stop us,” she messaged, then shut off her phone. By the summit, they’d beaten their personal best by 40 minutes, winning a critical buffer for the next two walls.

The thunder disappeared for the nighttime Nose ascent, but returned for Half Dome. By the time the team had made it up Half Dome’s Death Slabs approach, which took just one hour, 30 minutes, they’d each hiked nearly 18 miles and climbed 5,200 vertical feet.

Kelleghan was feeling beat—and panicked. “It was my worst nightmare,” she said. “We’re going to be really close to 24.” Technically, it was only 9:40 a.m., and they still had six hours to summit Half Dome. They’d previously done it in six hours, five minutes, but that was when they were fresh, not after two consecutive walls and no sleep.

Kelleghan still felt nervous as they simul-climbed through the first block, but when she got through her section of aid pitches, Pineau told her, “That was the fastest you’ve ever done them.”

“Sweet! Cool!” shouted Kelleghan, revitalized.

Later, Pineau admitted that she lied. “I was definitely pumping [her] up a little bit,” she says. “I wasn’t actually tracking [her] time.”

At the base of the next Half Dome checkpoint—the chimneys—Pineau told Kelleghan, “If you do your block in one and a half hours, and I do mine in one and a half hours, we’ll make it.” Kelleghan gave herself a stern pep talk: “I was like, ‘Any energy I have left now goes to the chimneys.’” She channeled her focus, ignored her burning feet, and blazed up the rock.

When Pineau began to lead her final block to the summit, she asked Kelleghan to give her regular time checks at each pitch. By the last pitch, they had 30 minutes left, and Kelleghan realized something she hadn’t considered before: They were actually going to do it.

The giddiness set in. Lightning was flashing around her, but there was nothing she could do—mentally or physically—except jug the final fixed line to her three-year dream.

When Kelleghan caught Pineau at the final anchor, Pineau pressed her stopwatch, and the timer froze at 23 hours and 36 minutes. The two collapsed into a hug, still tied in. Kelleghan found tears streaming down her face. They had made history together.

“It doesn’t feel real yet,” said Kelleghan that night, back in Yosemite Village. She was lying cross-legged on a carpeted floor, while Pineau smiled at her from across the room. “It’s been so many years in the making.”

And the pain cave? She laughed. “It’s like a mansion now.”

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On Thursday, June 5, rescuers in Southern Colorado boarded a helicopter and flew high into the Sangre de Cristo range of the Rocky Mountains.

They plucked a hiker off the southwest flanks of 14,055-foot Mount Lindsey, one of three Colorado fourteeners clustered at the southern edge of the range.

According to an update from Alamosa Volunteer Search and Rescue (AVSAR), the hiker, who has not been identified, “had fallen several hundred feet after a boulder gave way” while ascending the mountain’s northwest ridge, one of the two standard routes to the summit.

The rescue attempt was mobilized shortly after noon, and a search and rescue helicopter managed to reach the fallen climber at 1:20 P.M. Rescuers had extracted the injured climber by 1:40, and determined that “transfer to a local hospital by EMS would be appropriate due to the nature of the injuries.”

Mount Lindsey, located north of the town of Fort Garland is one of the southernmost Colorado fourteeners. It is also one of a handful of the famed peaks that sits on private land. While much of Mount Lindsey’s approach trail is within the Sangre de Cristo Wilderness, the ridge and summit itself are part of billionaire Louis Moore Bacon’s Trinchera-Blanca Ranch, the largest privately owned ranch in Colorado.

Citing liability concerns, Bacon closed access to Lindsey in 2021, and reopened it to hikers until this March. The move came after a 2024 change to Colorado’s Recreational Use Statue, which reduced the liability burden on landowners who allow public recreational access on their property. The Colorado Fourteeners Institute, a nonprofit, was one of several groups that lobbied for the rule change.

Climbers hoping to ascend Lindsey target the peak from the northwest, either via a gully leading up the north face, or by scrambling along the crest of the northwest ridge. Both routes are identical until the final approach to the summit, and are rated Class III.

This means that, although not usually protected via a rope or any other climbing gear, the routes do involve some basic scrambling, and any mistake can be consequential. The northwest ridge route, in particular, entails high exposure and requires navigating a considerable quantity of loose rock.

One commenter on the AVSAR post, Joe Bartoletti, said he met the injured climber on the peak. “I talked to him on his way down around 12,600/12,700 ft, he was ambulatory and it seemed like he would be able to continue on for a while,” Bartoletti wrote. “I went on towards the summit and figured I’d see him again on my way down if he weren’t able to continue on. Saw the helicopter fly in a while later and figured he was getting extricated.”

While far less popular than well-known Colorado summits like Longs Peak and Pikes Peak, which can see as many as 15,000 to 25,000 hikers per year, Mount Lindsey has historically welcomed more hikers—between 1,000 and 3,000 annually—than most of the other peaks in the Sangre de Cristo range.

This is due to its minimally technical route and relatively short trail: a little over eight miles round trip, with 3,500 feet of elevation gain. The mountain is often used by budding peakbaggers as a way to dip toes in the water before attempting the harder peaks in the range, such as those in the Blanca or Crestone group.

Per the stipulations of Mount Lindsey’s re-opening, all parties are required to sign an before any hike. There is also a sign with a QR code leading to the waiver at the trailhead, so hikers can sign their waiver on arrival, depending on cell reception. While hiking is allowed, other recreational activities, such as hunting, camping, motorized vehicles or wheeled transport, and aerial drones, are all restricted. The waiver also restricts climbers to either on the northwest ridge or gully route.

“Please remember that the restored climbing access to Mount Lindsey is a privilege that can be withdrawn if people do not follow the rules,” wrote the Colorado Fourteener Initiative in an update on the re-opening. “Being responsible climbers will help maintain access. Violating the rules certainly will send a poor signal, and may result in the peak being closed again.”

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There are times, more than I’d care to admit, an hour and a half into a trainer ride in my freezing garage, staring at my bike avatar move through virtual landscapes of Zwift, when my gear is growing moss and the walls are closing in the way do at Disney’s Haunted Mansion ride, that I suddenly feel the urge to shed the cloying comforts of home and go for some long trek through a foreign landscape.

If only, I’ve often thought, I had an 国产吃瓜黑料 Buddy—someone who would always be there, nodding along as I detailed my latest hazily conceptualized scheme: I just read about the most remote pub in the UK. They’ll buy you a beer if you hike in. It takes a few days. You up for it? To complicate things, my mind never seems to drift to the local, the achievable (say, a day-hike in the Poconos) for which I might actually drum up a companion. I generate quixotic ideas that call for veritable Sancho Panzas.

The trusty companion of trail and tent is an idea—almost a romantic longing—that haunts the world of outdoor exploits. You think of famous climbing partnerships like Conrad Anker and Jimmy Chin, or Tommy Caldwell and Alex Honnold. If you’re me, you think of writers like William Finnegan, in his surfing memoir Barbarian Days, cavorting around the globe with his buddy Bryan Di Salvatore. Finnegan once evinced the bromance aspect of the whole thing. “You go to extreme lengths, and you do it together, so these friendships really get tested,” he told Alta Journal. “You want that great wave, but it’s much greater if your friend sees you get that great wave. It’s a dense sort of homoerotic world you live in.” The same, of course, can be true of female adventure friendships.

I’m not alone in my hunger for shared adventure. You see it on the partner boards at shops like Denver’s Wilderness Exchange, where people put up cards listing their preferred pursuit and available dates (“Always,” being my favorite). You see it in endless online queries from people new to a town who don’t have anyone to join them in the outdoors. The URL will take you to a site, based in Alaska, looking to pair people up. “What a great idea!” one commenter wrote. “Just what Alaska needs … So many things to do, but not always easy to find the people to go with.”

Indeed.

As it turns out, I actually do have an ideal adventure buddy in mind: my friend Wayne Chambliss. Wayne—currently doing post-graduate work in London on geography, part of which involves him being “inhumed,” or buried underground—is pretty much up for anything, no matter how grueling, how ill-advised, how quasi-legal. He’s got an outdoor CV that is impressively outlandish.

All this raises a question: What, in fact, makes for a good adventure buddy?

There was the time near Utqiagvik, Alaska, that he had to outsprint a polar bear—this just after he’d taken bolt cutters to his wedding ring, chucking half of it, in some Tolkienesque rite, onto the frozen Beaufort Sea. Or the time, for lack of planning, he was forced to do a fifty-one-mile single-push circumambulation of Oregon’s Three Sisters volcanic peaks. He’s been submerged in a homemade submarine, along with its maker, off the coast of Honduras; he’s been airlifted into the wilds of Canada for a kayaking trip, without much knowing how to kayak. He’s crossed the Grand Canyon from rim to rim to rim, walked through Chernobyl’s zone of exclusion, and traversed Death Valley on foot (twice). Wayne is also a ferocious magpie of information, an endless spinner of theories and weaver of connections, a writer of feverish, private dispatches. Once, when I was asked him for any off-the-cuff thoughts for a potential story on treasure, he responded immediately:

“Hey, Tom. An interesting question. I’ll give it some thought. In the meantime, are you considering botanical rarities like ghost orchids or Pennantia baylisiana, or last surviving speakers of languages, or the gold that Rumi?ahui ordered hidden in the Llanganates Mountains, or the Nazi gold hidden in Lower Silesia, or the one viable REE mine in the U.S. (now owned by a Chinese concern), or how antimatter (of which less than twenty nanograms have been produced thus far, I believe) costs ~$62.5 trillion per gram, or the lone copy of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin (which would be a great opportunity to interview the Wu-Tang Clan, and maybe Bill Murray), the disassembly of the Codex Leicester…”

I will cut it off there. But it went on. And it was the first of three emails. Suffice it to say, we could spend weeks on an outing without running out of things to talk about. There is just one problem in all of this: Wayne and I have never actually done any adventures together. Our failure to connect can be explained away by that tangled alchemy of time pressure, work commitments, having a family, and the general financial state of the creative precariat. Call it real life.

The closest we got was when I randomly discovered we were both in Quito, Ecuador, at the same time. I was working on a magazine piece about a spate of new luxury high-rises built by big-name architects. He was , the active volcano that shimmers distantly over the city. Flopping on my bed at night after another lavish, wine-heavy dinner, I felt a bit trapped, like Martin Sheen’s character in Apocalypse Now, stewing in Saigon: “Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker.” Wayne was out there in the bush, getting stronger.

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Yes, Girl Climber has an oversimplified title. But it’s also the complex, vulnerable, and deeply inspiring story that adventure-obsessed audiences deserve.

Directed by Jon Glassberg, this 83-minute documentary describes how Emily Harrington’s life and two-decade-long climbing career culminated in one audacious goal: to become the (5.13b) on El Capitan in a day. Stymied by exhaustion, hailstorms, rope burns, mental fortitude, and sometimes one single move, Harrington persists through four attempts on the route in 2019 and 2020.

Glassberg, owner of the production company and the man behind dozens of shorter climbing documentaries, says that he didn’t want his first feature-length film to feel like a beta video. With nearly ten years of footage, Glassberg is able to expand beyond the one or two side plots that typically decorate shorter adventure documentaries.

“This is a holistic look at an incredible woman’s life in the adventure world,” he says, “from the top of Mount Everest to crazy expeditions in Myanmar and ultimately climbing Golden Gate in a day.”

Harrington’s Dream Team

Braided within Harrington’s narrative are three pivotal, developing relationships: her mentor-mentee relationship with , who passed away in 2022; her friendship with ; and her relationship with her husband, high-altitude mountain guide . All three support her during her attempts on Golden Gate through constant belays (Honnold), gentle pep talks (Ballinger), or healthy debriefs (Nelson).

It’s through these close relationships that we learn so much more about Harrington than we would through just climbing footage and interviews. When Harrington falls on the Freeblast in November 2019, we experience it through Honnold, whose normal expression breaks into wide-eyed alarm.

Something we haven’t seen in other feature-length climbing films is the consistency of a female mentorship like the one Nelson extended toward Harrington. After every one of Harrington’s self-described failures, their text conversations fade into the screen. It’s almost like we’re living Harrington’s recollection through what she shares with Nelson.

The most powerful moment in the film comes when Harrington falls on her fourth attempt, smashes her un-helmeted head against the granite, and all but gives up. She sobs openly, looking up at the summit, and gathers her grief into one brave statement: “Someday, I’ll do it.” Ballinger, however, is unfazed. He corrects her gently: “You’re going to do it today.”

A Unique Addition to the El Cap Canon

With references to , a cameo from , and, of course, Honnold, Girl Climber adds Harrington’s story to the existing El Cap cinematic universe for mainstream audiences, which primarily consists of Valley Uprising, The Dawn Wall, and Free Solo. The film’s goal of building upon this oeuvre echoes Harrington’s: to join the elite group of heroes who have sent Golden Gate in a day. At the time, that list only included Honnold, Caldwell, and the late Brad Gobright.

On each attempt, Glassberg captures Harrington’s failures, and the resurrection of her self-confidence, with unbelievable clarity. One of the most inspiring parts of the film, however, is rather mundane: watching Harrington’s discussions with Honnold about gear and supplies. Despite Honnold’s good-natured sandbagging, Harrington confidently prioritizes her own needs and comfort on the wall.

“I think it would be tough to make this more comfortable,” he jokes before her final go, looking at everything she planned to haul up the wall.

“Yup, that’s the whole point,” she replies, unbothered.

In another scene, she insists on bringing her extra chalk and breakable ice packs, even though Honnold thinks it’s too much. She’s sitting across from the most famous climber in the world, and instead of trying to impress him or apologizing for needing extra gear, she’s reminding him to bring up her extra things. Her goals and comfort matter so much more than his assumptions. And that’s something every female climber truly needs to see.

Girl Climber does have some misses. For example, the movie’s title suggests an arc about sexism that the plot doesn’t necessarily deliver. But ultimately, the authentic and vivid storytelling in Girl Climber creates several layers of inspiration for both a climbing and mainstream audience.

The Emotional Tension Stays High

From the start, Girl Climber does an incredible job building the stakes. Five minutes in, a montage of Harrington winning five National Championships and climbing Everest condenses into one powerful belief: “I’m really proud of my career so far, but if you want to call yourself a successful all-around climber, you’ve got to be up on El Cap.”

As a film,?Girl Climber?skillfully avoids several climbing tropes and common pitfalls. While the plot inherently involves Honnold, Glassberg avoids overly relying on him for narration. Instead, the film deftly lets him provide side-character comic relief as Harrington bangs her head against the wall—sometimes, literally—as she rehearses the route.?Girl Climber?also does not shy away from vulnerability; Harrington grieves her failures openly and carries no air of defensiveness or overconfidence. And even though we know she eventually sends,?Golden Gate‘s five cruxes act as one, shapeshifting villain and bring an unpredictable tension to each of Harrington’s attempts. At each sequence, we’re still looking for clues to whether she’s going to send?right now. If she holds on through a crux sequence, the music crescendoes; if she falls, the music halts, like a dream popped.

A Closer Look at the Title

While?Girl Climber?captures mainstream audiences with a plain and to-the-point description, its title hints at an insult that is never actually delivered. Harrington alludes to the mansplaining she experienced during her project, but doesn’t elaborate much beyond slightly condescending comments. Nor does this theme rise to the fore. Glassberg had good intentions and sharp marketing instincts, but having?Girl Climber?as the title overexaggerates the role of sexism in the film.

One could argue that tiles are always reductive, especially short ones. But when a brief label embodies the heart of the story, such as?Free Solo,?The Dawn Wall,?and?The Alpinist, the glory of the accomplishment casts itself back onto the subject. Honnold’s free solo of?Free Rider, Caldwell’s?Dawn Wall?redpoint, and Marc-André Leclerc’s bold alpinism each defined their legacies; their movies are appropriately named. But?Girl Climber?doesn’t add anything to Harrington’s legacy besides the most straightforward biographical info. It’s trivializing; it might as well be about a five-year-old in the gym instead of a world-class professional athlete in her thirties.

The movie’s title and its asterisked subtitle, “Stronger Than Stereotypes,” remind us that female climbers face stereotypes. However, the film’s only example of this is the media’s treatment of Harrington as a “damsel in distress” after her viral accident in 2019.?Good Morning America‘s portrayal Harrington as reckless and lucky to be saved by Honnold is most definitely a combination of sexism and the post-Free Solo?deification of Honnold. But it also represents a misunderstanding outside the climbing world of just how normal Harrington’s simul climbing really was. Overall, the flash of sexism in?Girl Climber fades in comparison to the film’s real, dynamic antagonists: Harrington’s own expectations, gravity, slippery granite, and time.

For her part, Harrington says that she did not choose the title. “I actually really hated it at first, and kind of laid into Jon about it when he told me,” she says. “I was like, ‘What is this? It’s diminishing. I don’t like it at all.’” But after talking it out, Glassberg convinced her that the movie would turn the demeaning phrase “girl climber” into something that means strength.

“The movie was pitched many, many times as flipping the script on the male-dominated climbing scene,” says Glassberg. “We really wanted to draw attention to the fact that Emily’s doing this remarkable achievement that very, very few people are capable of doing, and that she has this extra layer of stuff that she has to face because she’s a woman.” To Glassberg, the extra burdens Harrington faces include her ticking biological clock and the additional scrutiny she faces as a woman on El Cap. “We just kind of saw it from the way the media latched onto things, with the ‘damsel in distress’ idea,” he says. Calling attention to sexism, he explains, is the goal.

I don’t doubt that Harrington, like all female climbers, has faced misogyny and stereotypes in climbing. However, as a female climber myself, I cringe at seeing one of the most accomplished climbers of our generation summed up in this reductive phrase, especially a hypothetical one. If anyone has ever lobbed “girl climber” as an insult at her, the film does not show it. Perhaps Glassberg intended that, but the discomfort is still there.

Harrington confirms that I’m not alone in feeling this way. “I asked a lot of climbers what they thought of the title, and they had the same reaction as I did,” she says. “Again, this is the mainstream versus the core. I asked a lot of people who didn’t climb, and they were just like, “Oh my god, that title’s amazing, I love it so much.”

For that reason alone, even if a core audience of female climbers dislikes the name, calling the film?Girl Climber?was a smart business decision, and one that’s likely to pay off with millions of eyes on Harrington’s plot. In the long run, if a movie name disliked by a niche audience is what causes mainstream audiences to experience the story and know that women, too, climb El Cap, I understand why Glassberg would take it. After all, the general public has different understanding of rock climbing than climbers themselves. To someone whose only exposure to the sport is?Free Solo, female climbers with Harrington’s grit and résumé might as well not yet exist. What feels insultingly obvious to climbers like me might be, in fact, a necessity to break into the public’s collective consciousness. But if that’s true, let’s admit it right here—and acknowledge that male climbers have never had to infantilize their story’s names in order to achieve broad recognition. In an ironic and meta way,?Girl Climber’s title does more to prove that female climbers still face sexist barriers than the movie’s actual storyline.

Want to catch a screening of?Girl Climber? The film is screening at the 国产吃瓜黑料 Festival in Denver, Colorado, May 31–June 1, followed by a Q&A with Emily Harrington and Jon Glassberg. Tickets available?.

Catching Up with Harrington

The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Climbing: What’s it like to watch this movie four and a half years after freeing Golden Gate in a day?

Emily Harrington: I didn’t anticipate it would take this long to create the film. I’ve learned a lot in the process about how hard it is to create a documentary film, and honestly, it was really scary. I was pretty nervous to watch it. You’re your biggest critic, and I can barely listen to my voice message machine because I don’t like the sound of my voice. It was really stressful, actually, to watch it and see the story unfold. As human beings, we evolve and we change so much. In the last five years. I’ve had a child and been through that transition, so it’s just an interesting experience to see who you were and what you cared about.

Climbing: When you announced the movie on Instagram, you wrote that your quiet moments of struggle, fear, and self-doubt gave way to stories of heroism and sensationalism that only the mainstream media could drum up, and none of it felt like your true experience. What aspects of your story do you feel were twisted into heroism and sensationalism?

Harrington: It was just the sensationalism of climbing up on El Cap. People think it’s this crazy, death-defying, adrenaline-fueled endeavor, and it’s just not that for me. I don’t think it’s like that for most climbers. It was putting someone on this superhero-level pedestal and making them seem like they’re not a human, and it made me feel a little bit sensitive about it all. It happens with any achievement, when you have the greatest, the hardest, the first—all of these things.

Climbing: When Girl Climber was in production, did you have any other movies in mind that you hoped it would be similar to?

Harrington: I hoped it would be more of a female story on El Capitan, a little bit similar to The Dawn Wall, because they’re both free climbing. They’re both the kind of niche achievements that the mainstream doesn’t totally understand, but I thought that The Dawn Wall did a really good job of explaining what it was that those guys did, and how much effort and commitment it took. I just wanted it to be an inspiring female story on El Cap, because women also climb up there. And we don’t have that many female climbing stories, honestly.

Climbing: Jon told us that he saw a renewed psych in you during COVID. How did your thinking about Golden Gate change throughout early 2020??

Harrington: There were multiple reasons. I had this bad fall, and I knew immediately that I could go back. I remember Jon being like, “No pressure, you could be done with this project.” And I was like, “No, I know that I made a mistake.” It wasn’t this random occurrence that I can’t control. I felt really grateful that I was okay and I walked away from it. It took a while to mentally recover, but I immediately knew that I could go back and I could be better. Then COVID was helpful, because a lot of us during COVID felt a little bit aimless. This was this thing that I could hold onto and be like, “When Yosemite opens back up again, I’m gonna go back.” Right now, I have nothing better to do than really think about how to prepare for it and how to train for it. Thankfully, climbing is such a complicated sport. You can really creatively train for rock climbing in your house.

Climbing: What kind of advice or support does the sports therapist give you? And do you talk with them through every major project, or was this specific to Golden Gate?

Harrington: I work with a sports therapist, like a mental health coach, and I have since 2019. It’s been wildly helpful for me. It wasn’t just for that project; I still talk to her probably twice a month. It’s really about leading into your feelings, validating your feelings, and understanding that body-mind connection. A lot of athletes can neglect that mental side. In the past few years, I’ve really learned how important it is to train that side of things. It’s work. It’s training, and you have to think about it like that. It is something that we have to train, like a muscle, and it is very intimately connected to our physical bodies and our performance, as well as, our well-being and happiness. So, that’s another reason why I think it’s super important. But a lot of what we do is about how I’m feeling—fear, anxiety, failure, and motivation. It’s just a lot of letting those things come up and not judging them, but being really aware of them, and of how to work through them and move forward.

Climbing: What advice do you have for people who want to free climb El Cap in a day?

Watch the video below for Harrington’s response.

Climbing: What’s your current focus in climbing right now?

Harrington: All of it. I trained really hard this year, probably harder than I have since Golden Gate. I wanted to climb 14c, and I went to Spain with that specific objective. I fell short of my goal, but it’s okay. I ended up climbing a 14a that I was really excited about and really proud of. It was kind of my first big thing away, with Adrian gone, and bringing our son with us, and having the chaos of single parenting and trying to do a big trip. I succeeded in that, and it made me more motivated and excited to keep going and see what else I can do. Now that I have a kid, I’m a little more deliberate and focused. I actually think that’s helped me a lot in my climbing, so I’d love to climb harder sport routes. I’d love to climb my hardest grade. I think that’d be really cool.

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