UKH

I was wondering if anyone had any suggestion of female climbers who onsight E5 and above currently, that have some sort relation to UK or Ireland. Preferably not a world famous professionals (Hazel/Emma/Maddy/Anna). I'm considering a project featuring female climbers pushing the discipline at a grassroots level. My list so far is:

Katie Keeley, Ferdia Earle, Anna Gileat, Rebecca Drummond, Alice Thompson, Zoe Wood, Rachel Pearce, Freya Shannon, Sophie Whyte, and Kel Vargas. I'm sure I'm missing loads, any other suggestions?

Thanks

Anna Taylor? Quite a lot of really bold soloing in her CV I think as well as hard trad.

Edit: Or is she the Anna you'd grouped in with Hazel et al?

Yes

While I'm sure your intentions are all positive, have you considered if these unsung female traddies actually want their names plastered about? Might be worth people who know then checking first? 

I see your point, it was a well-intended question for a publishing idea. Unfortunately I can't edit the names out of the original post. Yes some have been contacted already, the idea has been received positively. But if someone has been offended by my post I do apologise, I couldn't think of a better way to find out other female climbers that are not in my radar

While I can see the concern, it feels a shame that climbers wouldn't be able to discuss other climbers they admire on a climbing forum.

p.s. I'll message you a few names on instagram Ramon.

Must be loads. Just have a look through the photos in the Pembroke guides for one.

OK mega, yes Rhos did say yesterday I should talk to you, thanks!

Any suggestions? I've been through them, even in my Pembroke Bond book they weren't many and the ones featured are mentioned above

I think that if they are named in guidebook photos or have climbing-focused public Instagram accounts it's probably fair to assume that they don't mind being known for their climbing activities.

Otherwise it's probably wise to err on the side of caution. Some might enjoy being "dark horses"!

I just looked on the recent top ascents list in the logbooks. Quite a few female names appear in there.

Kate Keltie is on the front cover of the Pembroke North guide climbing Beyond the Beyond (E5 6b), but you'd have to ask if it was onsight

Ah cool, I missed that one, I don't have that guidebook. Glad tis post is producing some results already. Thanks for the suggestion

Lucy Creamer and Emma Alsford also prominent in those guides, but maybe don't meet your criteria.

Both on the list above already

Idle musing really, rather than any particular concern. As said, maybe some like being dark horses...

I guess Fay Manners should be in there? That said, while she's clearly capable I'm not 100% sure if she's got any UK E5 onsights in the bag?

Some more names in here https://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/features/this_is_my_place-14755

Yes seen that article obvs, no new names there. Fay is a good suggestion but I'd rather stay away from the world famous pros that have had plenty coverage. I guess Freya is fairly famous, so grey area there. Of course those who don't want to be featured and remain dark horses that will be fine as the concept would involve them contributing so without their collaboration it won't happen. The project has opened a few discussions, specially men discussing, but when I've discussed it with women (and some of the names above) the idea has been well recived

katy whitiker - though she

• a) maybe too famous
• b) not currently onsighting e5
• c) on your list !

My impression is that the number of people (male or female) pushing this particular discipline are few and far between these days

In reply to Ramon Marin:

Hi Ramon , an interesting historical aside to this topic is that it is 40 years , probably to the month if not the day that a number of prominent climbers in the scene were all doing the first known E5 leads by women in the British scene , with, I hope I am correct , Gill Price and Mandy Glandville doing Comes the Dervish , then graded  E5 , Jill Lawrence Right Wall and Geraldine Taylor climbing Positron  . it was on an international woman meet where Cathrine Destiville and Rosie Andrews also climbed that standard .

these all being done in good style 

I apologise for any omissions 

I'm aware of two sisters, daughters of a close old friend who have climbed E7 and E5. 

Onsight E7 is definitely pushing it 

Good knowledge! Jill Lawrence did Right Wall on 29th May 1984 https://climbing-history.org/climber/1028/jill-lawrence

Jill also did Comes the Dervish the same week which was E5 at the time.

I know of one who has flashed E6 on Peak Lime…..something that is rare in itself….

There is a fair sized cohort of climbers both male and female operating in the higher grades, who peacefully climb for their own pleasure. Not the seeking the adulation of others or the pursuit of celebrity status. Have you thought about just leaving them to it?

Trains are for spotting, not people, it's too intrusive.

This has been addressed in the thread.

Recently?

Interestingly it has been conversations with some of female climbers that started this idea. I don’t have any other motive than telling stories that climbers themselves want to tell, not me myself particularly. But it f there’s so much negativity about representing female climbers then I’ll have a re-think

Yeah have a re-think dude.  

I really wasn't suggesting it was a bad idea, or that many would have an issue - didn't mean it to come across like that!

If you were to write an article, it would be great to hear from some of the people that inspired the idea.

I'm struggling to think of any lassies in Scotland *currently* onsighting E5, but somehow I can't imagine there aren't any! 

Sure whatever it is will be great, considerate and well thought out!

When was that? Care to mention the name? 

Yes I will. Thanks for your contribution 

Personally I think it would be a great shame if climbing went down this route. There's an enormously rich history of climbers telling their stories, whether that's articles in the magazines, anecdotes in the back of the guide or novels about expeditions to the greater ranges.

Obviously that's not for everyone, and Im sure there have always been people who climb purely for themselves and are not interested in sharing their experiences, but for me (and many others, guessing by how popular the logbooks are on here) sharing stories about climbing is brill.

If you haven't had a read of Ramon's Pembroke Bond book I'd encourage you to get hold of a copy and have a read. I think it's a great example of storytelling from a little climbing niche, and I find it really hard to see it as an intrusion on anyone's privacy.

That’s really interesting and I appreciate the thought. However, I’m more interested in current climbers and giving them a (printed) platform to talk about their climbing, achievements and so on. Through conversations with some of those climbers we have realised that a lot of their stories are not told unless they are pro or famous, hence my willingness to focus on grassroots and ‘dark horses’ as someone put, even if they don’t operate at the top end. 

Thanks Remus! To your point, yes you know I put a lot of care and attention to my projects, every climbers wishes would be respected. So far every climber I have approached have been very positive. But it seems a lot of people have opinions about what these said climbers might like or not… which I find ironic. Anyways I’m not much further forward on my list other than your suggestions, thanks very much. 

Well that’s the thing, I find it interesting that is the case. Do we struggle to come up with the female climbers because they don’t get a fair coverage? or is it because we are not interested? or they are just good at operating under the radar? I’d like them to explore just that through their words and images (if they are willing to contribute obvs, some people in this forum think I’ll just go and write something about them myself)

There appears to be a lot of the more mature female climbers who have been climbing E5 onsight for decades missing from your initial list. Are they on your radar?

https://www.ukclimbing.com/news/2010/04/e8_for_karin_magog-53060

Sophie Nunn (also her user name here)

I’ll PM you another name, she probably doesn’t want the publicity but you know her. 

Surely that decision should lie with the individual, not you, I or the OP.

Or... Because there aren't any? Genuinely, there are very few hard trad female climbers in Scotland. You already have Rebekah (not sure if she has/is sighting E5? She's done Skye Wall for sure,) and Sophie. 

That just might be it? 

I think a lot of the questioning on this thread has been because until your posts late yesterday it wasn't entirely clear whether your project was...

1. Writing about female climbers and their achievements and experiences - hmm
2. Enabling female climbers to write about their achievements and experiences - laudable 

And nobody bothered to actually ask.

I don't know of any in the Aberdeen area, but that's cos everyone just goes sport climbing now!

Yes, I imagine there are lots that boulder and sport climb hard enough that they could lead E5 if they wanted to and put their minds to it. But similarly with men with all the climbers you see in climbing walls or at sports crags that could lead E5 if they wanted to, I imagine the % that do is actually pretty small. But Ramon's interest here is in trad climbing.

If you have seen his pembrokeshire bond book you will realise that his approach is very collaborative and inclusive. I cant imagine for a minute that he would be intrusive/invasive with anyone who wasn't happy/interested in sharing some of their experinces.

It's a shame, though understandable in some ways, that we can be so suspicious.

Remus did say "climbers telling their stories" which suggests that it is the individuals decision. 

Ramon's approach with his previous book is all about enablling climbers to tell their stories.

Well do I need to reveal what my project is to be able to ask the question? Does it really matter? Can't we not discuss what female climbers are going after it without any baggage? You've made quite few negative assumptions about my enquiry, and my question didn't imply any of it. It was a genuine enquiry but like always UKC forums tend to bring out the worst in some.

Exactly! A lot of negative assumptions in this post, to be honest I think I've given up on the idea already

I think the fact is that onsighting E5 with any sort of consistency at all is really hard and there just won't be many people doing so at any given time. Just saying people could if they wanted to and put their mind to it probably plays down just how demanding it is. With all the much bigger E numbers in the news getting climbed in lesser style it is possibly easy to forget how respectable a standard E5 is.

I get your point, but past climbers like Karin, Lucy, Katherine, Lucinda, Glenda... have had exposure in the past, and was more interested in the names of current active climbers, rather than looking back. Then there's the small detail that the project is quite small so I have to have some sort of way to limit the theme, otherwise it can become a bible, and I just don't have the time or money to fund that. But anyways, let's carry on the conversation over email.

That, Robert, basically sums it up for me. Thanks

Let's not overegg things. Onsighting the odd E5 was pretty normal for many keen male climbers back when I became super obsessed on everything climbing in the late 80's. Now gear has improved and technical and fitness standards have increased massively below elite levels and women have closed the gap on those. It's more a climbing games fashion thing in my view.

Over a hundred UK women are known to have bouldered 7C and ditto for sports 8a, from remus's lists:

https://climbing-history.org/list/4/strong-british-female-boulderers

https://climbing-history.org/list/2/strong-british-female-sport-climbers

Here is remus's list on hard trad:

https://climbing-history.org/list/7/strong-british-female-trad-climbers

Good luck with your project Ramon.

It's a striking discrepancy isn't it? I imagine if you took roughly equivalent men's lists from the past ten years, proportionally it wouldn't be too different (maybe trad a bit better represented, I'm not sure). I agree about the climbing games thing - compared to bouldering 7C or sport climbing 8a, on-sighting a steady E5 shouldn't be very hard in theory - it's just not what a lot of climbers are into at the moment.

I don't blame Remus for not trying to collate it, because on-sight trad (let's be provocative and call it 'proper trad', because there's nothing very 'traditional' about practising a route into submission, and I say this as someone who enjoys doing so) often doesn't get the hype, plus there are shades of grey as to what 'counts' as an on-sight or a flash or whatever, but I think a list of women who have on-sighted or flashed E6+ and men who have on-sighted E7+ would be just as worthy of recording as hard headpoints.

The trad onsight grades would need to be much lower than that for equivalent numbers to his other lists!

Maybe...I would have thought one grade lower you might have roughly similar numbers, but there must be more women have on-sighted E4 than have headpointed E7, and far far more men have on-sighted E5 than headpointed E9 (like, well over 1000 surely?)

So all the more reason why your project sounds a good one. Stories from unsung women working for and reaching the magic grade sounds good to me.

Yes indeed, I think you misunderstood the whole thing, you immediately assume I was going to write about them without their consent or knowledge, when I never gave any idea that was going to happen. I only asked a genuine question about potential climbers operating at the grade.

Sorry to hear that. The negative posts you've received on here are quite unbelievable, to the level that they even sound like satire. 

Considering that one has to be very careful 

1.when talking about females as a male and

2.  being careful anyway on UKC when posting

if you do not want to cause offence or get riddiculed, I  think you are being sufficiently circumspect .

Yes I get that. In hindsight I shouldn't have put those names on the OP. At the same time, I think that is also part of the problem why we don't celebrate female climbers more often, we are just find it too tricky to navigate so we don't bother. And I think that is unfair and leads to under representation. 

It would've been hard to ask for new people if you didn't state those you already knew about, so including those names was probably fair. Assuming the info about their climbing was readily available to the public through the logbooks/social media/guidebooks etc. then repeating that data is hardly an issue.

I think ideally you should've aimed the post at the people you wanted to hear from "are you a female trad climber onsighting E5+" or at least someone that knows them personally to enable you to contact them a bit less out of the blue. But obviously you already know that the UKC forums are only frequented my miserable old blokes so you probably did the next best thing.

Yes you very much summed it up. In between all the grumpy old blokes the post achieved its main purpose and I now have a sizeable list of climbers who fit the bill and feel a lot more positive, more than anything to actually realise that the female climbing scene operating at the top is very much kicking and alive, a lot more than I firstly thought so. Whether I will manage to turn the concept into a reality is another matter... 

I would bounce your ideas around the guides scheme administrators, pyb and glenmore staff, they might be able to point you in the direction of those who gone through the schemes recently ticking the grade boxes and some of their own staff. Obviously not all mid E grade upwards climbers will be on schemes, it just broadens your net.

Looking forward to this, what ever form it eventually takes.

Yes and no, I am convinced you asked the question with the best of intention. However the question can then lead to an unknowing poster drawing unwanted attention to someone who does not wish it.

UKC is our little bit of the media and the media is all about celebrity. Some folks just don't want that.

Grumpy, sweetness and light me

Old, middle aged I would say

Man, guilty

One out of three 😁

I agree with Offwidth that this is surely overegging it. If plenty 6c climbers routinely onsight E3, why would E5 be so difficult for 7a+/7b climbers? Like others have said above, this is surely more due to inclination (a focus on sport over trad). One could say the same thing for winter climbing - VII shouldn't be too hard for those with the skill level in other discliplines, yet not many climb at that grade; it's down to them focussing their talents/efforts elsewhere. 

For some reason I thought you meant a film about female onsight climbers. Maybe that's not where your talents lie, but it would be a good project for someone.  

Yes I have already, it had produced two new names added to the list thanks to Rudders

I don’t understand your point, how am I drawing unwanted attention to those climbers when their names I put above are either public on logbooks, their ascents published on IG and some even make the UKC news (i.e. Ferdia on Femme Fatale)? I’m not sure what your problem really is celebrating female climbers, but I’ll leave you to it, good luck

Oh I very much would love to do a film, but no, this is would be for a little book. 

Extreme Frock?

Nothing to add to this in terms of names, but personally I find female performances like this MORE inspirational. Physically they have to try harder, many are maybe less mentally aggressive than guys, and as a weaker punter somehow I relate to that better than some over obsessed, cellar living uberwad? I for one would love to read their stories - it's not just about representation of females for females in the sport, us boys can love it too! Knowing Katie k and following her exploits has given me great pleasure, she know which end of a pen to hold and I very much hope to see her writing sometime soon as her posts are incredibly eloquent and thoughtful... 

Hi Ramon, please don't be put off by these small negative folk. These commenters (also ukc) is just a small portion of what people you will hopefully reach with this project. I for one think it's a brilliant idea! there is a serious underrepresentation of female climbers, especially in trad. thanks for putting energy into this. 

I'm unconvinced that a 6c climber is more likely to be regularly climbing E3 than a 7a+/7b climber is likely to be regularly climbing E5. Anyway, I suspect, rather than simple inclination, it is that getting to 6c or 7a+/7b is pretty straightforward compared with acquiring the skills, experience and confidence to regularly onsight E3 or E5; there is so much more to it than simply deciding to transfer the physical skills - I suspect most probably wouldn't manage it even if they wanted to.

Just as a constructive aside, and I hope you do not take offence - some women (though not all) dislike the use of the term females as it does not denote that we are a person, rather it could refer to any species. Women in my understanding (and also personal preference) is generally preferred. Note you don't tend to see men referred to as males colloquially. 

The use of female as an adjective e.g female climbers is not an issue as far as I'm aware.

I am by no means 100% correct here and would welcome thoughts from others. 

Agree, KK incredibly badass it's unreal, and her writing beautiful, feels a shame not giving her platform to express all that

As said per my email, thanks for bringing this up and contributing to this forum

I certainly did not intend any offence by using the term female, didn't realise that some people take offence to that, just thought it was correct terminology? I would refer to a man climbing as a male climber though for what it's worth. To be fair though, my point was that I personally would feel overwhelmingly positive to see more about women climbers in the press and media in general, as I say I relate to their success better and love seeing women getting as excited as men about the sport we all love. Not sure why some others would find that a bad notion? Whilst I can see that some some may wish for there to be no distinction between their exploits from men's, I'd say (as a man) it's an absolutely awesome thing to see so many young, impressive women coming through the ranks and doing things I absolutely aspire to.

That's often the case when adjectives are changed into nouns. E.g. blacks vs black people; the former can sound derogatory even if it isn't meant to.  

It's an interesting debate. I still think that many that underperform on trad (relative to sport grade) do so often because they just don't do enough trad climbing. 

Tess Fryer surely. At least when I look at all the FAs done.

There are certainly many people who only sport climb (and probably many of whom would not have been climbing at all when trad was all there was), but I'm not sure that of those who do both trad and sport, there are all these underperformers you think are out there; it is probably more that these days it is relatively easy to get to biggish numbers in sport, but proper trad gains are pretty much just as hard won as ever.

Tess Fryer, of course! Thanks for the addition

Good luck with this project Ramon, I'm sure there will be some great stories to be told and inspiration to be had.

I totally agree with your comments, but the problem is unless you,ve regularly climbed at that grade it’s hard to appreciate that redpointing 7B after practice is nothing like onsighting an E6 where falling is often not an option and self control and fear suppression are of paramount importance, above physicality and not some drawn out balletic exercise.

Is it that hard? Its a statement of the bleeding obvious isn't it...

I think you mean 7b Phil. Sport grades are lower case and so 7B is a boulder problem grade.

I was talking about those onsighting 7a+/b and making comparisons with E5. I thought that would have been clear.  

It was clear to me.

Good luck with the project and I hope you’ve regained your enthusiasm for the idea.

Certainly in the past. I have only met her once, earlier this year, but from what she was saying it didn't seem like that was her current level but I could have misunderstood.