Rock climbing is the only truly gender-blind sport.

I was rock climbing in August just outside Las Vegas with a seasoned mountaineer named Patrick when our gearhead chatter about men’s vs. women’s climbing shoes prompted a question about gender. I asked Patrick, a rescue climber and guide who helped start one of the first Vegas rock gyms, about the performance potential of guys vs. girls. Gender parity in climbing is uncommonly common, in contrast with the dozen or so sports in which I’ve competed or dabbled (and the many I’ve spectated). In the four years since I started, I’ve routinely seen women match or best the efforts of much burlier men. But until recently, I still assumed that the guys, as in every other sport I know, could ultimately go higher, faster, stronger.

Patrick’s answer was brief and unhesitating. “They’re equal,” he replied, before belaying me up a face of lovely red sandstone. Once, he later told me, he took a group of government officials out for their first climb. The first three, all men in fairly good shape, struggled up the wall. Then a woman raised her hand and said she wanted to try. “She was a little on the heavy side,” Pat says. “We could barely get the harness around her.” But it was immediately obvious that she had an inherent sense of balance and body position. She scaled the face with ease. "It was beautiful,” Patrick says. “Don't take this the wrong way, but it was like watching the hippo ballet in [the Disney movie] Fantasia.”

If there ever was a search for the most gender-blind sport, call off the dogs. Rock climbing is it. Here’s why:

Sports generally reward bulk, speed, strength, and, often, height—all traits in which men tend to have the physical advantage. But climbers can’t rely on brute strength alone. The typically feminine assets of balance, flexibility, and a sprinkle of grace are essential to navigating the vagaries of ancient rock and plastic gym holds. (To effortlessly “dance up the wall” is a high compliment.) Excessive bulk, be it muscle or fat, while not a showstopper, is a definite disadvantage in a sport that rewards a high strength-to-weight ratio. Height can help or hinder, depending on the contours of the rock.

True, most of the top climbers are men, but in a few cases, women have accomplished what men could not. In 1993, Lynn Hill was the first person to free-climb a famously challenging route in Yosemite National Park called "The Nose.” (Unlike previous ascenders of “The Nose,” Hill did not insert artificial holds into the rock. She was still on a rope, but used only natural rock to summit.) Her diminutive size—she’s 5’1”—and small fingers helped her move past key segments of the climb. As Hill later wrote in the American Alpine Journal:

After numerous tries over a three-day period, I discovered a bizarre sequence of moves involving delicate smears, stems, back-stepping, cross-stepping, laybacking, arm bars, pinching, palming, etc. Ironically, what initially appeared [to be] a pitch that would be desperate for a small person turned out to be a unique expanse of rock that almost seemed custom-designed for someone of my body dimensions and background in climbing.

Hill is fantastically strong, of course, but she accomplished her famous ascent with contortions fit for a dance or yoga class, including a move she later dubbed “the Houdini.” The following year, Hill free-climbed “The Nose” in a day, another pioneering feat.

Tags: rock climbing, sailing, sports, title IX

Jeannette Lee is a writer based in Washington, D.C.

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Rock Climbing: The Only Truly Gender-Blind Sport

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