Today a rare and wonderful thing happened at the gym…I climbed with women.  3 women.  Adult women.  Who were bouldering.  All working problems in the same grade range as me.  Completely unplanned.  This has never happened to me before.

Now don’t get me wrong.  I always have a blast at the climbing gym.  I love meeting new people and climbing with them, be they old, young, beginner, old hat, men, women, anyone.  I also love the days when I climb by myself.  (I kind of just love climbing:) )  And I have climbed with this many women at comps, although, sadly, not as often as you would think given the number of comps I have been in.  But to just run into 3 other women, each at the gym on their own, and start climbing together…this was something new.  I learned so much just watching.  The vibe was amazing, supportive and enthusiastic without pressure.  Beta sharing was actually worthwhile.  No one complained that I was too flexible or too tall.  There were no excuses when we fell and genuine appreciation for sends.

I want to be clear that I don’t believe that this would be impossible to experience with male climbers, or that it would always work with any female climbers.  Maybe it was just this day and these ladies that made it work so well.  But over the course of the night, each of us mentioned that it was a rarity to find other women to climb with and that we were all really enjoying it.  I hope that this is just the beginning of a trend.  And thank you to those ladies, I had a great time.