Scholarship Recipient | 2023 Flash Foxy Climbing Festival - Bishop

The Flash Foxy Climbing Festival expanded my sense of community and belonging in the climbing world. It allowed me to rekindle my friendship with a climbing buddy who had recently moved, and I had the opportunity to meet many wonderful people during the festival’s abundance of activities. Even though there wasn’t much climbing, I was amazed by how event organizers pivoted the activities to respect the land and still cultivated an environment where climbers could be their full, authentic selves.

The climbing community where I reside is generally quite welcoming, but sometimes violent expressions of white settler colonial attitude in outdoor spaces leave me and other queer people of color feeling alienated. Every detail of the festival felt like it was selected with care so that folks would feel safe and valued, from the pronoun pins to the panel discussion to the land acknowledgement and amplification of Indigenous voices. During the Climb for Joy panel moderated by Lou, a lot of what panelists shared resonated with and empowered me, and one statement (I believe it was from Forrest) that struck me in particular was that there is a difference between “everyone is welcome” and “this place was built with you in mind”. I truly felt that the festival was built with us in mind.

As an Asian-American woman, I’ve been taught from a young age to assimilate into the dominant white culture and to be fearful of the outdoors—if you don’t stay on the beaten path, ready for or flight at any moment, you could end up in danger or worse. That fear I’ve harbored has made it hard for me to feel at peace recreating in the outdoors, and I constantly feel inadequate in my abilities. However, getting to witness folks similar to and yet different from me fight for recognition and thrive in these traditionally exclusionary spaces has given me the courage to dare and be bold, to grow autonomy in the outdoors. I gained so much inspiration from being in community with other attendees, volunteers, event organizers, vendors, and everyone in between. Recalling that sense of community as I write this is giving me the warm-and-fuzzies.

I wanted to highlight how amazing my clinic instructors Thomas and Carlin were for the Intro to Big Wall clinic. They creatively adapted the clinic so that we’d still learn a ton, even though we didn’t get to practice skills on real rock. I admitted this to them at the start of the clinic, but I don’t have a very physics-y brain. For example, when I first learned how to top rope belay two years ago, it took months for me to actually understand the mechanics of the system—I knew the steps, I knew to PBUS, I knew to not let go of the break strand, but I didn’t really get the why of what I was doing until I had gone through the motions a couple hundred times.

I was concerned that because we weren’t on real rock, I wouldn’t be able to mentally project the skills onto a big wall. However, Thomas and Carlin were thorough in their explanations and beyond patient with answering all of our questions. Despite my anxieties, I was pleasantly surprised by how the pieces came together and made sense to me. We were jugging up a rope tied to a tree, moving horizontally across a fence with ladders, setting up a portaledge on the rails of a stage, and I had an absolute blast. One of my favorite memories of the festival was strapping on a backpack and having my friend haul me across the auditorium floor—I giggled so hard I could hardly breathe.

I’m so appreciative of how Thomas and Carlin made the knowledge accessible and dynamic for us, and I’m excited to take all the lessons I learned throughout the festival, whether they be technical lessons or lifelong lessons on inclusion and activism, to the rest of my climbing experiences and other areas of my life.

Laura Chang (she/they)

Michelle LeBlanc (she/her)

Parker Reid (they/them)