Scholarship Recipient | 2023 Flash Foxy Trad Fest - North Conway

To anyone who has met me in the last 5 years, I am a undoubtably climber. I am experienced in the backcountry, I can get myself to a mountain, read its features, and navigate my way up. I am strong, athletic, and skilled at this sport.

But I am not an athlete. I have never identified in that way. Why? I couldn’t say. From an early age I looked around at the kids who made the teams, and I just didn’t feel the part. I didn’t have the right legs, the right outfits, my hair didn’t tie up into a ponytail the right way, my hips wobbled around weird. The traits that made me different, defined who I could not be.

When I found trad climbing, my life changed. I could squeeze my limbs into places that even my strongest friends struggled with. I could find ways for my body to fit like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle. High up in a crack, out of talking range, there is no beta worth anyone’s breath - No one really knows what is going on except me, anyways. Trad climbing become the place that I could push myself without anyone watching and without judgement from my own inner voice.

My love for trad climbing drew me to this festival, along with a desire to make some new friends. But Flash Foxy this year was much more meaningful to me than I could have anticipated. To describe why, there is a particular conversation that I keep circling back to: What does ‘tradition’ mean in climbing? In one sense, traditional climbing is simply my favorite weekend pastime, my hobby and sport. In another sense, tradition is the passing down of knowledge - it is how I learned to climb at all. Friends, more experienced than me, shared second-hand tricks about how to wear my rope like a backpack, or tie it up on my hip during a rappel, or make gloves out of tape that can last for weeks. It is more than passing down technical skills that you could learn in a class or YouTube video. It is the small things, like the mountain-top selfies, crag snacks, laughs that come with climbing tradition that brought me into the sport and made me feel like I belong.

However, tradition is also a barrier. It is the reason my younger self couldn’t imagine being an athlete. For many, it represents gender roles or other religious expectations. As a scientist (my alter ego), it represents narrow-minded thinking that is resistant to new knowledge, progress and innovation. As a climber, when the mentors are all cis, white, and male, tradition can be the locked gate preventing access.

In the past five years, I accidentally became an athlete. At Flash Foxy this year, I realized that I have also become a mentor. Having recently moved across the country, away from my original climbing community, I, for the first time, felt qualified in a role other than apprentice. This realization has transformed my relationship with climbing. It reminded me that mentorship and tradition isn’t about knowing every technical skill or what grades I can send – it is about the little things: high fives at the top of each pitch, hauling up a surprise summit beer, knowing the best swimming spot nearby. It was an amazingly powerful experience to pass down what I have learned, and who I am as a climber, to so many diverse and beautiful women and non-binary climbers. I came to flash foxy to make friends and kick myself back into outdoor climbing shape, but what I left with was a sense of confidence and independence that will stay with me in all of my future outdoor endeavors.

Valentina Alaasam (She/her)

Fig Johnson (they/them)

Iliana hernandez (she/her)