BY MAANYA GOENKA
They Built A Wall. And White Men Climb It
Carleton’s climbing gym is under fire for its predominantly white male demographic
As it turns out Donald Trump’s border wall is not the only vertical structure that has the potential to encourage racial segregation.
Carleton College’s thirty-feet-high rock climbing wall, in the Recreation Center, is molded granite, replicating a real rock formation at Minnehaha Falls, near Minneapolis. Students can top-rope and lead-climb on the wall and may even alternatively choose to boulder in the climbing cave which was established in the summer of 2005.
The bouldering routes at the gym are set up by student workers, under the supervision of the Climbing Coordinator Amy Erickson, and they range in difficulty from ‘easy’ (marked by green tape) to ‘very hard’ (marked by purple tape). The remaining tape colors (blue, orange, yellow, and pink) are representative of routes that are varying degrees of 'intermediate' in their level of difficulty. By navigating the various routes progressively, students are able to perceive and enhance their climbing competence - the more hours you climb, the farther up on the color ladder you are able to move.
Sighs of exasperation and utterances of jubilation are incessant at the cave with remarks such as, “I can’t believe I just moved from a blue to an orange!” and “Ugh, I was able to do the pink but the purple keeps failing me!” overheard by student climbers who frequent the space.
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In addition to the student workers at the Recreation Center, the Carleton Association of Nature and Outdoor Enthusiasts (CANOE), the largest student-run organization on campus, is also actively involved with the sport of climbing at Carleton. In fact, on most weekends, the leaders of the group lead off-campus adventure trips for outdoor recreational activities such as canoeing, kayaking, hiking, and climbing. In the past, weekend climbing trips have involved traveling to Red Wing (a little over an hour's drive from the twin cities), the Vertical Endeavors rock climbing gym (in Bloomington), and Minnesota Bouldering Project (in Minneapolis). By allowing students to test the skills they have developed within campus confines, in off-campus gyms, the club has been successful in accruing a rather substantive membership and following.
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Carleton's bouldering cave boasts over 40 routes set up by the climbing staff (Images uploaded by @carletonclimbing on Instagram)
In high school, I would have described myself as an avid rock climber. I occasionally found myself elevated several feet off the ground - perspiring fingertips, calluses developing underneath my knuckles and on my palms - clasping the holds as one of my feet hovered reluctantly over a suspicious knob of rock. Bouts of adrenaline were released as I pulled myself over the top of the wall and all of a sudden, the trepidation was replaced by elation when I heard clamors of affirmation beneath me. "You did it." "Way to go." "You're a beast."
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At Carleton, I was excited to continue climbing. However, I found the lack of diversity at the gym particularly disillusioning. Often times, I was the only woman of color in a room teeming with enthusiastic white men adorning too-tight shoes and chalky palms. Having realized that the rosy picture I had painted of the climbing culture on campus was not reflective of the 'real thing', I was quickly turned away from the cave and the college's climbing community.
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Carleton's climbing culture is a microscopic representation of the disparity issues penetrating the sport in the general West. A research project, undertaken by professors at Clemson University, highlights this well. The study found that under 2 percent of climbers who were members of USA Climbing, the national governing body of the sport of competition climbing, identified as African American. Multiracial members accounted for under 5 percent of the cohort. These numbers are indisputably dismal. Indigo Johnson, a biracial climber from Novato, California, comments on the racial imbalance in her blog post.
"Nothing about non-white people intrinsically prevents them from rock climbing, yet they still seem largely absent from the sport. I have seen many articles and online conversations assuring readers that climbing is a free and open sport in which everyone can participate, yet the more I research, the more I realize this isn't the case."
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I find a plethora of parallels between the countrywide climbing demographic and its exemplification at Carleton. Falsely advertised as inclusive, the climbing community at Carleton is disproportionately dominated by a specific climber archetype. Ask a student here to describe the quintessential climber on campus and the words 'white', 'male', or 'cis', or any combination of those terms will certainly come up. Yet, when I tried to do an internet investigation of what these spaces on campus looked like to an external observer, I was immediately greeted by photographs of BIPOC students attempting to ascend the formidable walls of the cave. Online portrayals of Carleton's climbing community did not mirror my actual experiences of the past four years here. The Indigo Johnsons and Abby Diones of the bouldering world are largely absent from representation in Carleton's climbing circles.
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Kara Sun '22, an Environmental Studies major at Carleton, took a liking to the sport when she was a senior in high school. "I like climbing because it is both a physical and mental sport. I enjoy the problem-solving aspect of bouldering. It happens to be one of few activities that is just as collaborative as it is an individual endeavor, in that you can be in the same space with your friends but working on very different climbs. It has a nice social aspect to it while also being a journey of personal growth and learning."
Sun is an active member of the climbing community at Carleton in her capacity as a Staff Leader at the Recreation Center. She has been outspoken and insistent in her advocacy for making climbing on campus feel more inclusive, especially for students with marginalized identities. "Climbing is already such an intimidating activity for beginners. It can be discouraging to go to the gym or go on a CANOE trip and find that nobody else in the room looks like you. That feeling leads to imposter syndrome and makes you never want to be in that space again."
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The BIPOC climbing club on campus is Sun's brainchild and she has undertaken the responsibility of spearheading the organization. "There's a narrative going around that people of color are not interested in the outdoors but my own experiences working with BIPOC students goes to show how false this perception is. I've had the opportunity to lead BIPOC-only off-campus trips and some exceptional climbers have participated in those. Seeing how many beginners have shown up to these trips is really exciting and hopeful."
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Julian White-Davis '23, a Political Science major and climbing staff member at Carleton, was drawn to the sport at the young age of four. Having been part of the community since his freshman year, he is aware of the issues that plague the climbing gym at Carleton, and the lack of diversity in the makeup of the college's climbing cohort is not lost on him. "These are ongoing conversations and I don't know why they were not started earlier. Now the gym has events and organizations specifically for students with marginalized identities such as Figure Four [for climbers who identity as female or non-binary] and BIPOC hours. I'm glad they exist, but we shouldn't need them in the first place. The goal is to make all climbers feel welcome in the gym at all times and there's still a lot of work that needs to be done to be able to accomplish that."
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Arya Misra '22, is a novice climber and only began participating in Carleton's climbing culture after her white-male friends encouraged her to visit the gym. "I never felt comfortable being in the space without them. There are still so many women, BIPOC and non-binary students who would much rather climb during hours set aside specifically for people like them to climb, than with the everyday Carleton climbing community and I can't blame them. The gym has historically been a white-male dominated space and although, I feel fine going in there by myself now, it took some time for me to get to that point and there are still times when I feel intimidated."
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Figure Four, Carleton's femme climbing club, has its first meeting of the term near the bouldering wall (Image uploaded by @figurefour.carleton on Instagram)
Misra conquers a difficult belaying route in the Vertical Endeavors rock climbing gym while her friends cheer her on
Zoe Poolos '22, has been working as a Staff Leader for the climbing gym ever since she was introduced to the sport her freshman year. "Sometimes being the only woman in the climbing gym makes me self-conscious and like I need to try really hard to not mess up because I feel like I'm being watched. Since I started climbing, I've noticed just how much easier it is for men to exist in that space and to not have to worry about being judged by others around them."
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Poolos addresses the barriers that underlie the process of route-setting at the gym. Climbing staff members occasionally modify and reinvent routes to please visitors who crave varied experiences while climbing and to keep them "excited and interested." However, oftentimes the routes only appeal to climbers of a specific build - those who are categorically tall, possess higher upper body strength, or have a long arm span. Women climbers are neglected in the process and this can cause them to feel embittered and discontented.
"I like taking on challenging climbs but sometimes it is obvious that a particular route that I am attempting was set for a 6 feet tall man. Given that I'm on the shorter side, it makes me think about just how important the feedback process is. Having other climbing staff members test out a route you are working on before you finalize it should be emphasized as Route-Setting 101."
In a college that produces the likes of Jimmy Chin '96, the winner of the 2019 Academy Award for documenting climber Alex Honnold’s ropeless climb of El Capitan, a 3000 foot granite monolith in Yosemite National Park, it is unsurprising how pivotal of a role the sport plays in the sphere of outdoor recreation. Chin's zeal for climbing was fostered only after he partook in a CANOE climbing trip, organized his freshman year. He speaks to the obstacle of gender disparity in climbing and outdoor sports, prevalent both within and outside of the college premises, but is hopeful that students on campus will take the necessary measures to combat the imbalance that exists.
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"When I first started climbing and skiing there weren’t that many women. There's no denying that this has changed quite a bit. At Carleton, people understand, you know, it's a very liberal college. It’s focused on those issues, the students have the awareness and sensibilities of those issues, which is great. As a parent to a five-year-old daughter, it’s about encouraging everybody, regardless of sex, color, or sexual orientation. I'm also a Chinese first generation student so believe me, I know."
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Rock climbing and bouldering are quietly gaining momentum as popular outdoor recreational activities, at Carleton and globally. According to the Outdoor Industry Association, the leading outdoor trade association in the U.S., some styles of climbing have grown in participation by 16 percent in the last three years, but the sport’s diversity has not kept up.
Poolos believes, "It's difficult to hold a particular person solely accountable for the absence of more diverse groups at the climbing gym. But white men at the gym should be encouraged to look at how much space they take up and should be active in making their non-white non-male peers feel more welcome. Trying to steer the space away from this dominant demographic is a laborious task but one that we should keep having conversations about. At least until marginalized groups can exist in the same space without having to think that they don't belong here."
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Image taken from Jimmy Chin's personal website (https://jimmychin.com/)