May 29 2018

Climbing, Travel and … Napping!?

Kids, Motherhood, Pregnancy, Travel
by Beth

Hi Beth,   First, thank you for truly being an encouragement, inspiration, and role model to all of the mommies out there trying to navigate their new roll as life giver while also trying to remember and live their identities as adventurers. Certainly a hard and rewarding transition.I loved the blog about the third wheel, thank goodness for them. Probably, all enthusiastic hikers, having told relatives and friends the good news about the upcoming addition to the family, hear similar phrases: “Well, now hiking will have to be postponed for several years ...

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May 24 2018

Climbing Postpartum, Recovery and Prolapse

Kids, Motherhood, Pregnancy
by Beth

Hi Beth -   Your blog has really helped me through my pregnancy and early days of motherhood. I gave birth to a wonderful baby boy in October last year. But, 6 months later, I feel like my body is falling apart. Apparently I have only a mild bladder prolapse but I can feel the pressure all day every day. Before having my baby, and during pregnancy too, I would climb, hike, cycle, do yoga...

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May 22 2018

Athletes, their children and social media

Climbing, Kids, Motherhood, Pregnancy
by Beth

"Can't wait for the adventures ahead with this little man." That's the caption I wrote on my first Instagram as a mom. I posted it from the hospital bed as I held a seven-pound infant to my bare chest. I hadn't slept in over 36 hours, couldn't stand upright, but had been through the most profound experience of my life. It's human nature to want to share these impactful moments. Social media allows us to do this, and share them to whoever chooses to follow us. Even better, online...

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Apr 24 2018

Weekend Warriors

Climbing, Kids, Travel
by Beth

As a professional climber, I've avoided weekends when the roads were full of traffic and the crags were littered with people. Saturday and Sunday have always been, by choice, my rest days. It worked out perfectly. I climbed during the week with other abnormal people (e.g., professional climbers or vacationers) and lived in a lovely little bubble. During those years, it never occurred to me how few weekend warriors I actually knew or interacted with. Then I met Randy, my husband, a bonafide working man with a commute to an...

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Mar 01 2018

Climbing With Kids: In Praise of the Third Wheel

Climbing, Kids, Motherhood
by Beth

As climbers, when we become parents, most of us become boulderers by default. I can feel the cringe from some Valley locals now, but at least for my family, it’s true. Fortunately, Randy and I love bouldering, but there’s no doubt that bouldering can been the easiest form of climbing with kiddo in tow. Single-pitch cragging almost always means finding a third person so that one parent is able to watch and attend to the child (unless you are in the pre-mobile stage or self entertaining stage, both of which...

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Jan 11 2018

Katie Lambert Interview: Thoughts on climbing and decisions not to have kids

Climbing, Interviews, Kids
by Beth

For anyone that knows Katie Lambert, she's an inspiration. Not only with her climbing achievements, but with her insightful and thoughtful way of approaching life. She's not one to jump on a popular bandwagon nor to promote things that she isn't passionate about, which I find incredibly refreshing these days. Katie is one of the best and well rounded climbers out there, proficient in the alpine, sport and boulders and has a tenacity that gets her up daunting climbs.   I spent a fair bit of time talking to her about having...

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Dec 19 2017

Jen Bisharat Interview: Climbing Pregnant and Climbing with Kids

Interviews, Kids, Motherhood, Pregnancy
by Beth

I first met Jen at a Triple Crown competition over a decade ago. She was one of those undercover locals that crushed all the visiting professional climbers. Since then she's gone on to quietly become one of America's most accomplished female sport climbers while simultaneously being a Kindergarten teacher, a fact that should blow anyone's mind. With multiple 5.14's under her belt, she's ticked off some of the hardest routes in Rifle. A little over a year and a half ago, she and her husband Andrew welcomed their daughter Piper into...

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Sep 13 2017

Fear

Kids, Motherhood
by Beth

Fear and Afar: From Kyrgyzstan to the Bay   Fifteen years after being held hostage for six days by a group of Islamic rebels in Kyrgyzstan, I picked up the phone and called a therapist. I had spoken to her a couple of times about starting therapy, but had never pulled the trigger. I was too scared to go down that dark road. Too scared to open those wounds. My friend did tell me that if I was experiencing these types of emotions that I should Get more info about the...

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Apr 04 2017

Paige Claassen Interview: Thoughts on Climbing, Starting a Non Profit and Having a Family

Climbing, Interviews, Kids, Motherhood, Travel
by Beth

Paige Claassen is one of the strongest, understated climbers of her generation. For the past decade she has dispatched with some of the hardest routes in the world - and doesn't gloat about it. What's always struck me about Paige is her eye and desire to try meaningful climbs - beautiful, historical, stiff - they are always "king lines" in my opinion. She recently got married (happy almost one year anniversary Paige!) so naturally I wanted to know when she was going to have kids...

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Aug 18 2016

Life, Death, and What We Worry About

Kids, Motherhood, Pregnancy
by Beth

"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened."-Dr. Seuss I wish it were as easy as Dr. Seuss put it. But grieving is hard, and crying usually comes with it, at least with me. In the eight years I've known my husband, Randy, I've seen him cry only three times. I've cried at least three hundred times in those same eight years. Randy has a way of coping or dealing or grieving that he saves the tears for the big ones. Once over the guilt and separation with his...

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