Guardian and Observer Editorial

The Women’s Issue EXTREME SPORTS High-risk sports were once considered just for men and a woman’s place was to watch from a safe distance. Times have changed . Three women adventurers describe the thrill and dangers of life on the edge STEPH DAVIS Yosemite Valley , using just her Patagonia in South America, where by impulse,’ she says. ‘In reality ROCK CLIMBER hands and feet to make progress the wind blows hard and almost it was never a choice, but rather a and relying on her rope only to constantly, confi ning climbers to surrender to the inevitable.’ stop a fall. Called ‘free climbing’, base camp for weeks on end. She was born into a respectable, aped to the refrigerator in this style is regarded as just about hard-working family far from the TSteph Davis’s mobile home the purest form of ascending the She has returned to Patagonia mountains, in Maryland. She is a scrap of paper with the valley’s big granite walls. again and again, often unrewarded only discovered climbing as an earnest thought that ‘struggle is Davis has been right in the midst but sometimes snatching a prize, undergraduate. To her family’s part of life, and once we accept of this dizzying revolution. In 2003 , such as the fi rst female ascent horror, she ditched plans to be a that, things will be much easier’. she became only the second woman of Torre Egger , a vast needle of lawyer in favour of a life scraping There has been no shortage to free climb Yosemite’s legendary vertical granite that she climbed together sponsorship deals and of struggle in the 34-year-old El Capitan . Then, in 2005, Davis with her equally nomadic husband, waiting tables. climber’s dramatic life. For a start, made the fi rst free ascent by a Dean Potter . ‘It was a big shock,’ says her there aren’t many top athletes woman of a more diffi cult route What she has not done is get mother, Connie . ‘We were just a these days who do their best work called Salathe Wall , again on the involved with Mount Everest regular family – climbing wasn’t in such straitened circumstances. 3,000-foot El Capitan. ‘For the fi rst and the mainstream adventure something we could relate to . But as Davis herself says: ‘When time in my life,’ she said after the circus . Staying true to her vision of She did it by herself, with no help you live in a trailer, it really keeps Salathe, ‘I truly believed that I could climbing is essential for her. ‘My from us.’ you honest.’ do anything I put my mind to. And pursuit of climbing was initiated For now, Steph Davis is happy She has lived, she says, like a it was an amazing feeling.’ to be back at home in Moab, Gypsy, always moving on, living out Davis’s achievements aren’t Utah. ‘I am feeling really drawn of her car or duff el bags hauled to confi ned to California. She excels ‘FOR THE FIRST to the deser t and trying to push peaks across the globe. ‘Climbing,’ at almost every aspect of climbing, the season there with some hard she says, ‘is the way I love the from rock climbs a few feet in TIME IN MY crack climbing. I don’t know what world.’ Eff ort and application, as length of fi endish complexity, LIFE, I TRULY challenge is next for me, but there is much as raw talent, have put Davis to big, cold mountains. She has a guy I know who is 59 and climbing among the very best half-dozen achieved a string of impressive BELIEVED insanely hard ascents. Maybe I’ve female climbers in the world. fi rst ascents around the globe, got another 25 years in me.’ Her recent speciality has been from Baffi n Island in the Arctic, THAT I COULD long rock climbs in California’s to Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia and DO ANYTHING’ ED DOUGLAS May 2007 OSM 59.

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