An insider’s look at the sometimes-rocky life of a climbing mother

This is one analogy that might surprise you: As I see it, motherhood is a lot like rock climbing.

Nothing truly prepares you for either: all the expert explanations, advice from well-meaning friends, instructional videos and manuals — nothing does motherhood or climbing justice. I’ve learned this firsthand after nearly a decade at the first and two decades at the second.

In the end, climbing and motherhood come down to one thing: until you’re there yourself, perched precariously, staring wide-eyed and terrified around you, you have absolutely no idea what it’s like. Combining two such powerful and all-consuming life experiences has always challenged women. Which leads to my first confession. …

Confession No. 1: I no longer climb with my spouse.

November, 2007: It’s a glorious autumn day, and I’m out for a rare, precious bit of cragging in the Shawangunks. But I’m not with my husband, John, whom I met climbing. He’s home with our children, Grace, 9, and Matt, 6.

Before we were parents, John and I were each other’s favorite climbing partners. I started climbing in 1991, John a few years earlier. We met in the early 1990s at Manhattan’s first climbing wall and spent virtually all our free time outdoors — we even aid-climbed in the Gunks during downpours (to the dismay of our poor dog, forlornly tied up below the cliff). But now we haven’t roped up together in six years.

It started as a safety precaution. When our oldest was a toddler, John and I found ourselves simul-climbing some very low-angled but grungy pitches to top out Whitehorse Ledge, New Hampshire. I’m cautious by nature, and this was outside my comfort zone. (I trip over schmutzy stuff on a flat trail.) As John and I moved up those easy slabs, I squelched thoughts of how awful it would be for our children if one of us died…but how unbearably awful (and irresponsible of us) if we both perished. I swore not to be in that position again.

Climbing separately is now pragmatic — climbing is a time drain and someone must always be with young children. Like most of us, my family’s time budget is tight. John works a fullltime, corporate job with long hours, as I also did until a few years ago. Now I’m a full-time freelance writer and also full-time stay-at-home mom. (In the mom’s alternate universe, the percents add up.) A few years ago, John converted to more family-friendly, time-flexible, and condensed recreational activities — first roped soloing, then bouldering. Now it’s exclusively gym bouldering and skateboarding.

Me? I tried solo-toproping with a Silent Partner and I can now do a 360 on a skateboard. But unlike John, who happily gets his outdoor fix at the skate park or snowboarding half-pipe, my heart lies in traditional roped climbing with a partner. Not that this is practical: we live in Connecticut, two hours from the cliffs, one hour from the closest rock gym. But who becomes a climber because it makes sense? Which brings me back to that autumn day in the Gunks: I’m with an old climbing pal who’s fun and safe but, most importantly, has grey hair, children, and a life outside the cliffs. Now that I’m a mother, I won’t climb with anyone who lacks a keen sense of mortality.

We’re on Modern Times, a steep, exposed classic that has the traditional Gunks sandbag rating of 5.8+ (but is 5.10 in the latest guidebook). If while seconding you pop on the crux, overhanging traverse, you swing out over several hundred feet of air. (You’re only 175 feet off the deck, but since the cliffs perch atop a hillside, you get the full-monty view of the countryside below.) There’s no easy way to pull back in, and if you fall again, you swing out, dangle, and end up back where you started.

Which is exactly what happens. I slip, swing, and dangle for an hour until I manage to aid my way up using helpful suggestions from a leader below. (My prussik technique is as rusty as my footwork.) When we chat afterward on the ground, the helpful leader is impressed that my climbing partner qualifies for AARP but still leads Modern Times. Then hearing I’m a mom, he exclaims, “Wow, now you’re the impressive one. I don’t know many moms who even still climb.”

Confession No. 2: Climbing as a mom is a lot harder than most women admit.

Like that helpful Gunkie, I don’t know many climbing moms either. Most of my gal climbing friends stopped after motherhood. (Some, inexplicably, stopped working out altogether.) I understand the dynamics, though. It can be hard to get excited to climb sporadically: you’re rusty, not used to exposure, and awkward on routes you previously aced. You watch other women smoothly leading your former trade routes, and now you’re fumbling to find the right-sized cam on a novice pitch.

If you somehow climb regularly, it’s most likely climbing is all you manage outside of motherhood (whether you’re stay-at-home or work an outside job). Both climbing and parenting suck up time faster than a telemarketer ringing at dinner.

The hard reality, even for women with supportive partners, is that most big-time parenting commitments typically fall onto mom’s side of the ledger — teacher conferences, carpooling to school activities and play dates, buying school supplies and children’s clothes, packing lunches and snacks, scheduling doctors and dentist visits, organizing kids’ rooms and closets.… Some, like nightly tuck-ins, are incredibly heartwarming; some, like the infamous homework, just aren’t. Regardless, it’s all part of what you sign up for.

But it also all translates into less personal time (and less climbing time) for moms.

Confession No. 3: You need a “system” if you’re going to climb.

For good reason, my friend Jannette says, “The term ‘climbing mom’ is an oxymoron.” And this from a woman who’s developed the most creative and effective climbing system I know.

With two “tween” daughters, Jannette works four days a week, devotes weekends to her family, but keeps a sitter on call on Fridays, her climbing day. In the winter, it’s an indoor gym; when feasible, it’s outdoors. On weekends, she climbs with her daughters or organizes toproping groups with other climbing families. Periodically, Jannette sets up overnighters — last fall, 75 of us descended on her house near the Gunks. (Some parents even managed to climb.) That Jannette pulls off being a good climber and a good mother is partly due to her talent and determination but also to her system, which is based on a dual-income household with disposable cash and time. It’s not one many moms can replicate.

Each climbing mom is on her own to figure out her system. Some use disposable income to hire sitters; others tap into local relatives or a climbing-mom childcare cooperative. (Nearby rock or climbing gyms help immeasurably.) But if you’re going to climb, you need a system incorporating at least one of those elements, ideally more.

And once you finally have your system working, be forewarned it can fall apart faster than you yell, “Take!”: your wonderful sitter joins the Peace Corps… your spouse starts traveling on weekends…your mom grows too frail to look after the kids. Or you become pregnant again. (Another reality: with each child, it’s exponentially harder to find time and energy to climb.) Or your child is now one year older, with different activities and needs.

And you’re back to figuring out your system all over again.