Wendy Bruere - More Than It Hurts...and Other Stories of (Mis)adventure by Womxn Who Climb and Mountaineer

Also by Wendy Bruere

More Than It Hurts...and Other Stories of (Mis)adventure by Womxn Who Climb and Mountaineer

Journey to Eternity and More Stories of (Mis)adventure on Rock and in the Mountains

Also by Emily Small

More Than It Hurts...and Other Stories of (Mis)adventure by Womxn Who Climb and Mountaineer

This book is produced by Climb & Wine to celebrate women, including people of diverse genders, and their contributions to rock-climbing and mountaineering.

We would like to say a huge thank you to our Lead

Sponsors for their incredible support for this book: Climbing Anchors and Mammut.

You rock!

Thank you also to our Second Sponsors:

Mountain Equipment and Australian School of Mountaineering (ASM).

You also rock!

Most of all we would like to thank all the incredible contributors to this book for trusting us with their stories.

As Climb & Wine we would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands and waterways where we live, climb, and explore. We acknowledge and pay our respects to Elders, past, present and emerging. We celebrate the First Peoples' unique cultural and spiritual relationship to Country and acknowledge and value their huge wealth of knowledge passed down through cultural and educational practices. We acknowledge our gratitude that we share this land today, along with our sorrow for the costs of that sharing, and our hope and belief that we can move to a place of equity, justice and partnership together.

We ensure that, to the best of our knowledge, when practising our sport we avoid impacting areas that hold cultural significance for Aboriginal Peoples in Australia, and around the world. We closely monitor discussions within the climbing community and beyond; we actively seek to learn where access is restricted and climbing should be avoided. We pass this information on to climbers who participate in our events, and encourage all members of our community to respect the wishes of the traditional custodians of the land. We endeavour to always respect the land and rock where we climb, and to practice Leave No Trace principles.

Climb & Wine is a rock and alpine club founded by Emily Small, an Australian climber and mountaineer, while she was living and climbing in Huaraz, Peru in 2014.

The climbers and mountaineers Emily encountered in Peru were predominantly male; and awesome though these men were, Emily quickly realised that the gender imbalance meant many people viewed women as intrinsically less capable at climbing and mountaineering.

During an evening with a fellow female climber and a few glasses of wine, the idea of Climb & Wine was born to provide more opportunities for women - both Peruvian and foreigners - to build skills and participate in climbing and mountaineering, and to challenge those misconceptions.

Upon returning to Australia in 2016, Emily wanted to continue to encourage an inclusive environment, welcoming all to develop rock and alpine skills. And so a Climb & Wine community in the Eora Nation/Sydney and the surrounding areas began to grow. To date Climb & Wine has organised regular day and weekend trips locally, and in Darug and Gundungurra Country/Blue Mountains and beyond. Climb & Wine has also held events interstate in Dyuritte/Arapiles and Gariwerd/Grampians, and hopes to go international with a trip returning to where it all began in Huaraz, in 2021 (or maybe 2022).

The idea for this book was born under COVID-19 restrictions. Wendy Bruere, the books editor and wordsmith, thought if people werent able to head outdoors or travel for adventures it could be an opportunity to share our stories together. Most of the stories we had read over the years about climbing and mountaineering were about men. And much as we truly enjoyed those books, as Climb & Wine we wanted to highlight stories that celebrated a broader and more diverse range of adventures on rock and in the mountains.

Happy reading!

Caitlin is a deputy principal of a large high school in Canberra. She has spent the last 20 years of her life pursuing adventure sports - climbing is her passion. She managed a climbing gym for many years. She was head coach of a successful climbing team for nearly two decades and still set routes regularly. She is a qualified guide and outdoor education teacher. She lives for the outdoors, her dog and ice cream.

I am a rock climber. I am many other things too. First and foremost though, I am a climber. It feels funny to me, even after all of these years, to sit here and tell you that I am a climber, because for a long time I never felt worthy of the title. I had never climbed high grades, I had never put up a gutsy first accent on gear. I had never won the National Championships. However, I started climbing at 16 and I have travelled the world climbing for over 20 years and have worked in all areas of the sport. But still... I never felt worthy of calling myself a climber.

So here is my story about being a climber and how I was the last person to believe it.

It was 2015 and I had just landed back for another stint in Canberra Hospital with more pneumonia. The chemotherapy I was on caused me to have no immune system to speak of so I was in and out of hospital often. I remember this particular hospital stay well because the buzz about Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson on the Dawn Wall had just hit the mainstream media and I would regularly catch my mind drifting off to a movie I had watched when I was first diagnosed about Tommy and his improbable dream line on El Capitan. He didn't have a solid partner at that stage and he had no idea if the line would go, but he went out there anyway, pushing the limits for the next generation of climbers to aspire to.