Why We Climb: Sophie Alexander on Identity and Belonging
In this conversation, I speak with Sophie Alexander, a Master’s student in Kinesiology at the University of Victoria, whose research explores the relationship between climbing, physical activity, identity development and belonging.
CiTR 101.9 FM / The Blue Hour
Recorded live on August 11, 2026
You can listen to the episode on CiTR.
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The Blue Hour, hosted by Farha Guerrero, airs live every Tuesday at 2 p.m. on CiTR 101.9 FM at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada and at citr.ca.
Sophie Alexander is a Master’s student in Kinesiology at the University of Victoria, where her research examines how climbing, social experience and a sense of belonging can influence physical activity and identity development.
Her interest in the subject grew out of her own experience with climbing. Initially afraid of heights, Sophie began working at the Calgary Climbing Centre as a teenager and discovered the sport as a pathway to personal growth, community and mentorship. She later coached at BoulderHouse Victoria, supporting climbers of different ages and backgrounds, from youth to older adults.
With a background in psychology, Sophie has also explored the relationship between climbing and mental health. Beyond climbing research, she has worked with cancer survivors through a fitness internship in Belgium and contributed to rehabilitation medicine research at Island Health in Victoria.
Our conversation centres on climbing as something more than physical exercise: how it can shape identity, confidence and connection, and how the social environment surrounding a sport can influence whether people feel that they belong and want to remain physically active.
Transcript
Transcript lightly edited for clarity while preserving the natural rhythm of the conversation.
Farha: Today's program is the first in a two-part series exploring rock climbing, physical activity, and psychological well-being.
The idea for this series grew out of personal curiosity. I began rock climbing last year with my older son at the age of 48, and it profoundly changed the way I understood sport and my own relationship with the mountains, something I have always been passionate about.
What was extraordinary about discovering climbing at this stage of my life was realizing that it was not too late to begin it. It's a sport that I can imagine continuing for another couple of decades, perhaps longer.
Climbing can also be remarkably adaptable. People of many different ages, abilities, and backgrounds can find their own way into it.
I wanted to understand this experience from the perspective of scientific research. What happens cognitively, psychologically, and socially when someone begins climbing? How do confidence, identity, and belonging influence whether we become physically active? And how might climbing contribute not only to physical health, but also to our overall mental and emotional well-being?
My guest for part one is Sophie Alexander, a master's student in kinesiology at the University of Victoria, whose research explores the relationship between climbing, physical activity, and identity development.
Her current project, From Doing to Being: A Mixed Methods Exploration of Developing a Rock Climber Identity, asks how a socially supported introduction to climbing might help physically inactive emerging adults develop a sense of themselves as climbers and become more engaged with physical activity.
At the heart of her work is a deceptively simple question: if climbing can transform people's lives, how do we help them take that first step into the community so that they can experience its benefits?
Next week, in part two of the series, my guest will be Dr. Patrick Boudreau, a postdoctoral fellow at Concordia University and a behavioural medicine researcher with a background in health and exercise psychology.
We will continue exploring climbing and physical activity, with particular attention to psychological well-being and the experience of exercising in natural environments. But today we begin with the process of becoming a climber.
Welcome, Sophie, to The Blue Hour.
Sophie: Hi.
Farha: I would like to begin by speaking about your article, Climbers' Insights on the Health Benefits of Their Sport: Combining Photovoice and Confessional Tale Genres. This was published last year.
At the beginning of your article, you write that despite the growing interest in rock climbing research, little is known about its health benefits from the perspective of rock climbers themselves. That seems to be a very central starting point of the paper.
Instead of looking necessarily at clinical measurements or researchers' assumptions about what climbing might offer, you asked climbers themselves to describe what the sport means in their lives. Why was it important to begin with the climbers' own perspectives, and what did their personal accounts allow you to see that more conventional research might overlook?
Sophie: I think the reason I wanted to look at the perspective of climbers themselves is because I wanted to know why climbing was so beneficial for people's health.
There's a lot of clinical research out there that I was analyzing in my undergrad, comparing the benefits of rock climbing cognitive behavioural therapy, and I wanted to know why it was so successful for people.
I wanted to talk to people I knew in the climbing community, because I've had discussions about the benefits of climbing with people in the climbing community, and I thought they would be able to share some valuable insights from their own personal experience.
Farha: So the personal anecdote, that relationship with the rock, was really important to you. It's also drawing from something you call the confessional tale, which was very interesting to me because, as I said to you before we went on air, I've never seen this before in academic research.
It really is the researcher's personal voice. Can you tell me what you mean by the confessional tale and why bringing your personal voice, even as the lead researcher of this paper, was so important?
Sophie: Confessional tale is a qualitative research method, and it's used to enhance something called reflexivity, which is the idea that research is inherently subjective.
As much as you can try to be objective in research, there's a person behind the paper, and I think it's really important to know what the reasoning behind creating the paper is and the potential biases that were present while making the paper, so that people who are consuming the literature are able to critique it and figure out the best way to use it in their own practice or in their own life.
Farha: For you, climbing, even as a subject of research, is central to your life. In your paper, you start by talking about what you experienced in the final year of your undergraduate study.
Could you share that with us and explain how your own personal journey with rock climbing brought you to what you're studying today, and certainly what your master's thesis is on, but also why you intertwine it with the paper itself?
Sophie: I think a lot of people really struggle with their mental health in undergrad, specifically following the COVID-19 pandemic. For me, I found that the climbing community was a place where I was really able to lean on people and find people who were very similar to me.
But I think the thing about climbing itself is that it helps you overcome challenges. There's research showing that it can help you with something called neuroplasticity, which is making changes in your brain.
It can also help with executive functioning, which is something that people who are perhaps depressed or have ADHD tend to struggle with. Climbing, through problem-solving and having to focus so that you don't fall and hurt yourself, helps train your brain to be able to overcome difficulties.
Farha: You have all of this research, but then you have yourself. Do you feel comfortable telling us what you experienced in that undergraduate year and how climbing really shifted your life and helped you deal with challenges that maybe you could never have imagined?
Sophie: In my first year of university, I was taking psychology and I learned about this thing called ADHD. I thought, "Oh, this kind of sounds like something that I struggle with." So I went to get diagnosed, and then I started taking medication for it.
But I found the medication made me feel very anxious, and I found that being able to climb was something that helped me feel more like myself. I felt more focused and free rather than worrying about what was going to happen or worrying about my grades.
I've been able to recover academically. In high school, I didn't always do the best with grades. I worked really hard, but I didn't achieve what I would have liked to have achieved.
But once I got into climbing, and maybe knew where my struggles were coming from, I was able to succeed more academically. I also think that finding something I was really passionate about definitely helped with that.
Farha: For people listening who may have never climbed, it's important to distinguish the types of climbing because there are many kinds.
One of the most popular forms, especially in cities in Canada because we have cold weather and our climbing season can be short, is indoor climbing or bouldering. Then, of course, there's outdoor climbing, which could be sport climbing as well as outdoor bouldering.
When did you start to notice that climbing became a way of dealing with stress, anxiety, and the kinds of things you were facing as an undergraduate student? And when did you feel that you were able to get off medication and find that rock climbing was, in some ways, nurturing what you really needed?
Sophie: I think when I first started working at a climbing gym and trying rock climbing, I was really scared of heights. I found it quite challenging, but I think doing something that you're scared of and proving to yourself that you can do it is really helpful.
I definitely noticed it was helping with my anxiety levels. Towards the end of my undergraduate degree, I would climb a lot in the evenings, and I was able to make a lot of friends.
My family climbs, so I'm pretty lucky that I'm able to do that with my sister and with my mom.
Once I started integrating it more into my academic life, that's when I started to have more of the researcher mindset when analyzing my own climbing behaviour.
Towards the end of my undergrad and starting my master's is when I really started to realize how important it was to me and was able to pass that on to other people I met, whether it was coaching competitive climbing or instructing new climbers of all different ages.
I found it was something that I was able to build rapport with all different people in the climbing community.
Farha: This goes back to the concept of confessional tales. In this paper, you have a whole section about the idea that your experiences not only enabled you to understand the research you were embarking upon, and certainly many of the theorists and researchers you quote, but also enabled you to understand the participants in your research and their perspectives because, in many ways, some of them were mirroring your own experiences.
Let's talk about this qualitative research. This involved nine climbers, interviewed over Zoom and in person, and you used different techniques. We'll get into photovoice in a moment, but could you set up how you embarked on this, what kinds of things you did, and how you were able to get these people to speak about their experiences?
Sophie: I grew up in Calgary, but I moved to Victoria to do my master's, and I was part of an outdoor climbing group chat on Instagram. I posted a message there to see if anyone was interested, but I also wanted to do an in-person group.
I formed a small in-person group through Boulder House Victoria, and I was able to compare because I wanted to see if people were able to build stronger connections and talk more openly in a Zoom setting versus an in-person setting.
The people I was talking with from Calgary I had known longer, so I was curious to see if the dynamic they had with me changed the possible outcomes because the in-person group was people I had just recently met that year. They didn't have as long-standing a history with me.
Farha: Once you had participants who were willing, how did you go about collecting the data? In the end, this is the qualitative research you've embarked upon.
You quote Gupta on the assertion that the personal anecdote holds some sort of scientific value, especially when exploring under-researched topics or emerging methodologies, which is definitely what you are approaching in this paper, and that this kind of evidence can explain phenomena in ways that statistical research may overlook.
How were you able to dive into these participants' experiences and extract that information for your paper?
Sophie: I think it was trying to give the participants a lot of freedom because they're giving up their time to do this research with me.
I told them, "You should select roughly five to ten pictures that you think capture your experience of climbing and what it means to you." I didn't give them any limitations other than that question and that number of pictures.
Then I set up a time when everyone was free, and they brought the pictures in and we discussed them.
I had some questions lined up for them, but in the in-person group, I also gave them a chance to go in a circle and talk about each of the pictures they selected and why they selected them. Some people had longer explanations than others.
Then I asked them to talk about somebody else's picture that spoke to them, so that they were able to have that sense of mutual recognition of what climbing meant to them as a community and not just as an individual.
Farha: This is what you call photovoice, meaning constructed through images. It is a qualitative research method allowing participants to select photographs and express their motivation for climbing through images as well as words.
Why was that a technique you wanted to utilize in this research, and where did you find it?
Sophie: I chose it because I learned about this thing called participatory action research in my master's, which is the idea that research should be guided by the participants themselves and should be something that benefits them, not just the researcher.
This is a way to give a voice to the participants. I also think sometimes pictures can show the reader things that you can't express in words alone, or a feeling that you can't understand without seeing it.
Farha: Absolutely. For the listeners to imagine this, I'm holding your article in my hands, and as you go through it, with the text and all of the important information you've collected, you have these photos.
This is photovoice. It's bringing a voice to the photos.
What's interesting is that the photos themselves are captivating enough that even if we didn't read the text, you could get something from them.
Sophie: Yes. When my friends ask me about the paper, I tell them it's a bit long. If you don't want to read the whole thing, just go to the discussion and look through the pictures. They'll tell you the whole story.
Another thing to note is that the participants themselves were able to reread the entire manuscript before it was published and give feedback to ensure that their thoughts and opinions were accurately portrayed.
That's something we usually skip out on in research because the researcher gets to decide what the findings are and what the conclusions are based on their methodology and their introduction.
But I allowed the participants to have an opportunity to have a say in what the most important findings were in the research.
Farha: In some ways, it feels a little bit like a storybook because it is anecdotal. The photos tell the story, but you also capture what many of these climbers say about the photos.
It made me think about Susan Sontag. She published On Photography in 1977, and broadly speaking, she argues that photographs do more than capture the world. A photograph selects and frames a reality and therefore influences how that reality is seen and understood.
She was thinking about how photographs do much more. They are much more complex, even if they're just a second sort of frame.
In your photos, you have the full spectrum of the climbing world. You have climbers in groups, climbers in gyms, and people tackling some very serious climbs, including multi-pitch. You even have a photo of a girl showing some injured fingers, maybe some blood.
Sophie: She was climbing in Spain.
Farha: And there's a photo of a woman showing that she is persevering despite multiple falls. It's blurred, so you can almost see the fall that she has probably taken multiple times, because falling is a big part of the sport.
It's a beautiful way to bring out research.
Had you come across other research like this? Is this a technique people are using in academia?
Sophie: In qualitative research, specifically health research, they use something called photo novella, which is similar.
But one thing I wanted to say about pictures is that it's not just a memory. I think it's also meaning-making.
In my upcoming master's thesis, we're going to use photovoice again, but part of my hope with it is that the act of taking pictures of climbing, learning to belay, and all of those aspects of climbing will help participants build their own identity and build that experience together.
Then once they see the pictures and discuss them together, it helps them integrate that sense of identity into their own meaning-making.
Farha: So like a photo journal in a way.
Sophie: Kind of.
Farha: We need to talk about your thesis because even its proposed title is very interesting. You're setting out to do something that is about more than climbing. It's about identity. It's about how a person may, at some point in their life, call themselves a climber.
Not someone who's climbing, but someone who actually is a climber.
Tell us about what you want to do.
Sophie: My master's thesis supervisor is Ryan Rhodes, and he runs the Behavioural Medicine Lab at UVic. He has this model that he came up with called the Multi-Process Action Control Model.
One of the ideas of this model is that at the top of behaviour you have identity. It's a reflexive process, so it requires fewer cognitive thinking processes.
If you're trying to motivate yourself to do something, you're doing a bunch of planning, and you're trying to really force yourself to do something, it's going to be difficult. Versus if something is a part of who you are, it may be more natural and easier to do.
I've conducted this research that has shown, from the perspective of climbers, how beneficial climbing is to their physical, mental, and social well-being.
But my question now is, how do we get more people to experience those benefits?
The fact is that 70 percent of individuals aren't meeting the current physical activity guidelines. Thirty-nine percent of Canadian youth are not meeting the recommended physical activity guidelines of 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity.
And it's not just about the physical activity. For me, climbing is also the social aspect. It's overcoming problems. It's learning how to regulate your own emotions.
My goal with this research is to see if we can use social identity as a way to get people into the sport.
Farha: Your project is called From Doing to Being. That felt very philosophical to me. Can you unpack that?
Sophie: I notice a lot of people, when they're talking about the gym or health, say, "I should eat this because it's good for me. I should go to the gym because I can build muscle. I should go to the gym so that I don't gain weight or get sick."
But I think about this idea of intrinsic motivation, which is when you're doing something because it's pleasurable, because you enjoy it, because you love it.
I think that's why identity is important. I would love it if people said, "I'm going climbing because I love my friends, or because I love being on the rock. I love being outside," rather than, "I should be outside. I should hang out with my friends."
It would be great if it was just something that people inherently enjoyed doing.
Farha: And with time, it forms their identity.
There's something you call "full-circle moments."
Sophie: Full-circle moments.
Farha: This is a moment where seasoned climbers, or people like you who have climbed for a long time, almost naturally gravitate toward someone who is just learning to climb. You want to give them some motivation or share your knowledge.
There's also this term in climbing terminology called "beta," which happens a lot, where people give each other beta.
Maybe you can explain what that means.
Sophie: Beta is the idea that when you're doing a climb, there's a specific movement or specific way you move your body to finish the climb.
Maybe you get stuck at a move and you keep falling, and then you figure out, "Okay, I need to put my left foot up first, and then I place my right foot up as I swing." That's my beta.
But I think the interesting thing is that there could be intended beta, where the person who created the climb says, "This is what I want people to do."
You could watch 20 people try the climb, maybe only ten people do the intended beta and the rest do their own beta. They do something unique.
And with full-circle moments, you don't have to be an advanced climber or an advanced person in the climbing community to have one.
You could be a summer camp kid who's climbed maybe only five times ever in your life, but you did that climb for the whole week and you now know the beta. You see someone new coming in and you can say, "Well, this is how I did it."
Then you're having your own little way of giving back to the community, even if it's something as small as giving beta to another climber.
Farha: That goes to the heart of this idea of the full circle because it's a continuous transferring of knowledge from one person to another.
It happens in climbing gyms. It happens at crags among climbers. You may arrive at a crag and not know the people next to you, but they've maybe just done the route you're about to do. They've moved on, and there they are helping you and guiding you.
That's very interesting from a research perspective because, in these full-circle moments, you can see that the evolution of the climbing community is not just friendship and camaraderie, but people actually helping and teaching one another, even if they're not people you know.
Sophie: I think that's what's unique about climbing because you're not necessarily always competing against each other. You're competing against the climb.
I had a participant in my study who was a competition climber. They mentioned that during a competition, they were struggling with one of the competition climbs, and a friend came over and said, "This is what I did. This is what you should do."
Then they were able to do the climb.
I don't think a lot of sports have that aspect of camaraderie and support in a competitive environment.
Farha: And then there are many situations, especially in the outdoor climbing world, where you cannot climb without a partner.
There is a very famous climber, as we all know, Alex Honnold, who is a free solo climber. But free climbing is actually part of the sport. We sport climbers are free climbing.
However, in the case of most people, you can't really climb without that partner.
That's something you definitely bring out in your research. At the very beginning of your paper, you say that the research process was shaped by both the researchers' and participants' voices, "supporting, guiding, and sharing the experience much like the act of belaying."
That was so striking because in that one sentence you show what your research paper is doing. You need a partner, you need that collaboration and sharing, and of course the big word, trust.
Sophie: Belaying is managing the rope system so that the other person can climb.
If you're top-rope belaying, the rope is at the top of the climb and each person is on one end of the rope. The person who's climbing just gets to climb. The person who's belaying takes the rope through to keep it tight.
If you're lead climbing, you're both attached to the same rope, and the rope starts at the bottom of the climb. The climber clips the rope as they go.
I think this is where the subjectivity of research comes into why I wrote this.
When I started climbing, I actually enjoyed belaying more than I enjoyed climbing because I found the climbing part to be really difficult. A lot of the people I worked with were competition climbers and they were very good.
So I first got into the sport by belaying, and I thought it was really cool to be able to support someone. You're kind of climbing with them because you're watching them, seeing what they're doing, and moving the rope with them.
It's this dynamic motion that you're both experiencing.
I think that's also why I found multi-pitch climbing so intriguing. It's when you go outside and you're climbing the face of a mountain, and the goal is to have two or three people work together to get to the top.
The reason I like that is because it's a whole shared adventure. You have to plan: where are we going to climb? What equipment do we need to bring? What techniques are we going to use? How are we going to get there? What time are we going to leave?
It's a whole shared experience of conquering the mountain together.
Farha: You have a whole section about that, and some photos to go along with it. It really is this experience of depending upon someone and knowing that someone is also depending upon you.
Another aspect that was interesting to me is that although the climber has creative choices, and even the beta can be different with each person, there's also creativity in something called route setting.
Can you explain that and what you highlighted in your paper?
Sophie: Route setting is that somebody has to create the climbs in the gym. Even outside, somebody has to set up the bolts for people to go climbing.
There's somebody behind the climb who has decided where people should put their hands, where they should put their feet, and how they should get to the top.
People are obviously thinking about safety, but there's this other idea of artistic expression, which one of the participants in my research mentioned.
A teenager who was doing a route-setting workshop created this climb that was beautiful. It looked like a piece of art. It wasn't very functional. It was difficult to climb, but it was still beautiful.
I think that's also where art comes into climbing. You have somebody who creates a climb, but then you have people who use the climb and it turns into something new because there's new beta, or the climb is too easy, so people take away holds and play games on it.
The climb becomes this experience that people have together, as opposed to just rocks on a wall.
Farha: It's an act of creativity that begins with the route setting, especially in sport climbing or indoor climbing, but then there is that creativity in the climber who wants to understand what they can do.
Everybody is different. Some of us have longer reaches, some may be shorter, so there are different ways that a creative climber can challenge themselves.
The other thing you mention in your paper, which I think is part of your thesis idea of identity, is the connection between identity and belonging.
You describe queer climbing nights and why these gatherings suggest that community is not just a benefit of climbing. People who may not feel entirely comfortable in a conventional sporting environment can find, when they have shared experiences or identities, that those spaces are more welcoming.
Can you talk about that?
Sophie: At the gym I worked at, Calgary Climbing Centre Rocky Mountain, we had one of the supervisors organize a queer climbing night, which was a night where people who identified as LGBTQ+ were able to come in and climb together in a space that may feel more supportive to them.
I also know of a different staff member who created an Indigenous climbing night for anyone who identified as Indigenous.
Similarly, at Boulder House Victoria, they've also done queer climbing nights that have been quite successful.
I think it gives people a place where they are able to climb with people who feel like they understand each other and where they're not being judged for their various identities.
Farha: I've seen women's climbing nights in many gyms as well.
The other thing I wanted to bring up is trust and mindfulness, which are a big part of your research. You're also interested in what is now called the state of flow.
Even Alex Honnold is famous for saying that climbing is a sort of form of meditation. This is now being studied quite seriously.
It brings us back to some of your original comments about how people can deal with things like anxiety and other challenges, and why climbing can be used as a therapeutic tool.
Can you speak about that?
Sophie: I think there are two important things for flow.
The first is that the amount of challenge needs to match the person's ability.
If we're going to use Alex Honnold as an example, he's an incredibly strong climber. He's able to achieve flow when he's free soloing.
If we were to put Alex Honnold in an indoor gym, he probably wouldn't find it challenging enough to match his abilities, and he wouldn't be able to achieve that sense of flow.
The second thing about flow is that it needs to be something that is inherently enjoyable. You don't really notice time passing because you're so immersed in what you're doing.
I think that's something climbing helps create because you have the danger aspect of it, which adds to the challenge.
You also have to activate almost every single part of your body to do certain moves. You have to balance yourself with your core. You have to push up with your legs. You have to pull up with your hands.
Then you also need to activate your brain to think about where you're going to put your body and where you're going. You may be talking yourself through it.
But if you've reached flow, you're not really thinking about those things anymore because you're just doing it.
Farha: It's hard to describe for people who are listening.
You said something about time stopping and almost not existing. I also like what you said about challenge because I think that's important. The challenge you're working on, which in climbing terminology is often called a project, is something a climber may return to again and again.
Could you bring us into that state of flow for a minute?
Sophie: I find often in my life, because I'm a master's student, I have a lot of things to do. I'm constantly thinking, "Okay, this is what I'm going to get done today. This is what I need to do."
I recognize a flow state when I go climbing and I forget about the time. I'm not thinking, "I need to finish this by this time, and I need to do this by this time." I'm just there climbing.
It doesn't happen to me every time I climb, obviously, because I'm not able to push myself every single time I go climbing.
But when I am projecting or working on a climb that I really enjoy, or a climb that is challenging me in a way that is new, that's when the flow state comes out.
Specifically, I think it's easier to achieve when you're outside because you're immersed in nature. I also think it's more challenging to climb outdoors because there are more hazards that you have to mitigate.
Farha: I think that's an important point. Outside, you don't have the mats you could land on, and you're dealing with overhangs, rock, sharp rock, and sometimes a few cuts and scrapes.
We've had a lengthy discussion. What do you feel is the value of this kind of research?
It goes back to the initial question. It's not studied as much as some of the more analytical research that looks at statistics, and specifically people like Alex Honnold are studied.
What do you think the benefit of your research is, and of some of the things we've talked about today?
Sophie: I think it's that it's interdisciplinary.
I went from a psychology degree to kinesiology. I've enjoyed neuroscience and philosophy. I've worked at a hospital that was more rehabilitation-focused.
I think that when different disciplines work together, you're able to solve more problems.
The way this relates to this research is that we have the World Health Organization defining health as something that is physical, social, and mental. I would add spiritual, but that's a different conversation.
I think climbing hits upon all of those points.
It helps with your physical health through the aerobic activity you're doing and building muscles.
It helps with your mental health because of the neuroplasticity I talked about, the flow that we discussed, and this idea of self-efficacy, where you build belief in your ability to do a specific task.
Then there's also the social part that we talked about, your own social identity, but also your sense of belonging, community, and being able to make relationships with other people.
A lot of research is trying to figure out how we deal with all these chronic diseases and how we deal with people's well-being.
I think rock climbing is something that can help with various problems that the world is facing today, but is also something that is attainable to a wide variety of people because there are so many different disciplines of climbing.
You can go bouldering. You can go top-rope climbing. You can go indoor climbing. You can do competitive climbing. You can do multi-pitch.
There are so many different things you can do. If you want to get involved more in an instructor role, you can do that. If you want to go into route setting, there are lots of different ways you can get involved in the community.
Farha: One thing we have not mentioned is fear.
Fear of heights may be a deterrent for people who don't climb, but fear continues to be there even for climbers. That's an important aspect of one of the themes in your paper, emotional regulation, and also what you call the value of falling.
You say that failure fosters resilience, patience, and problem-solving skills. Failure is a very important part of climbing, but the falling itself, from the fear side, is also important from a cognitive or psychological side.
Sophie: I think climbing mimics life in that way because I don't know a single person who has achieved every single thing they've wanted in their life at every single moment.
You don't wake up every single day and have things go perfectly well. You're going to get injured. You're going to have conflict with the people in your life. You're going to fail an exam. You may fail your driver's test. You may get sick.
It's the same thing with climbing.
I don't know many people, or anyone, who's been able to immediately do every single climb they wanted to do or who's never been injured.
Falling and being able to get back up again, or getting injured and getting back into the sport, is teaching you life skills because you're going to need those skills in your life.
Specifically, doing things that scare you. I'm sure everyone has something that scares them, and it's important to be able to do some of the things that scare you.
Farha: I'm sure this must have come up in the conversations you had with these nine individuals.
How did some of them react to that? How did they see something that can sometimes feel almost like something we shouldn't be doing?
Many of us might be facing a 90- to 100-degree wall that could have an overhang, and we could be 60 or 70 feet up in the air on a rope.
There is a community of people, I'm sure, who think climbers are a bit nutty.
Sophie: Yes.
Farha: I get that question all the time: "Do you free solo?"
Sophie: No, I don't.
Farha: But even those of us who are on a rope are often seen as being a little bit odd in our choices. Yet the climber is embracing that fear. Am I right?
Sophie: I think it's interesting you brought this up because when I was trained to instruct climbing, we were told you're not allowed to use the word "safe" because climbing is inherently dangerous. It's not safe.
What you're teaching people when you're instructing climbing is how to manage the risks.
You're given skills as the climber and as the belayer, how to make sure your climber doesn't fall, how to position yourself in relation to the rope so that you don't get tangled in it and flip upside down, and when you should clip into the draws so that you don't ground fall.
If you're going to go outside, what's the weather looking like?
You're basically learning these skills for how to manage your own safety.
Coming back to life, life is also risky because you're going to go through it and you're going to get injured. You're going to get hurt. You're going to feel emotions, and you need to find ways to manage those.
I think it's worth putting yourself at a little bit of risk so that you can learn to manage it.
The other thing is that you get to choose how much risk you're comfortable with. Some people are comfortable with free soloing without very many risk-mitigation techniques, and some people like to have all of the risk-mitigation techniques.
It really gives that person the autonomy they need to feel comfortable doing the activity.
Farha: I think this will be my final question, Sophie, because it really interests me.
What do you think makes climbing unique, specifically if we take other mountain sports? I feel that it's unlike anything you can really compare it to.
Some people, including myself, have difficulty even expressing what climbing actually is.
Do you think that's the right way to see it?
Sophie: If I think of other mountain sports like skiing, mountain biking, or hiking, it is similar with the exposure to the outdoors and challenging yourself.
But I think the real difference with climbing is the connection.
If you're thinking about rope climbing, you need that other person to be there to get you to the top, and you're working together.
Obviously you're working together on a hike as well to get to the top, but I think climbing is different because of the way that it activates your brain and your body, and the social dynamics that it creates.
Farha: And what about the actual physicality of the sport? Do you think anyone can climb?
Sophie: I think anyone can climb.
I don't think anyone can climb a specific climb, because all climbs have different grades.
But I think the biggest thing that holds people back is the belief that they're not a climber and that they're not able to do it.
That ties back to my thesis because we're trying to get people to believe, "This is who I am. I am a rock climber, so I'm going to rock climb."
People may think, "I'm not a rock climber, so I'm not going to rock climb because it's going to be too hard."
But if you do half of a climb and it's the easiest climb in the gym, who says you're not a rock climber?
You just went rock climbing.
Farha: I love that. I think that's a beautiful way to end.
Thank you so much for this. This was a really special interview, Sophie.
Sophie: Thanks for giving me the opportunity to speak about my passion. I appreciate that, and I hope other people resonate with the conversation we've had.
Farha: Thanks so much.
Further reading
Climbers’ Insights on the Health Benefits of Their Sport: Combining Photovoice and Confessional Tale Genres Sophie Ann Alexander & Timothy Hopper (2025)