It’s about time we had emojicons for climbers! For the past year, I’ve been working on creating one.
have wanted a climber emoji for a few years now. Admittedly, I love using emojis in my text messages and captions on social media. You can tell a lot about a person by their most frequently used emojis: how they interact with people, their sense of humor, how their mind works. For instance, these are my top emojis:
While there seems to be an emoji for all kinds of sports and outdoor activities, like surfing and weight lifting, there shockingly hadn’t been one for one of the fastest-growing adventure sports—until today! I first tweeted about the lack of a climbing emoji last May, tagging @GetEmoji, to highlight the absence. To my surprise, the account actually tweeted me back and said that I could submit an emoji design. I direct-messaged back, excited.
Athletes who love climbing outdoors aren’t positioning themselves to perform well at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Here’s why.
The picture of how competitive climbing will work in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics is beginning to come into focus. The International Olympic Committee announced last fall that the sport would be included in the next Games—in speed climbing, sport, and bouldering—and this weekend an official assembly in Canada confirmed a combined format. It feels like a missed opportunity to bring climbing to the biggest stage in the world.
“How can you let her do that? It’s so dangerous!” For years, my mom has fielded this question from other parents about my climbing. Here’s what she thinks about raising an adventurous daughter in an unfamiliar sport.
“Every time I hear about what Sasha does, I think, ‘I’m so glad that’s not my daughter!’” I overheard a woman say this to my mom at a holiday party last December. The woman was referring to the fact that I’m a professional climber. My mom, Andrea, later told me that she often gets this type of response from other mothers when she mentions what I do for a living.
I guess that perspective makes sense. On the surface, climbing seems pretty dangerous. The reality, of course, is that there are ways to calculate and reduce risk if you know what you’re doing. The odds of a fatal climbing accident are relatively low. But a lot of people don’t know that. My mom certainly didn’t know that back in 1998, when she hosted my brother’s birthday party at a local climbing gym in our hometown of Alexandria, Virginia. That was my first climbing experience—the event that set me on a trajectory to make the sport my life.
The day after the presidential election, on November 5, I felt like all of my thoughts were lost in a cloud. My mind felt like it was stuck in a maze and I couldn’t concentrate. I could not understand how Donald Trump, who I thought of as a villain, could win. There was some hole in my gut where my confidence in humanity should be.
What upset me as much was the fact that 37 percent of millennials voted for Trump. I’m a part of that group, and I’m shocked. How could this have happened?
When I openly endorsed the Democratic Party this last election I received numerous comments like, “crawl under a rock,” “stay out of politics,” and “focus on climbing, sweetie.” I felt like these comments were particular jabs at my awareness of the world beyond rock climbing and evidence of the misogyny that exists in our country. Receiving remarks that imply that my sole purpose in life is to scale cliffs. It’s not.
GoPro has an annual Athlete Summit in which they fly the entire team out to an incredible location to bond while being active outdoors, sharing our sports like surfing, mountain biking, kayaking, climbing, diving… Etc. This year GoPro has chosen the Gold Coast in Australia.
While it is an incredibly short time period to fly so far for, the experience sounded worth it.
So, on Friday I handed in the last academic assignment of my undergraduate career as a Columbia University Student. Then, Saturday, I flew out to Denver for the American Alpine Club event with Adidas. I went to Earth Treks in Golden afterwards, and then made my way back to the airport to continue my journey to Australia.
