“To pursue, always higher, toward the summit. Fate is thus made.” – Claude Kogan

Claude Kogan was the proverbial wrench in the spokes of those traditional gender mechanics that had ruled the alpine world for half a century or more. She and her contemporaries were as determined, hardened and enraptured as any man they climbed beside, and but for their gender would surely have stood out as stars in the climbing world. Fortunately, this archaic paradigm is in the midst of disintegrating. Today I can count among my most trusted mountain partners at least as many women as men, and I’m happy to say that much of what I’ve learned of rock-craft and rope safety has been from women. It goes without saying that women are every bit as capable in the mountains as men, I do think there’s something to be said for the differences between men and women climbers. It would be useless to hash out the list of pros and cons attached (artificial or realistic) to each gender, and suffices to say that there’s no rational reason to place one above the other.

All this said, there is no doubt an imbalance between the genders within the outdoor industry. This circumstance also appears to be shifting, with more women not only taking to the hills but making careers out of their love for climbing, skiing, and the outdoors. This is clearly evidenced by any given June day in the Gallatin Canyon. Three years ago, 9 of 10 climbers were men…this summer, more like 4 or 5. And, these 4 or 5 ladies are not begrudging participants tagging along with a boyfriend, but motivated outdoors women seeking adventure for the sake of it.

In her article, Susan Frohlick calls attention to an interesting double-standard within the climbing community; that a women is a bad mother for risking her life for a peak, but a man is not a bad father for doing the same. We touched a little on the theme of responsibility during our last discussion, and in all honesty it seems beaten to death. Who cares what gender the climber is? They’re climbing for their own reasons, which are no more or less valid for either gender. I thought her mention of ‘sacrificial motherhood’ (the idea that the biological mother must sacrifice herself to the care of her children) was especially interesting. As someone who was raised in a household where my mother won bread and my father played house, this is a somewhat contrived concept to me. Understanding that this is a social construction, it is still just bizarre to me that a woman is perceived to have the stronger bond to shared progeny than a man. Yes, she is the food source…but he knows how to heat up a bottle.

Through all this talk of gender it remains interesting that most mountains are ‘she’ or ‘mother’. I’m holding out for ‘brother’, ‘he’, and ‘father’, for do we learn any less from these pronouns? Are we somehow less inspired by our paternal origin?