When an Ellsworth native recently won the women’s gold medal at the 2014 IFSC Paraclimbing World Championships in Spain, she didn’t just climb to the summit faster than other women in the competition — she did it one-handed, as she has done since she started climbing as a preteen.
Maureen Beck, who lives in Colorado, finished first among women and second overall in the competition. Beck was born without her left hand and part of her left arm.
Paraclimbing is essentially climbing with the added challenge of having a disability. Some paraclimbers are missing an arm or leg, while others have neurological disorders or vision problems.
“I really think paraclimbing in the U.S. is about to blow up,” said Beck, who has devoted much of her time to training and recruiting adaptive athletes throughout the country.
This is the first year the United States has sent a full team of 15 athletes to the world paraclimbing championships, and the team brought home seven medals. It also is the first year that the U.S. has held a national paraclimbing competition, which Beck won in July.
“It’s not intuitive. Why would someone with one hand choose to climb?” Beck said. “But when I was a kid, if you told me I couldn’t do it, I did.”
Beck has been rock climbing since she was 12 years old. It all started at Camp Natarswi, a rustic Girl Scouts camp in Baxter State Park.
Throughout high school, Beck continued to spend her summers at the camp as a counselor, teaching rock climbing and other outdoor skills. She also found that living in Ellsworth provided her easy access to both Acadia National Park and Clifton, two of the state’s top rock climbing locations.
At the University of Vermont, Beck joined a climbing club, and her passion for the sport grew. She began entering competitions, even though she knew she wouldn’t win against the able-bodied climbers, she said.
“It was kind of just figure it out as you go,” said Beck, who essentially learned through trial and error.
In 2009, Beck got involved with Paradox Sports, a nonprofit agency dedicated to promoting adaptive sports for the physically challenged. The agency offers programs in a variety of human-powered sports, including rock climbing, ice climbing, stand-up paddle boarding and backcountry camping.
“It’s hard for a lot of adaptive athletes to get outside and feel like they’re not being babied just because they’re missing a leg or an arm or because they’re in a wheelchair,” said Beck, who applauds Paradox Sports for their mission “to recognize and foster an individual’s potential and strength, defying the assumption that people with physical disabilities can’t lead lives of excellence.”
Beck lives in Arvada, Colorado, with her husband, Brian, and works at a medical software company. But in the evenings and during the weekends, she travels to nearby climbing gyms to run clinics for athletes with a variety of disabilities through Paradox Sports, for which she serves on the board of directors.
“Climbing is liberating,” Beck said. “One of my teammates only started climbing after he got diagnosed with muscular dystrophy.”
“We get a lot of veterans coming to our clinics,” she said. “Many like the focus and the challenge of climbing. You get this tunnel vision and all you can see is the wall in front of you.”
At 27, Beck is one of the most experienced climbers on the U.S. paraclimbing team, and she often finds her teammates (and even people from other teams) asking her for advice.
“With all the adaptive athletes, there’s such a sense of community,” Beck said. “I just love that, yes, we are competitors, but first and foremost, we’re all adaptive climbers.”
This year’s paraclimbing world championships was held in Gijon, Spain, and hosted by the International Federation of Sport Climbing. The competition was broken up into categories based on disabilities. Beck competed in the amputee arm category. The other categories were amputee leg, visual impairment and neurological physical disability.
Athletes were scored on two climbs to qualify for finals, which was a single climb on a route that the athletes were completely unfamiliar with. The higher an athlete climbed on the wall, the higher their score.
“It was one shot. Once you fall, you’re done,” said Beck. “You can’t see it beforehand, and you can’t watch anyone climb.”
All athletes were allowed to approach the climbing wall for a six-minute preview before the finals. They were then ushered to another room until their climb.
“I’d never done isolation like that,” Beck said. “It was really intense.”
During her final climb, Beck recalls experiencing extreme tunnel vision and not being able to hear the crowd or the song playing. She was told later that the crowd erupted when she climbed past where competitors that climbed before her had fallen, but she didn’t hear the cheering.
“When I fell, I had no idea if I’d won or not,” Beck said. “But when they were lowering me down, I saw my husband smiling and giving me thumbs up. I knew then I’d won.”
“This is an amazingly big deal, and we are very proud of her,” said Beck’s father, Christopher Whalley, who lives in Ellsworth with his wife, Deborah.
Beck not only won gold for the women amputee arm category, when comparing her scores with all competitors, men and women, she finished in second place, overall. She was out-climbed by her teammate Ryan Snyder of Georgia, who also is missing a hand and part of his arm.
While the competition was not carried on TV networks, you can watch it on the IFSC website, www.ifsc-climbing.og. (In the five-hour video, Beck’s climb begins at 1:09:50, and Snyder’s climb begins at 1:00:33.)
While Beck is thrilled about her accomplishment, she thinks she could have climbed better. The world competition is held every two years, so her goal is to return and climb her best in 2016.
“I’m still learning and developing how I climb,” Beck said. “In the last year and a half, I’ve been taking competing more seriously, and I’ve really trained myself to use both of my arms. I’ll lead with my stump, not just my right hand, and I’m getting used to grabbing smaller and smaller holes.”
Fall in Colorado is prime rock climbing season, and Beck is looking forward to spending time climbing outdoors, at places such as Eldorado Canyon and Rifle Mountain Park.
“I’m an outdoor-minded person,” Beck said. “Spending summers at the base of Katahdin really got me tuned in with being outdoors and pushing yourself.”
The IFSC and American Climbing Association hope to see paraclimbing added to the Paralympics in the near future.
One of the roadblocks the sport is facing, especially in the U.S., is lack of funding.
“When you need to buy a climbing foot or lower limb for $10,000, insurance doesn’t cover that,” Beck said.
All members of U.S. team had to pay their own way to the IFSC Paraclimbing World Championships this year, and when the team got there, they received a yellow card for not having full uniforms (only matching tank tops), Beck said.
To help Beck with her competition expenses (and fund her training for and defense of
the gold medal in 2016), visit her fundraising website at www.gofundme.com/c12ffw.