As a father of a daughter and a lifelong climber, my hope is to someday have my daughter, June, become my climbing partner. We could travel the country and the world climbing in beautiful outdoor destinations, many of them parks, creating memories and spending time together during her formative years. For this to happen, she has to first fall in love with climbing.  

Luckily, climbing is one of the most gender-neutral sports you can find. Lynn Hill famously made history by becoming the first person, regardless of gender, to successfully free climb "The Nose" on El Capitan in Yosemite Valley. Janja Garnbret is the most recognizable face in Competition Climbing and widely regarded as possibly the best rock climber in the world right now. Any climbing gym or crag you visit will have female athletes outperforming many of the male climbers on a daily basis.  

However, indoor climbing gyms, which introduce around 99% of people to the sport of climbing, have historically had male-dominated staff; from the front desk to coaches and routesetters (those who create the climbs), a disproportionate number of faces on the gym staff are male. The youth sport of climbing has near-equal enrollment in the youngest age categories, but by the time the athletes become teenagers, there is a steep drop-off for competitive female climbers, as body image and bullying can often force them to give up competing at a high level.  

I am fortunate to own and operate a climbing gym where I have made it part of our company policy to have female representation in our staffing at every level, and specifically in the route creation. My daughter and other young guests have formed relationships with these women, and more importantly, look up to them. However, representation is only one side of the coin; access to the sport is the other. My daughter is privileged to be able to climb both at home and in the gym for free.  

While my gym and many others offer discounted rates for children, the barrier to entry in climbing is predominantly financial. While outdoor climbing exists for "free", it requires a knowledgeable mentor and expensive equipment to do safely. There are very few public climbing walls in schools, parks, or community centers that offer an experience that can truly onboard a participant into the sport.  

That is now beginning to change with the introduction of Boyce Bouldering Park, which was a project I personally developed alongside the Allegheny County Parks & Environmental Planning and Design. This bouldering park is a completely free to the public climbing gym which has changeable routes. This allows the park to function like a climbing gym where you can custom tailor the experience to users of every age, demographic, and skill level. I lead the design of the climbing walls, and currently hold a contract for the recurring routesetting where we change the routes 2x per year. I created kids-specific boulders and set routes for ages 2-5, 5-8, 8-10, and beyond.  

We also set with the intention of allowing kids to discover the sport and progress into "competition" style climbs which tend to require momentum-based movement, coordination, or extreme problem solving. There is no other public climbing wall in the country that offers something similar. The response to the park has been better than expected and each and every time I visit with my daughter we meet other kids who are there discovering climbing for the first time. The immersion of experience and first time climbers is creating the mentorship path needed to introduce people to the true sport of climbing vs the activity of it that is often highlighted in other parks and playgrounds.  

Young girls are able to see older more experienced female climbers and receive encouragement and advice from them as they try the climbs. In one such occasion the mother of a girl told my wife that her daughter just asked for climbing shoes to be added to her Christmas list. I truly believe that if bouldering parks expand on a similar trajectory as skate parks in the early 2000s, then in the future there could be countless female climbers being introduced to a lifetime sport that will allow them to explore the world through parks, nature, or in competition.  

During a competition at my gym over this past weekend my daughter was sitting with the female setters and watching the female climbers compete and she said "I am rooting for all the girls to win” and later told me that someday that will be her up there competing. It was one of the happiest moments in my parenting journey, and hope that it will just be one of many for us. The future of climbing is bright, and keeping and further inspiring young female climbers can only make it brighter. 

Dean Privett is the founder of Boulder Solutions.

Learn more about NRPA's Get Her in the Game resources to expand access to youth sports in your community and share your story highlighting the powerful role youth sports programs play in strengthening lives and communities.