NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC LIVE PRESENTS: IMPROBABLE ASCENT
Where: Royal Theatre, 805 Broughton St.
When: Tuesday, April 25, 7 p.m.
Tickets: $36.50-$47.50 from the Royal McPherson box office (250-386-6121) or rmts.bc.ca
Maureen Beck was drawn to rock climbing for the same reasons many climbers gravitate to the sport — the mental challenges, problem-solving component and physical rewards.
There was another mitigating factor pushing Beck forward in her quest: the National Geographic 2019 Adventurer of the Year was born with one hand. Top among her reasons for wanting to excel in the pursuit? She wanted to prove naysayers wrong.
“Disability was always a negative word for me — it meant you couldn’t do something,” Beck, 36, said. “So I never identified with having a disability. Just because I have one hand, doesn’t mean I can’t do something. When someone told me rock climbing would be hard at 12 years old, I said, ‘Watch me.’ ”
The Denver-based rock climber is appearing tonight at the Royal Theatre as part of the ongoing National Geographic Live speaker series. During her 70-minute multimedia presentation, Improbable Ascent, she’ll cover facets of her journey to this point. She also goes into detail about her first big alpine expedition in 2018, which brought her to Nahanni National Park in Northwest Territories.
“I was very clear [with National Geographic], I don’t want this to be an inspirational/motivational thing. My goal after I tell my mountain adventure story is to have people say, ‘Oh, right, you’re disabled, too.’ I want them to get so wrapped up in the story that they forget I have a disability.”
Beck tweaks the presentation each time she’s up at the podium, with changes based on a variety of factors, including her mood, the city, and the engagement level of the audience. She admits hers is a “non-traditional Nat Geo show,” but she has come to embrace the experience. In 2022, she visited 11 cities as part of her National Geographic Live tour, and will visit 14 cities under the same guise in 2023.
“When I think of National Geographic, I think of scientists and really smart people,” Beck said with a good-natured laugh. “I’m just a rock climber. For me, it’s more about the storytelling. I picture the theatre as a big campfire setting, and this is my turn to tell my story.”
Beck, who was born in Ellsworth, Maine, and graduated from the University of Vermont, was athletic growing up, and played a variety of sports. But climbing immediately stood out, she said. “It was just me and a rock. It wasn’t liker a soccer team or other activities. I was up there, in the sky, with a rock. And it didn’t care about me.”
Because she was born with one hand, Beck got up to speed quickly as a paraclimber. That was to her benefit, she said. Her partner in 2018, when she made the first unassisted adaptive climb of the Lotus Flower Tower in Northwest Territories, was Jim Ewing, who had his left leg amputated following a climbing accident four years prior.
“I never had to learn another way. Many of my main climbing partners had tragic accidents, so if anything I help them out.”
She admits to being “dismissive” of those with a full range full faculties who complain about injuries. Beck’s mother broke her ankle a couple of years ago, for example, and when it wasn’t healing quickly enough for her liking, Beck suggested she chop it off.
Beck is a very good sport, and jokes often. But she admits it took her some years to be fully at-ease with her situation. Society has swung mightily in the right direction as well, which helped greatly. When she was born missing the lower half of her left arm, one doctor suggested the barbaric idea of suturing amputated toes onto her arm for use as fingers.
“Now, people don’t think it’s weird that someone missing a limb is rock climbing,” she said. “It’s normal. That is something that I have been working toward for years now.”
Her persistence has led to resounding success as a competitive climber, winning nine national paraclimbing titles and two gold medals at the Paraclimbing World Championships. In order to stay in top shape, Beck said she climbs five times a week.
She visits local climbing gyms in each city when she’s on tour, especially when she training for competitions. That type of access and availability is something that was inconceivable prior to the release of 2018’s Free Solo, the Academy Award-winning documentary about rock climber Alex Honnold, she said.
“Climbing is more popular now than it has ever been. I don’t know that I would say that it has peaked, because that would imply it is going to get less popular. The Free Solo domino effect happened at the same time the sport went to the Olympics [in 2020]. Now, there’s a gym in every city. I’m so jealous of kids today. When I was their age, my closest climbing gym was six hours away.”
