By Yasmine Silva
I spot Simran across the street from where we have agreed to meet to talk about her experience as one of the strongest and most inspiring women in climbing I have the pleasure of knowing personally. Having had an operation to heal her ruptured ACL only a few weeks prior, I was very grateful she made the effort to come and speak to me.
Simran and I met by working for the same climbing centre. We both fell into the climbing world almost accidentally and then both became quickly immersed in it in similar trajectories. As I am very much a solo climber and Simran is not, I was interested to hear about how her experience with other climbers, both men and women, had affected her relationship with the sport.
She recalls how she got into climbing, through spotting bodies suspended on plastic boulders in the windows of Arch North while on a drive with her sister, not far from where she grew up in Mill Hill. Simran moved to central for university and joined the KCL Climbing Society. While acknowledging that her relationship to training was much more causal back then, she knows that joining that society is where she fell in love with all that climbing is.
“I started climbing seriously two years ago,” Simran recounts. When she first started training, Simran would often train with her male counterparts. “Climbing with guys is great because it forces you to climb harder but we climb fundamentally differently”. Something we have both encountered is men climbers underestimating our skill or knowledge on the sport, especially when training side by side. “I’m aware of my own body, you don’t need to tell me how I’m going to feel”.
Simran goes on to tell me about how a year ago, she made the decision to train almost exclusively with women. “Me and the girls, we all make space for each other. We sit and give each other time to practise and there is no pressure, I’ve never really felt that with guys before”. She expresses how she saw a big shift not only in her abilities but also her mindset after implementing this change. “Before I would very happily sit on the mats and watch people climb, it feels like there’s only space for one female climber but that’s changed for me in the last year and it’s really cool watching other women climb.”
As part of my work, I teach induction classes weekly, introducing people to the sport. I asked Simran what she would tell any woman who was starting out with climbing. She replies, “that trying is really cool. When I see women try it really motivates me. I just wish someone had told me ‘don’t be scared to fall off’. Falling off is sexy.” Climbing can be a place for both self doubt and self assurance depending on who you surround yourself with. Simran’s decision to train with other women mimics a greater movement for women to find solace and encouragement within each other’s company both in the climbing sphere and otherwise. To see other women as companions instead of competitors and find comfort and community in a male dominated sport.
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