Permission Slip by Karly Rager (an excerpt)

This is an excerpt from Volume 26 of The Climbing Zine. Banner photo of the author by Travis Perkins 

 

We lay next to her, infantilized by moonshadows cast

swaddled tight in the present, future, and past

 

Her wisdom sews folds of time not held in line

Her patience shelters youth and her silence holds truth

we squirm to sleep, unsure and exposed

 

our big eyes tilt up to meet our teacher

like little bugs we’ll scale up each feature

remaining vestiges of deep time dimmed

warped incarnations show us what lies within

 

and with our short time together, maybe

we’ll earn the balance of old and bold

to see the wise, but be the daring

and with mariachi horns below us blaring

we finally granted ourselves permission

to weave our story into tradition

 

We looked up from the small ledge just below pitch eleven, feeling sharp edges of runnelled limestone press up through the bottoms of our shoes. The unknown, unchalked crux pitches, P11 and P12, towered above us. All that was left to do was…everything we had set out to do.

That precise point in time and space seemed to extend beyond any placeholder on a calendar or map. The air was quiet—I remember hearing our exhales, as if only Mango and I existed in that suspended moment. The line between possibility and reality soared above us.

Here we go, we thought, just one sequence at a time.

Perched over the valley for thousands of years, La Gloria never needed to reciprocate the meaning we gave her. Our wonder was hers to ignore. But by considering how we’d want her to care, we learned a lot about ourselves. The ever-widening aperture of this experience casts light into the present day.

In the end, a mountain never gives us permission to pass, but time spent in its cradle can help us give ourselves permission.

Giving ourselves permission is what we needed to complete the first free ascent of Guerreras on La Gloria—a thirteen-pitch, 5.12c in Nuevo León, Mexico. It was bolted in 2021 by Zach Clanton and Tony Pavlantos, who put in an incredible amount of work to establish the line. During their time on the mountain, they encountered a raging wildfire (check out this story in the Zine, Volume 24) and barely escaped off of the mountain. Afterward, they decided to open the line to others. As of January 2025—almost four years later—Guerreras had yet to go free.

We decided to give it a shot. The unknowns were numerous and daunting. The approach had likely been altered since the fire, and we knew it was pretty involved before the fire raged through the valley. The grade of the crux pitches (P11 and P12) were unknown but likely in the 12b–13a range. There was no water source at all up on the mountain. And, the condition of the route after the fire was uncertain.

We knew there was a lot to unpack up there. We needed to give it our time and attention. It was a big undertaking and brought up a lot of nervousness and self-doubt. We needed to objectively self-assess where our skills were in comparison with an environment that wasn’t known to us and was subject to change at any time.

To do that, we needed to understand ourselves truly, beyond the influence of passing opinions or external expectations.

Women who specialize in multipitch climbing are far less common than those who focus on single-pitch climbing or gym climbing. Women doing first free ascents of multipitch alpine routes are even more rare.

Why?

Well, partly because most of us haven’t tried.

Which leads us to the next question: Why haven’t we tried?

While talking to my climbing partner, Mango, about doing this route, we both acknowledged that we were wading in new waters. But we were also ready to give it a shot.

Mango is a Mexican climber with plenty of multipitch experience. But she is much more than a climber—she is the founder of Hanuman Café, a pillar in the community, and a good friend. If you have been to El Salto, you know that Hanuman Café is joked to be the living room of the town. Watching her start the café from nothing in 2022 inspired me just as much as watching her send 5.13 routes over and over at the crags in her backyard. She has created space for her community to connect but still makes time for climbing, her people, and herself.

As we talked about the route more, I realized I had done all of the bigger, wilder, and harder multipitch climbs with male partners. In itself, that’s not inherently bad or wrong, but when I mentioned freeing this route as two women, I was met with a lot of warnings, raised eyebrows, and thinly veiled skepticism that amounted to “Are you sure you are ready for this? Because we are not sure you are. This is a real climb. A real alpine adventure.”

It echoed a familiar warning about big boy climbs and a mosaic of subtle stabs that imply we just don’t have the stones to climb a big rock.

The discrepancy between all-male first free ascents and any other combination of people may be partly due to a lack of attempts. But wading ankle deep through chilly ripples of doubt—and delineating them from our own self-perception—creates an additional hurdle to clear in order to get to the trailhead.

It’s hard to remove the talons of opinions thrust into you, especially if you don’t have skin as thick as a cactus (I certainly don’t).

While approval is menial in value, the skeptical side comments get snagged in your consciousness like thorny plants.

More poignantly, hearing these sentiments over a long period of time makes it challenging to objectively self-assess—a skill that is vital for moving well and making decisions in the mountains. Am I overselling my skills? Am I asking for permission? Do I need permission? Am I waiting for people’s confidence in me to grow? Or, do I need to give that permission to myself? These questions have simmered in me since I was young.

So, while approval of our goal isn’t singularly relevant, the grooves that our cognitions run along during moments of uncertainty, toil, and decision-making on an alpine objective are very, very relevant.

We wondered, What will happen when we get up there? Will the voices follow us? What will we find in the quietude?

And, I was about to feel young again under the deep time and reams of rock held by La Gloria as she towered over me on an approach that I didn’t know with a haul bag that didn’t fit me.

Like I said, La Gloria isn’t a mountain that made me feel small, but rather—she made me feel young. Excited, gleeful, energetic, exposed, shy…young. Like a duckling that stepped too far out from the nest but did so on purpose despite quacks of doubt. I wanted to see what lay beyond well-documented, over-debated routes on Mountain Project—I wanted an experience unbedraggled by the opinions of everyone else.

I wanted to go into a world that didn’t hold previous opinions and see what we were like out there on our own. What we ran into, what we found, what found us, and what already lived within us that needed our permission to be expressed….

Score a copy of Volume 26 to read the full piece

Listen to our interview with Karly on our Dirtbag State of Mind podcast