In her 60s, she became a record-breaking mountain climber
In her 40s, Dierdre Wolownick taught herself to swim. In her 50s, she took up running. Then, at lx, she became a rock climber – and not just any rock climber. Four years ago, at 66, Wolownick made a record-breaking ascension upward El Capitan, Yosemite National Park's granite monolith that has some of the longest, nearly challenging rock climbing routes in the world. And she did it in way. The route she tackled then, Lurking Fear, typically takes iv days to complete. Wolownick did information technology in ane.
Of course, it helped that the author and at present-sponsored athlete had one of the almost accomplished rock climbers in the world to guide her: Her famous son, Alex Honnold, the star of the 2022 Oscar-winning documentary Free Solo. The motion-picture show chronicles her son's scenic journey to get the first person to climb El Cap with no rope or condom equipment whatever. Her own effort – which did use ropes – was "by far" the about demanding matter she had e'er washed, Wolownick said.
Reaching the summit of El Capitan in 2017, she became the oldest woman to make that ascent, co-ordinate to Hans Florine, an American rock climber with a record 179 climbs of the vertical rock formation. And she has non slowed downwards. In belatedly September, Wolownick returned to El Cap without her son to climb it again, this time to celebrate her 70th altogether with a small group of friends and guides. On that gamble she went up an easier route that climbers typically utilise to descend. It took her six hours to achieve the summit, and after camping at that place overnight, she came downwardly in 6.5 hours the next day.
The grueling climbs were a departure from the first half of Wolownick's sedentary and cerebral life. Growing up in New York, she painted and played the piano in Jackson Heights, Queens. As an adult she taught five languages and wrote books, including a 2022 memoir, The Sharp End of Life: A Female parent'southward Story, in office well-nigh her first El Cap ascent. In 1990, a few years subsequently moving to suburban Sacramento, California, where her husband grew upward, she founded an orchestra in W Sacramento and conducted it.
"These were wonderful, greatly satisfying things only zilch was really physical. There certainly was no danger," she said. "I never in a million years idea that I could climb El Cap."
(The post-obit interview has been edited and condensed.)
Q: Why did you start climbing?
A: Alex has e'er loved it. He was ofttimes very quiet, even morose as a child, simply he would talk well-nigh climbing. The sport has real jargon – they say things similar "jugging" and "rapping" – and I had no clue what he was saying. It pained me that I couldn't relate to him over this. I figured I would try it so at least we could talk.
Q: How did you try it?
A: Well-nigh 10 years agone, Alex was home with an injury then I asked him to accept me to the climbing gym. I figured I'd get to know the equipment and climb halfway up the wall and come home and exist happy. I got on the get-go climb and went all the way upward, about 45 feet, and I was totally surprised I had no fear whatsoever. Then I did 12 more climbs that twenty-four hour period and loved it.
Q: What was your life similar before that?
A: Total turmoil. My husband, Charles, savage over expressionless at 55 in the Phoenix airport one month after I had divorced him and I became the executor of his manor. My father had simply died and I was dealing with his estate, likewise. Alex had about died while snowshoeing in 2004 when he was nineteen. So I started running, little past little, and wound upwardly condign a runner. There was aught in life I was doing for me and running was for me. Climbing turned out to exist the same, an escape, just it took backbone.
Q: How did y'all overcome the challenges to climb?
A: Climbing is very physical and at that place'due south then much to larn about the equipment, the physics, the angles – everything.
I was just a lumpy quondam center age woman completely taken with jobs and chores. I was scared, also, and sometimes y'all need a little assistance to practice something totally new and alien to you. But after a calendar month or two I had had enough conversations with myself and and then I said, okay, today, you're not going home after work. Yous're going to go directly to the climbing gym. And I did. Information technology became a routine. Climbing was like a central opening this lifelong door. Information technology was wonderful.
Q: How did you lot ready for El Capitan?
A: I went to Yosemite to railroad train iii days a week for 18 weeks in a row. I would hike and climb. I've never been able to do pushups or pullups so I got i of those pullup bars y'all tin can put in a doorway and started working on it. Every time I walk by it, I exercise 10 pullups. I'm upwards to near 50 pullups a day now. They're not pull-up-from-the-ground pullups, merely however, for me, they're extraordinary. Climbing Lurking Fear was still the hardest affair I've ever done by far but just being on El Cap is a mind-bender. Your life changes.
Q: How has climbing changed your life?
A: I learned how to suffer through all kinds of discomfort because what y'all get from it makes it worthwhile. Information technology's the aforementioned for anybody who wants to follow a path of bliss. There'due south a lot of suffering. With climbing, you just have to deal. Information technology'south not similar y'all tin say, 'Oh, it's raining, let's get back to the car' when yous're 2,500 feet upwardly. It'south such a privilege to exist upwardly there. Climbers get to go to the most unimaginable, beautiful, inspiring places, and the only fashion to experience them is to put in the hard work.
Q: What would yous tell people who are stuck or scared to make changes that might exist good for them?
A: You lot first accept to figure out why you think y'all tin't do something and inquire yourself if that's a valid point. Look, in that location'due south somebody telling yous every step of your life what to eat, what to habiliment, that you tin't slumber without this drug, and it's all nonsense. Y'all tin can determine for yourself what you recollect y'all're capable of. Information technology'south just so sad when people say, oh, I'm 50, I tin't … fill in the bare. Try it anyway! Who cares! You might be surprised.
By Tim Neville © 2022 The New York Times
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/women/her-60s-she-became-record-breaking-mountain-climber-287031
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