Morras Escalando: This Hermosillo group is building a community of women rock climbers
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Paulina Rojas helps Carolina Navarro prepare for her first ever outdoor climb - showing her how to adjust her harness and tie the proper knots in her rope. Then she guiding her through some light movement to get warmed up and calm her nerves.
Surrounded by experienced female climbers, Navarro says she feels safe.
“Everything is going to turn out well,” she said.
Dipping her hands in chalk and placing them against the cool rock face, she begins to climb — or send — her first route.
It’s harder — and scarier — than she thought grasping for finger and foot holds as she spiders up the wall
But each time she gets stuck, the group below urges her on.
“Tranquila, tranquila,” Rojas said, telling her to stay calm. “Take a deep breath. Look at the nature around you.”
“Good job,” the others add. “You’re doing really well.”
With a final push, Navarro reaches the top to the cheers of her fellow climbers.
A few minutes later, the slim 30-year-old is back on the ground and has ditched her helmet and harness. The climb was nerve wracking, but worth it.
“It’s really cool to have been adopted into this group of strong, fearless women,” she said. “I’m in a phase of my life when I’m looking for the tools to feel safer. To feel stronger and more powerful.”
That’s what this group is all about.
“It doesn’t really have a name yet,” Rojas said. “In our WhatsApp group we’re just calling it ‘Morras Escalando.’” Climber girls.
They formed the group to fill a growing need for women to learn and connect in what is still very much a male-dominated sport in Sonora.
“I would say it’s not a perception,” Rojas said. “These spaces are dominated by men."
Rocking climbing is just taking off in Sonora. And while major Mexican cities like Monterrey, Guadalajara and Mexico City already have well established women-led climbing communities, that’s still not the case here, Rojas says.
“There’s nothing wrong with co-ed groups,” she said.
When she started climbing three years ago, male climbers welcomed her and taught her much of what she knows about the sport, she says. But there’s something special about climbing with other women — a different energy and solidarity.
Women have the knowledge, the ability and the desire to carve out their own space within the Hermosillo climbing community, she says - one where they are neither led nor supervised by men.
“We used to fight for room in that male dominated space. But now we’re more focused on creating our own,” she says.
Still, climbing is an extreme sport, and that can be intimidating.
“We want to make sure that we have other women to climb with, who feel confident and who have the skills and information they need to climb safely,” Rojas said. “And we want them to know that we all go through a learning process.”
Earlier this year, she teamed up with long-time Hermosillo climber Mariana Lopez to create the climbing group and an introductory climbing course for women just starting out.
The foundations of climbing
On a chilly Wednesday evening, Rojas and Lopez hook into a make-shift anchor hung on the wall of a small room, giving a demonstration to a group of a dozen or so women seated on the floor around them. Over the course of several weeks, they’ve gone over climbing terminology, gear and techniques, preparing some participants to climb for the first time, and reinforcing best practices for others.
“We didn’t know there would be so many people interested in this course,” said Lopez.
It’s a positive start to the community of reliable women climbing partners they are beginning to build.
“The more united we are, the more this will grow. And that’s what we want — for this community to grow,” she said. “We want more women, more community and just a different environment.”
Climbing with women has a different vibe, she says. They communicate and climb differently than their male counterparts. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t as good at the sport.
Early in her climbing career she visited Monterrey and saw women there climbing harder routes than best male climbers she knew in Hermosillo.
It showed her what was possible, and she wants newer climbers to see the same potential.
As the course wraps up, the participants riffle through climbing shoes and harnesses Lopez and Rojas collected for them to use in a final practical class outdoors.
Role models
On Sunday morning, Rojas welcomes everyone to La Escuelita — part of the El Reliz climbing system just south of Hermosillo that’s suitable for beginners.
The shaded rock face is mostly in shadow as Rojas and Lopez gear up — reviewing how to tie knots and double check each others’ gear — before demonstrating the roles of climber and belayer — the person who manages the climbers’ rope.
With Rojas belaying and narrating to the group, Lopez makes her way up the granite rock face, yellow wildflowers and spindly trees growing out of the craggy surface.
Looking on, Alicia Avila says she joined the course because she had been looking for examples of women climbers.
“There weren’t very many,” she said.
She’s been climbing for eight months and feels like the sport has shown her both how to push and be patient with herself.
“It’s really changed the way I think about myself and what I can do,” she says.
She hopes having a community of women climbers will open the doors for more people to give the sport a try.
For Yazmin Duran, it’s a way to defy expectations.
“When my parents found out I was going to try rock climbing, they assumed I would have a male teacher,” she said. “But I told them, ‘No, I have a woman teacher,’ because that’s what Paulina [Rojas] has been.”
Even friends are shocked, she says, when she tells them she climbs with a group of all women.
But like Avila, she says one of the biggest shifts in perspective has been her own.
“Climbing is a constant reminder of what you are capable of,” she said. “You’re just like, ‘Oh my god, I did that. That’s so cool.’”
Rojas started this group so more women could have that experience.
“It’s an invitation to get out of their comfort zone,” she said.
She hopes the group will support women to try something that might scare them a little, surrounded by friends who will be cheering them on.
“It really feels good to see them smiling and laughing and cheering each other on,” she said. “That’s why we have this group — to get to know each other and feel comfortable and confident with each other, so that we always have someone to climb with.”
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