Making the Climb

Natalie Gunn is an adventure seeker; she travels and explores the great outdoors, joined by her husband. If you need proof of their love for travel, she says, “we got married in Costa Rica just for fun!” Natalie’s husband is also her climbing buddy, and climbing is one of Natalie’s great passions: “I love climbing, national parks, hiking, and canyoneering.” Natalie’s home state of Utah is filled with state parks. She exclaimed that “Utah is just the greatest place…to do outdoorsy things!”

Not only is rock climbing a fun outlet for Natalie, it also took center-stage as the topic of her Honors thesis, “Women and Gender in Mountaineering and Climbing.” Natalie majored in History, and her thesis began with a historical question relevant to her own experience. “It's kind of hard to be a rock climber and not know about people like Lynn Hill and Margo Hayes, who are just at the top of the sport—not at the top of female climbers, but the top of climbers period. I was so curious about the gender dynamics within this sport, and if history influenced it at all.”

With a goal to explore the historical twists and turns of gender in rock climbing, Natalie got to work. “I started digging in and found these incredible resources and primary source accounts from these women who started climbing in the mid- to late-1800s. [It was] just a couple of years after men started mountaineering,” she said. “There are these insane photographs of women traversing in these full-length dresses and petticoats and everything.”

Natalie also trekked out to the National Park archives in Yosemite—the center for American climbing. She was excited about a new climbing museum that had recently opened there. “They have Lynn Hill’s climbing shoes from when she free-climbed The Nose on El Cap, which is the most difficult route. She was the first person to do this, and it took 14 [more] years for a man to do it, which is just wild,” Natalie said. “And the guy who runs the museum has climbed with all these people and was a great resource to me as well.”

But it wasn’t all smooth sailing. Along the way, Natalie found that the research and writing process for her thesis was very different from a typical college essay. We often outline our essays with a structure, arguments, and evidence. But Natalie said, “When I was starting my thesis, I was so frustrated because I couldn't figure out how to organize it. I was basically almost done with it by the time I figured out what the sections were going to be…. I just had to follow this train of questions, see where it led me, and be open to those conclusions. So, when I was [thinking], ‘What are my sections? What is this going to look like?’ I didn’t know yet. You're not supposed to know. You have to find it.”

Over a year and a half, Natalie put in the work to "find” her thesis. She collected stories, photos, and journals to form the history of female rock climbers. Finally, she was ready to draw conclusions… but it wasn’t that simple. “As a newbie historian—where I'm making unique conclusions and going into an under-researched area—it was really tough for me to find the line where I was allowed to make this claim,” Natalie shared. “The mentorship from my faculty helped to give me that confidence [to know that I] have the evidence and can make this claim.”

Natalie concluded that female rock climbers did indeed face discrimination and belittlement—even in a sport where they often outperformed men. “This is a really interesting case study for gender dynamics,” she said. “Men and women were performing equally, and sometimes women were performing above men. It begs the question: if women are performing equally, why wouldn't they be treated equally? There’s a go-to excuse when people talk about the WNBA or women's soccer: they say, ‘Oh, well, they're just not as good.’ Classic argument. So, what happens when women are just as good in a sport and they're still treated differently?”

Part of Natalie’s experience has been navigating sexism—both historical and current. Her advice is to educate people respectfully. “I think there's such value in educating people… in a way that's constructive. You know, I've never had a conversation with someone where they yell at me and it makes me agree with them—it’s not really proven to be effective. I feel like there's really something to be said for learning how to advocate for yourself in a way that's correcting things [while] also building relationships.”

Natalie says that her thesis has “been awesome to include on my resume,” and that for her future work, “the research and writing piece of the thesis is so crucial.” Through Honors, she even had the opportunity to present her research at three different conferences. But Natalie truly regards her thesis as a work of passion; “I wanted it to be something excellent… to throw myself into it.” Natalie’s thesis was the culmination of her college career; she graduated in December. From here, she anticipates attending law school.