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I felt sure that developing some degree of athleticism would make me feel powerful. But the girls in our church youth group were taught to crochet potholders while the boys were enrolled as scouts and sent on fifty-mile backpacking trips.
Nothing frees up—or focuses—every cell in my body like leaning into a nice, fast turn. Nothing pairs free-wheeling giddiness with the immediate necessity of reading a backcountry snowpack.
When anyone compliments my skiing, I want to hug them and cry. Sometimes I just hug and pause until the frog in my throat retreats.
I feel a bit of resentment at not being one of the little girls whose parents bought her first pair of teensy skis at 18 months. I wouldn’t suggest my entry into outdoor sports was the hardest—I salute the Afghan Women’s Cycling Team, Bolivia’s team of indigenous mountaineers, and the darling, strong-hearted girls I’m teaching to ski each weekend as a SheJumps volunteer. But I was raised in an environment of pronounced sexism that hit its lowest lows behind closed doors.
This is the flavor of misogyny I built an early familiarity with: being a kid in an outwardly normal suburban household that, within, held a family tension that was both sharp and suffocating. We collectively flinched at my father’s every violent outburst. Each fueled by hyperconservtism and, in retrospect, fear of female power. So, while we lived a mile from the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon, I was actively discouraged in sports of any kind and labeled a “wimp” throughout my childhood.
My mom was raised in a plucky matriarchal family of travelers and adventurers. Yet none of us knew how to fully stand up to the intimidation permeating our house and our minds.
This flavor of sexism—the kind that intentionally avoids visible bruises—highlights the part of a cultural iceberg that’s under the water. Our soft-yet-so-strong spirits can suffer death by a thousand micro-discouragements. I felt sure that developing some degree of athleticism would make me feel powerful. But the girls in our church youth group were taught to crochet potholders while the boys were enrolled as scouts and sent on fifty-mile backpacking trips.
I felt sure that developing some degree of athleticism would make me feel powerful. But the girls in our church youth group were taught to crochet potholders while the boys were enrolled as scouts and sent on fifty-mile backpacking trips.
Under our own roof, my father would actually pretend I hadn’t spoken if I raised an idea that didn’t fit his mold of an ideal woman. Beyond an exceptional religious conservatism and an explosive temper, my father had absolutely no cultural frame of reference for adventuresome or athletic women. Every female in the last several generations of the Lopez family had been married into domesticity before she could graduate high school. Adventure sports never entered the lexicon. The sheer unfamiliarity of my (or my mom’s) desire to go on river trips was threatening to the core—and the backlash was terrifying.
I knew in my early teens that I wanted to be good at mountain sports. I hung on every word of Into Thin Air, pedaled to Barnes and Noble to gape over climbing mags, and did an AOL dial-up search for “mountain biking basics.” Cross-country skiing had a cheaper entry point than downhill skiing, so I used my babysitting money and youth bus pass to go up to the local Nordic Ski Center. I’d stuff my cotton-socked toes into rental boots, throw on an Old Navy windbreaker, and skate peaceful laps through the woods.
A few high school friends finally started taking me climbing with them. I embraced the sport with the enthusiasm of a teenage girl who’s literally found something to cling to. I was alternately grounded or thrown out of the house by a dad whose cultural cartography was upended by a young woman who took AP Physics as seriously as she took her first trad routes.
Soon, I hid my climbing—tucking my hand-me-down harness, thrift-store climbing shoes, and chalk bag into a Jansport backpack I hid in the car to take up the canyons. I’d stop at a friend’s house on the way home to wash the chalk off my fingernails and put my school clothes back on.
Entranced by my copy of Wasatch Eleveners, I started ticking off the area’s peaks while using calculus study groups as my alibi. I gobbled up stolen minutes on top of the Pfeifferhorn. I savored every step up Lone Peak. These were the only moments that were mine.
I did everything I could do to get up and around in the canyons—cross-country skiing, climbing, mountain-biking, hiking, and finally downhill skiing. Hyper aware of my outdoor ignorance (compared with kids who’d taken their first steps along trails, slopes, and rivers) I simply did my darndest at all of it (and I sucked at all of it.) But each time I gained another smattering of competence—linking my mogul turns or picking the right line to paddle through a rapid—my heart both fluttered with pride and grew a bigger capacity for confidence.
A couple decades later, I still have frequent moments of flail, but they’re strung together by hours of flow state and a contented pride in general mountain-sport competence.
A couple decades later, I still have frequent moments of flail, but they’re strung together by hours of flow state and a contented pride in general mountain-sport competence.
I discussed this story with a close friend who laughingly (but honestly) pointed out, “Every white girl has a story about overcoming sexism.”
True. Meanwhile, I have no idea if I identify as white. On forms, I check the “Hispanic” box in a nod to the complex cultural heritage that forged me. But my lighter hair and blue eyes make me a mashup who’s navigated this world without perceived racism, so long as people meet me in person before reading my last name.
And maybe the fact that I had such an uphill battle with so many things going my way is the reason I should talk about my entry into outdoor sports. Because even if socioeconomic barriers aren’t present, misogyny, whether subversive or overt, drags like invisible ankle weights—the added friction quietly burning blisters under our collective mountaineering boots.
Awaiting the apres-patriarchy dance party, we can use a hyper-sensitivity to sexism as a secret weapon to methodically address the millions of big and little ways women feel disempowered, both indoors and out. We can give them the primordial strength that comes from dipping our toes in nature. From getting a little thrill of adrenaline—whether that means climbing a major summit or skiing your first blue run. From getting kind of scared, or kind of cold, or really really dirty. From venturing into new and reverent places, and coming home with a slap-happy smile.
I know that if I’d started skiing at two, things would be different — probably in some really fun ways. But by having a dad who literally would not teach me to fix a flat tire (it might encourage me to drive beyond our zip code), I pedaled a low-budget mountain bike to altitudes where I gained the clarity to howl at the moon out of pure delight.
Learning to take calculated risks and reap delicious thrills has stretched me physically and intellectually while giving me a level of personal courage that previous generations of Lopez women didn’t get to tap into. They were as resilient as they had to be, whereas I have the pleasure of choosing how I develop and channel my own resilience.
All of our scars tell a story. And if my inner scars led to outer scars (momentos of thorny bushwacking, alpine scrambling, and surgeries to repair my most epic wipeouts) that make me smile, then I’m doing all right.
Nothing frees up—or focuses—every cell in my body like leaning into a nice, fast turn. Nothing pairs free-wheeling giddiness with the immediate necessity of reading a backcountry snowpack.
When anyone compliments my skiing, I want to hug them and cry. Sometimes I just hug and pause until the frog in my throat retreats.
I feel a bit of resentment at not being one of the little girls whose parents bought her first pair of teensy skis at 18 months. I wouldn’t suggest my entry into outdoor sports was the hardest—I salute the Afghan Women’s Cycling Team, Bolivia’s team of indigenous mountaineers, and the darling, strong-hearted girls I’m teaching to ski each weekend as a SheJumps volunteer. But I was raised in an environment of pronounced sexism that hit its lowest lows behind closed doors.
This is the flavor of misogyny I built an early familiarity with: being a kid in an outwardly normal suburban household that, within, held a family tension that was both sharp and suffocating. We collectively flinched at my father’s every violent outburst. Each fueled by hyperconservtism and, in retrospect, fear of female power. So, while we lived a mile from the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon, I was actively discouraged in sports of any kind and labeled a “wimp” throughout my childhood.
My mom was raised in a plucky matriarchal family of travelers and adventurers. Yet none of us knew how to fully stand up to the intimidation permeating our house and our minds.
This flavor of sexism—the kind that intentionally avoids visible bruises—highlights the part of a cultural iceberg that’s under the water. Our soft-yet-so-strong spirits can suffer death by a thousand micro-discouragements. I felt sure that developing some degree of athleticism would make me feel powerful. But the girls in our church youth group were taught to crochet potholders while the boys were enrolled as scouts and sent on fifty-mile backpacking trips.
I felt sure that developing some degree of athleticism would make me feel powerful. But the girls in our church youth group were taught to crochet potholders while the boys were enrolled as scouts and sent on fifty-mile backpacking trips.
Under our own roof, my father would actually pretend I hadn’t spoken if I raised an idea that didn’t fit his mold of an ideal woman. Beyond an exceptional religious conservatism and an explosive temper, my father had absolutely no cultural frame of reference for adventuresome or athletic women. Every female in the last several generations of the Lopez family had been married into domesticity before she could graduate high school. Adventure sports never entered the lexicon. The sheer unfamiliarity of my (or my mom’s) desire to go on river trips was threatening to the core—and the backlash was terrifying.
I knew in my early teens that I wanted to be good at mountain sports. I hung on every word of Into Thin Air, pedaled to Barnes and Noble to gape over climbing mags, and did an AOL dial-up search for “mountain biking basics.” Cross-country skiing had a cheaper entry point than downhill skiing, so I used my babysitting money and youth bus pass to go up to the local Nordic Ski Center. I’d stuff my cotton-socked toes into rental boots, throw on an Old Navy windbreaker, and skate peaceful laps through the woods.
A few high school friends finally started taking me climbing with them. I embraced the sport with the enthusiasm of a teenage girl who’s literally found something to cling to. I was alternately grounded or thrown out of the house by a dad whose cultural cartography was upended by a young woman who took AP Physics as seriously as she took her first trad routes.
Soon, I hid my climbing—tucking my hand-me-down harness, thrift-store climbing shoes, and chalk bag into a Jansport backpack I hid in the car to take up the canyons. I’d stop at a friend’s house on the way home to wash the chalk off my fingernails and put my school clothes back on.
Entranced by my copy of Wasatch Eleveners, I started ticking off the area’s peaks while using calculus study groups as my alibi. I gobbled up stolen minutes on top of the Pfeifferhorn. I savored every step up Lone Peak. These were the only moments that were mine.
I did everything I could do to get up and around in the canyons—cross-country skiing, climbing, mountain-biking, hiking, and finally downhill skiing. Hyper aware of my outdoor ignorance (compared with kids who’d taken their first steps along trails, slopes, and rivers) I simply did my darndest at all of it (and I sucked at all of it.) But each time I gained another smattering of competence—linking my mogul turns or picking the right line to paddle through a rapid—my heart both fluttered with pride and grew a bigger capacity for confidence.
A couple decades later, I still have frequent moments of flail, but they’re strung together by hours of flow state and a contented pride in general mountain-sport competence.
A couple decades later, I still have frequent moments of flail, but they’re strung together by hours of flow state and a contented pride in general mountain-sport competence.
I discussed this story with a close friend who laughingly (but honestly) pointed out, “Every white girl has a story about overcoming sexism.”
True. Meanwhile, I have no idea if I identify as white. On forms, I check the “Hispanic” box in a nod to the complex cultural heritage that forged me. But my lighter hair and blue eyes make me a mashup who’s navigated this world without perceived racism, so long as people meet me in person before reading my last name.
And maybe the fact that I had such an uphill battle with so many things going my way is the reason I should talk about my entry into outdoor sports. Because even if socioeconomic barriers aren’t present, misogyny, whether subversive or overt, drags like invisible ankle weights—the added friction quietly burning blisters under our collective mountaineering boots.
Awaiting the apres-patriarchy dance party, we can use a hyper-sensitivity to sexism as a secret weapon to methodically address the millions of big and little ways women feel disempowered, both indoors and out. We can give them the primordial strength that comes from dipping our toes in nature. From getting a little thrill of adrenaline—whether that means climbing a major summit or skiing your first blue run. From getting kind of scared, or kind of cold, or really really dirty. From venturing into new and reverent places, and coming home with a slap-happy smile.
I know that if I’d started skiing at two, things would be different — probably in some really fun ways. But by having a dad who literally would not teach me to fix a flat tire (it might encourage me to drive beyond our zip code), I pedaled a low-budget mountain bike to altitudes where I gained the clarity to howl at the moon out of pure delight.
Learning to take calculated risks and reap delicious thrills has stretched me physically and intellectually while giving me a level of personal courage that previous generations of Lopez women didn’t get to tap into. They were as resilient as they had to be, whereas I have the pleasure of choosing how I develop and channel my own resilience.
All of our scars tell a story. And if my inner scars led to outer scars (momentos of thorny bushwacking, alpine scrambling, and surgeries to repair my most epic wipeouts) that make me smile, then I’m doing all right.
Beth Lopez spent her formative years reading Dickens in a treehouse and negotiating with her teachers to catch the ski bus after the third period. Decades later, little has changed. Now a seasoned mountain athlete with skills, summits, and descents under her belt, Beth relishes any chance to get outside—and to make the outdoor world more inclusive and welcoming.
Beth spent her formative years reading Dickens in a treehouse and negotiating with her teachers to catch the ski bus after the third period. Decades later, little has changed. Now a seasoned mountain athlete with skills, summits, and descents under her belt, Beth relishes any chance to get outside—and to make the outdoor world more inclusive and welcoming.
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