The Climbing TikTokers I Can’t Stop Watching

This article originally appeared on Climbing

"You know what's annoying? Regressing. At least I look cute though!" Sophia Duong, 30, smiled into the camera of her phone as she spoke. Duong had just fallen off the committing last move of an orange V5 in the gym--again. She tosses a boulder brush to the ground and gets back on.

When she started posting on TikTok under the handle @sophiachalks in 2021, Duong felt that the platform was lacking a core part of the climber experience; rather than showing a range of outcomes and emotions, she found a homogenized pool of send videos. "I was like, 'you guys, we fall so much more often, let's be real here.'" Duong decided to post videos on her platform that included everything from falling to sending to rest-day FOMO.

I came across Sophia's content in a mindless TikTok scroll one afternoon. Usually, my homepage is saturated with videos of professional climbers sending otherworldly boulders, wiry men doing front levers on ten-millimeter crimps, and the like. I'm inspired to see what's possible at the most elite level of the sport I love, but amidst the deluge of superhuman ability, Duong's video was refreshing. Commenters tend to agree. On a video of Duong working a scary top-out, they've left messages like "you always give me the inspiration to work on my projects" and "you're killing it!" Duong is one of several climbers--many of which are women of color--claiming space in climbing media by showcasing their vulnerability.

Tiffany Gomez is a 25-year old climber from Washington, D.C. She started climbing about a year ago to connect with a friend. Gomez was apprehensive during her first few trips to the climbing gym: "I didn't like being alone," she says. "When I first started climbing I was a little bit intimidated because everyone was so good and I was just kind of awkward." Worried to fail in front of more experienced climbers, she meticulously planned trips to the climbing gym around avoiding human contact as much as possible. She went to the gym when it was emptiest, early in the morning, and left as soon as people began trickling in.

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Despite the intimidation that plagued those early trips to the climbing gym, Gomez told me, "climbing was the only time when my brain wasn't anxious." Looking to build community online, Gomez turned to TikTok in search of videos by beginner climbers like herself. She struggled to find anything relatable. "I was watching all these TikTok videos and they were all people who were really good. I was like, oh god. It looks like no one is just starting."

Another climbing content creator, 30-year old Jocelynne Flor from Toronto, expressed a similar feeling of isolation. Flor remarked, "When I was first starting out, I would search 'beginner climbing' on TikTok or on Instagram and the only thing that I could find was tips for beginners from coaches or pros." While advice videos were helpful, Gomez and Flor both felt that content about the more intimate aspects of being a beginner --the fear of falling, the satisfaction of a hard-earned send, the intimidation at new climbing gyms and crags--was missing.

Gomez began posting on TikTok shortly after taking up climbing. At first, she said, "it felt wrong because I have no idea what I'm talking about." Instead of training programs or beta breakdowns, Gomez talks about how it feels to be a beginner climber. She makes memes out of her fear of falling, which has taken lots of hard work to overcome. She shows herself slipping and struggling. Soon after she started posting about her climbing, Gomez received a flood of positive comments. Other beginners confided in her that they considered quitting rock climbing before seeing her videos, which helped them recognize that other people were just starting out, too.

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Now, Gomez sails through the climbing gym without trepidation and posts about proud moments and failures alike. In a recent video, she locks off on the slopey starting holds of a steep boulder problem and slaps at the second hold for a while before falling to the padded floor, cackling at her inability to stick the move. The caption reads, "I love petting slopers."

Jocelynne Flor posts about her climbing "for people who are beginners or who climb alone." Her videos range from post-climbing meal inspiration to face-to-face confessionals about anxiety in busy climbing gyms to beta breakdowns. In many of her videos, Flor encourages her 10.5K followers to try new things, which she notes can be difficult for adults: "Mostly because I'm in my 30s, I feel like a lot of people in their late 20s and early 30s are afraid to try something new. As an adult you just want to stick to what you've known."

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In an early video, Flor works to get over her fear of slab climbing. She works moves on a "dreaded V2 slab," a problem that begins on two-finger pockets and sloping footholds before creeping up a series of directional volumes. She flows through the bottom half of the climb and then freezes at the final move, a committing sideways step with no handholds. She explains in voiceover, "I'm still just so scared to grab that last hold, but I'm working on it."

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Angela Park is another content creator aiming to change the status quo of climbing media. A climber of eight years, Park posts the kinds of things you'd expect--beta breakdowns, outdoor sends, and strength training drills--interspersed with vulnerable moments and life advice that her 1.4K followers can use off the wall.

Park told me that her beta breakdowns are among the most popular of her videos, and I can see why. She uses these videos, in which she voices over clips of her climbing, to deliver thoughtful analyses of her strengths and weaknesses that other climbers find useful. In one such video, she says, "I make it a point to try and change something every attempt." Being a smaller climber, she finds alternative beta for reachy moves. Her climbing style has evolved over the years: While she initially avoided powerful movement in favor of techy crimping, she now sometimes finds dynamic alternatives where taller climbers move statically.

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Park sees herself as part of a broader movement toward diversity in climbing media, saying "I feel really passionate about women taking up space in climbing, I feel like women of color are particularly underrepresented." By sharing her own struggles, as well as demystifying climbing etiquette and culture, Park hopes to encourage other climbers--especially those who don't find themselves represented in mainstream climbing media--to push themselves. "It's a really cool time to be a climber," she says. "So many more people are getting into it, you see more diverse bodies, which is sick. More people isn't always a bad thing."

Though Park has been climbing for more than eight years, she uses her platform to dispense advice that new climbers will find useful. In a video titled "What I Wish I knew Before I started to Climb," she talks about how trying intimidating climbing styles and getting comfortable with falling was crucial to her progress.

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The creators I interviewed were often surprised at how meaningful their content was to fellow climbers. "A lot of people message me really long paragraphs...I get messages that almost make me cry, make me think, 'wow, I can't believe that this seven-second meme with a Spongebob quote is relating to people,'" Duong said.

Climbing is scary, frustrating, physically taxing, and, sometimes, joyous and rewarding. By showing that the joys of climbing can be had at any level, these TikTokers are inviting people who have not been represented in mainstream outdoor media to see themselves as climbers.

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