The lifelong climber reflects on transitioning from indoor to outdoor bouldering — and the joy that came with it.
Twenty-nine-year-old climber Kelly Birch moves with strength and grace up some of the toughest boulders in Colorado. But before taking on some of the most challenging boulder problems in the southwestern United States, she almost quit her sport for good. After climbing on a youth team for most of her life, Birch took a much-needed hiatus from the sport. For six years, she swapped out climbing walls for powerlifting, running, and backpacking. Then, in 2017, the climbing fates stepped in.
“I just went to the [climbing] gym one day because my now ex-boyfriend was like, ‘Maybe if you try rock climbing again,’” says Birch. Just like that, Birch fell back in love with the sport—but this time, her approach would be different. Birch’s first go-around in the sport had centered around indoor competitive bouldering, a rope-free type of climbing conducted over thick mats on walls that average about 15 feet tall. This time, she decided to take her sport outdoors.
“When I was growing up in youth [programs], I didn't do a lot of outdoor climbing. So I hadn't really developed my joy for that yet,” says Birch. “But when I started climbing again I ended up meeting quite a few really nice, strong, supportive people who were into the Southern California bouldering scene. That’s when I developed my joy for climbing outside.”
Even after taking on a full-time job in an epidemiology lab, Birch continues to climb at an extremely high level. Today, she lives in Colorado, where she strength trains, optimizes her bouldering volume and power on indoor bouldering walls, and heads outside at least twice a week.
Bouldering outdoors looks much different than climbing on plastic in the gym. Not only are you climbing on real rock outside in the elements, but climbers bring mats, known as “crash pads,” to give them the best chance at falling safely. Depending on the location of the boulders, it may be necessary to hike miles with gear before the time comes to slip on your shoes and get on the rock.
Bouldering is graded on a “V-scale” that goes up to V19. To date, Birch has climbed up to bouldering grade V13, a grade that requires specificity, strength, and years of technical training. If you can imagine hanging horizontally to the ground with your hands holding the tiniest razor blade edges and your toe pushing into a crack that’s about a millimeter wide, you’re almost close… but V13 is actually even more difficult than that.
Since outdoor bouldering is a seasonal sport, Birch is savoring every last long summer day. “It's usually a lot more taxing on your body to go [climbing] outside because you're waking up at five in the morning and hiking for lots of miles and carrying stuff. So I tend to rest more during the summer because I'm just saving my energy to perform outside,” Birch says. In the winter, she’ll usually maintain her fitness indoors and turn her focus to work. “During the winter, I'm not doing a ton of climbing outside, but I am doing a lot of training and maybe some traveling to climb outside in other places where the weather is appropriate for me that time of year,” she says.
Birch wants to keep climbing harder. “I’d really like to climb V14 in the next couple of years, so I'm working towards that. Climbing is always an ‘on to the next grade’-type thing, but long term, I would like to explore other disciplines of climbing. I love backpacking and big mountain hiking, so I’d love to do more of a big adventure like alpine climbing in the future. I think that would be super fun.”