Beth Rodden was a Visionary Yosemite Climber. Now, She Introduces the Rest of Herself
For many years, in the public eye and in her own self-perception, Beth Rodden didn’t exist: There was only “BethandTommy.” Shortly after meeting, in 1995, Beth Rodden and Tommy Caldwell became attached at the hip, in every personal and professional sense. Now, in her new memoir, A Light Through the Cracks: A Climber’s Story, Rodden gives us an intimate look into her complex process of disentanglement and self-actualization. She tells her narrative on her own terms, as “just Beth,” sharing glimpses into her own flawed humanity and that of the community at large.
Rodden grew up in Davis, California, and began climbing in 1995, quickly rising in the competitive ranks. She also rapidly ticked noteworthy climbs, including Country Boy (5.13d) and To Bolt or Not to Be (5.14a). While on a climbing trip in Kyrgyzstan in 2000, she was kidnapped with Caldwell and two other climbers; they were held hostage for six days before escaping. The event cemented their relationship in climbing and in life. In 2005, they became the third and fourth climbers to free The Nose. Three years later, Rodden made the first ascent of Meltdown (5.14c) in Yosemite, one of the hardest trad lines in the world. Her other notable ascents include Lurking Fear (5.13c, first free ascent with Caldwell), Book of Hate (5.13d), and The Optimist (5.14b). Rodden and Caldwell divorced in 2009; in 2012, Rodden married Randy Puro and the couple had a son in 2014. In more recent years, Rodden has devoted herself to writing and advocacy in the sport.
A Light Through The Cracks is divided into three parts. The first covers the years 2000 to 2003, from the kidnapping to Rodden’s marriage to Caldwell. The second, from 2005 to 2008, spans the pair’s ascent of The Nose to the FA of Meltdown. In part three, from 2008 to the present, Rodden reflects on her divorce, marriage, child, and the current state of her career. The book reads as if we are peeking into Rodden’s diary entries, experiencing those past events from her perspective at the time. In part one, the dates flip back and forth between during and after the kidnapping; the latter parts adopt a more classic narrative flow.
Throughout, Rodden is unflinching in her portrait of herself, freely and viscerally putting her raw emotions on display. When she recovers at a military base after escaping her captors, we are there with her while she tries to shower and remove her underwear, stained from days of having her period while in captivity. “The blood had dried and it was stuck to my pubic hair. Again, I felt like a child in my body, thinking there was something I should have known or done differently … I was standing on one side of a dark-green cloth divider in the middle of a military base thinking I was going to have to employ the rip-off-the-Band-Aid strategy because I couldn’t bear the thought of slowly peeling away each inch,” Rodden writes.
This brutal honesty extends to Rodden sharing her own flaws. After the kidnapping, when she sees people of color and South Asian descent, Rodden admits to rushing to judgments and feeling paralyzing fear; she becomes anxious at the sight of a mother in a hijab at a playground. Rodden fully demonstrates the effect the kidnapping had on her mental state and how it warped her thinking, without using the trauma as a justification for her behavior.
A Light Through The Cracks compellingly captures the challenges that came with being a pro female climber in the early 2000s and the profound sexism of that era. In her early years, Rodden was constantly worried about losing sponsors and felt intense pressure to perform. She writes: “I’d count up my Rock and Ice covers, setting my total against the handful of other female climbers, I always, back then, saw as my competition for a seat at the boys’ table. Would this climb get me another cover? Would it get me a raise?” There was no room for female connection in her world; female climbers were competitors—not friends. There was often only one woman sponsored by each major brand, and none of them received the multi-year deals or high pay that men did. Rodden, who garnered attention for her many first female ascents, interrogates the concept of the FFA. “First female ascents were a double-edged sword: they got me accolades and raises from my sponsors, but I also knew they would always carry an asterisk. In the end, I would be judged against the accomplishments of the men, and I needed to do things none of them had ever done to be recognized among them.”
Whatever room Rodden had carved out for herself in this male-domianted sport disappeared as news of her divorce from Caldwell became public. “A lot of people, the industry acquaintances who’d always been quick to get in touch and praise my latest send, just disappeared from my life … I felt as though I’d been marked with a scarlet letter and cut out of nearly all the old social and professional circles I’d known,” Rodden recalls. But out of this isolation, Rodden unlearned her internalized resentment of women, and she formed strong bonds and friendships with other female climbers like Steph Davis and, later, Becca Caldwell. She embraced a role as a writer and an advocate for change in the sport, particularly around body image, eating disorders, and motherhood. Rodden’s ability to change her perspective and embrace female solidarity speaks to the sport’s potential to change—and for it to change us.
Rodden’s writing skillfully transports us, placing us alongside her on the wall. Any climber with a project can relate to Rodden’s descriptions of her hanging on a rope for hours, attempting to decode Meltdown, searching for the smallest of nubs to use as a foothold, and trying to hold onto polished nothingness. Rodden painstakingly details just how tenuous her ascent was. “I took two deep breaths and then reached up with my right hand to the worst hold on the route. It was a quarter of a finger pad deep…I weighted my right fingertip and pulled with my arms. As I reached up I had only a second before my body would start to succumb to gravity and pull me backward, off the wall.” Her recollection on her failed ascent of Magic Line (5.14c) blends the technical aspects of the route with deep emotional weight. Rodden saw the route as her “declaration of independence” after her divorce; a public statement declaring that “just Beth” could still succeed. She captures the wrenching agony of falling on the last move of a route: “I wanted him [my belayer] to tie me off to a tree and just leave me there, a spectacle for all the tourists hiking by. Beth Rodden: could have been someone, but she wasn’t, so here she hangs in infamy.”
Part three is the most captivating and emotionally resonant portion of the book. Earlier on, we have witnessed Rodden become inextricably linked to Caldwell—and her trauma—and here we get to see Rodden step into her own and find her identity. Her new marriage and her child do not provide the answer to the question of who she is; only Rodden can discover that through therapy, introspection, and self-love. “I had trained myself to lock Kyrgyzstan away, and facing those memories one by one felt like a kind of training project too … But instead of finding a sequence that successfully led up a blank rock wall… the gains were gradual, less tangible… As my thoughts became less frightening to me, less shameful, that meant I could loosen my rigid control over them. I could be kinder to myself. I could be myself.” Rodden’s capacity to break her destructive patterns, to unlearn her coping and controlling mechanisms resulting from her trauma, and to finally divorce her self-worth from her climbing is as awe-inspiring as any of her ascents.
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