TOPOPHILIA: Transforming Climbing Culture and Listening to Indigenous Voices with Climbing Guide Bennett Rahn

NORTHER EMILY: Thanks for talking with us today. Would you like to start by explaining who you are and how you present yourself?

BENNETT RAHN: Well, that’s a complicated question but in the spaces that I occupy on the internet, I introduce myself as Bennett Rahn, I use she/her pronouns, and I am a plus-size outdoor athlete. That means a lot of different things to me, but primarily I’m a climber, I’m a skier, I’m an advocate, I’m a queer person.

NORTHER EMILY: What kind of language do you use to speak about your relationships with places and what are some of the places that you feel most connected to?

BENNETT RAHN: So, I’ve lived in Washington State my whole life. In the last couple of years I have spent a lot more time on the road for various reasons, and something that I have found myself kind of coming to terms with is that I get very homesick for Washington State. 

I feel very connected to the whole area. I spent a long time developing identity in relation to the Cascade Mountains, the Puget Sound and even the high desert plateau in central Washington. I feel like there is a…sense of homecoming. There’s a sense of camaraderie between me and the land here. I also I feel very strongly about anybody’s relationship to the land also being related to a relationship to the indigenous people who are native to those places, and the gratitude we can show those people.

I do spend a fair amount of time also trying to stay connected with the tribal groups in the regions that I recreate in. I love hearing their stories and their indigenous knowledge and teachings. 

NORTHER EMILY: As far as building relationships with and having respect for the tribal entities that are originally from that land, can you tell me more about what that looks like for you? 

BENNETT RAHN: I think we probably come from pretty, pretty similar backgrounds. My mom’s whole family is colonizers, and my dad is half indigenous. So, I am a white person and I definitely take up space as a white person on the internet. I do not like identifying myself as an indigenous person, but I also believe very strongly that my grandmother’s people’s identities were stolen from them on purpose. Reconnecting and re-identifying with those identities actually does the opposite of what they were trying to do. I do not want to speak for what I do not know, not being raised on reservations. I do not have a tribal membership.

There are so many rad things that you can do that are objectively cooler than sending hard.

I do think that standing up in opposition to the history of violence that was done is really important. So that’s what I mean when I talk about showing respect to these tribal nations, it’s mostly just acknowledging that they’re there and spreading their words and listening to what they’re saying, it’s not really that complicated. They have been intentionally erased over and over and over again. So, the best way to be in opposition to that erasure is by listening and letting people know that they’re here. 

I think there’s like a common thread in woke white people outdoor circles that try to be like, “Oh, well, I did a search on nativeland.ca and therefore I know who’s, land I’m on and that’s close enough. That’s good enough.” But that isn’t really enough, especially because you can tell who did the search on nativeland.ca- it’s just a list of random words. Sometimes they’re in the indigenous spelling and sometimes they use the white people spelling. 

You don’t know anything about those tribal groups. You don’t know which tribal groups have stronger affinities to that land and which ones got included in that map because they have like historical trading ties with that land, but they weren’t residents there. 

You don’t actually know the history at all and that doesn’t solve a problem, it just tokenizes them. What you need to know and you need to understand, is the history of these places. You can’t learn it by a simple Google search.

Especially with areas that I spend a lot of time in, I do try to learn as much as I can over time. Because I have lived in the Pacific Northwest for so long, I have spent a lot of time learning about these tribal groups. My grandmother’s people are not from around here. I actually know more about the tribal groups in the Pacific Northwest than I do about my grandmother’s people which are from the American Southwest- New Mexico, Arizona area. 

There are opportunities available, you just have to take them. Go to tribal centers- not to benefit yourself, not to just take part in cool cultural experiences, but to go and to learn. 

There are a lot of resources out there, and are open to the public: museums, heritage sites. There are Instagram accounts for different tribes that have a lot of great resources and talk about what they’re doing- their language or opportunities for you to support them financially or in the legislative sense. A lot of tribal groups are still trying to get federal recognition, and you can help as a constituent.

When I spend time in Yosemite Valley, for example, I’m like, “this is a fucking sacred valley and we have stolen it from these people. They are still here and we need to talk about it.” 

And yes, it really bothers me when people have only received a white people’s education about indigenous history, it is pretty frustrating.

I spent a long time developing identity in relation to the Cascade Mountains, the Puget Sound and even the high desert plateau in central Washington. I feel like there is a…sense of homecoming.

NORTHER EMILY: It’s really hard because, I think that a lot of people mean well, but they have so been so thoroughly indoctrinated into colonizer culture, as we all have, and they’re looking to other white people to educate them about indigenous issues. I don’t think most people notice or realize they are subconsciously choosing to learn about indigenous history or the truth of our shared history through a white supremacist lens, but it relies on incomplete or false narratives to avoid accountability. 

And also- I don’t want to shame anybody’s like honest effort, right? 

I grew up on the coast and I have always been really interested in the relationships that people who came before us had with this land because the coast is spooky as fuck. 

I am really guarded about the information that I will share with my white clients, because I don’t want to turn someone’s very tragic and personal history into a little story that I tell you while we’re hiking. So I’m kind of tight-lipped about some of the things I’ve learned. 

I teach foraging and I tell people right up front, “I am not gonna talk to you about indigenous uses of plants because that’s someone else’s knowledge and you should be mindful of the lineage of your teachers when you seek out that knowledge. It’s not appropriate for me to teach you medicinal, ceremonial or traditional uses of plants.” 

BENNETT RAHN: You have to build a lot of foundation before people can understand that nuance. I think that like a lot of white people have been taught explicitly and implicitly that they have the right to whatever they want.

NORTHER EMILY: Yeah.

BENNETT RAHN: That’s a really hard thing to overcome.

NORTHER EMILY: Do you wanna talk about how you got into guiding? 

I would love to hear specifically about what kind of circumstances you had to navigate in order to become a guide as a plus size woman.

BENNETT RAHN: I wanna be clear about what I’ve done, you know, because guiding is like a word that gets used to cover a lot of bases. 

I used to work and I still occasionally substitute teach at a middle school in the Seattle area that has an outdoor program and we did a lot of camping and backpacking programming there.

Now I’m a single pitch instructor which means that I can guide anything in terms of single pitch climbing. 

And what that looks like is that you have to get a certification through the AMGA, the American Mountain Guides Association. It’s a three day course and a two day exam and then you have to get your 10 day wilderness first responder. 

There are a lot of requirements to get started with that program and it was pretty significant for me to get over that hurdle. 

I’m fairly certain- and there aren’t statistics on this and I’m basing this just based off of my understanding of the guide community and the people that I know… I think I am the first plus-size certified climbing guide in the United States. 

By plus-size, I mean: the definition of a person who wears above a size 16 or 18 women’s clothing or extra large men’s clothing. 

For one, I mean, you hit the nail on the head with certification- in order to get certified to be a climbing guide, you have to be a pretty competent climber, and if you are a person who is above a women’s size 18, there are not a lot of climbing harnesses available to us, and those that were available were a kind of harness that are not safe to lead climb in. 

In order to be a guide, you have to be able to lead climb, but most plus size harnesses were like rigging style harnesses that are not certified by the UIAA to be able to take lead falls. Basically, up until very recently, it wasn’t actually possible for somebody that was my size to have access to the required technical safety gear in order to do what I wanna do. So that’s one pretty significant hurdle.

I think there’s like a common thread in woke white people outdoor circles that try to be like, “Oh, well, I did a search on nativeland.ca and therefore I know who’s, land I’m on and that’s close enough. That’s good enough.” But that isn’t really enough

Now there are a couple of brands that have sized up a little bit. There’s one brand in particular that I often recommend called Misty Mountain Threadworks that does make the most size inclusive climbing harness on the market that is good for lead climbing. 

But I think it’s also just that climbing has a reputation as a sport as being something that you have to like, be able to do a pull up. “I can’t do a pull up so, I can’t go rock climbing”. And I’m like, “I’ve never done a pull up in my entire life”.

Climbing is seen as a sport that’s all about how strong your upper body is. And so a lot of the work that I do also is to kind of try and test the notion of what your body has to look like in order to do this sport. 

I think it’s also worth mentioning that I have a pretty significant fear of falling when I’m climbing.

I’m heavier than most people that I climb with. And even though the climbing systems are rated for plenty of weight in the climbing system, there is still this issue of, if your belayer is significantly lighter than you and you fall, you are going to pull them off the ground. So, it is actually less safe for me to do a lot of climbing that has significant fall risk, because I will fall farther than a smaller person. 

I had to overcome a lot of fear and a lot of obstacles to get to the point where I could feel confident in my climbing ability to pass the exams that I needed to do, or past the requirements that I had to pass in order to get certified as a guide.

NORTHER EMILY: How long have you been guiding? 

BENNETT RAHN: I got certified in the fall of 2021. I’ve been guiding for a year and a half. I got certified while I was still working in a different profession and I don’t even guide full time. I do a lot of different things. I’m a freelancer as well, but I’ve been guiding more regularly since last summer.

NORTHER EMILY: That’s so cool.

I’m so excited to do this interview with you in particular because it’s been really hard for me to find anyone in the climbing community that wants to have this conversation.

The only time that I hear rock climbers talk about the places that they climb and the love that they have for them is within the context of access issues. Like, “Oh, we have to take really good care of this place because we don’t wanna lose access”. And for me it’s like, “I just love that rock formation so much, I want to know what it’s like to stand on top of it.”

BENNETT RAHN: It’s so funny hearing you say this because I spent the weekend guiding at one of my favorite places in Washington State, which is this area called Frenchman Coulee or Vantage. And like, it’s not my favorite because the rock climbing is any good. In fact, the rock climbing is like, solidly mediocre. The rock quality is solidly mediocre. It’s not like an incredible vista either. I just love it and like, I love it for a lot of reasons, but I just love it.

This was the first time I’ve guided professionally there. I’ve done a lot of meetups and informal things there, but this is the first time I guided there professionally. And I just was like, I was like a kid on Christmas. I was like, “I want to show you guys all my favorite places, like, have you seen this? They were like, “it’s just really cool being here with you because you love this place so much. And like, that’s contagious”.

And I was like,”Yeah, but I don’t love this place because the climbing is really rad and like, I can climb really hard and push myself. It’s like, I love this place because it smells like sage. I love this place because the camping is free. I love this place because I think the rock formations look really cool and there’s a lot of really rad geologic history that I know about this area. And like, let’s talk about it. I love this place because there’s pigeons in the crack. Isn’t that rad? I love this place”.

In order to be a guide, you have to be able to lead climb, but most plus size harnesses were like rigging style harnesses that are not certified by the UIAA to be able to take lead falls. Basically, up until very recently, it wasn’t actually possible for somebody that was my size to have access to the required technical safety gear

NORTHER EMILY: I also love Frenchman’s Coulee so much. I will just go there just to camp there and bask in the sunshine. It’s the best early season weather that you can get in the Pacific Northwest. There’s so much good hiking out there too. 

Central Washington is a wildly underrated. 

BENNETT RAHN: I also think that the Stewart Range is underrated. I know the Stewart Range gets a lot of love but, like, compared to the volcanoes, it’s not enough. 

I’m a central Washington fan. Because I grew up in Spokane and I live in Seattle, it cuts my identity in half, you know?

NORTHER EMILY: What are some of the cultural changes that you would love to see taking place in rock climbing over the next couple of years and what do you hope that people can take away from the experience of doing a guided climb with you? 

BENNETT RAHN: I would really love to divorce from the idea that the only way to be a real climber is to push grade. I think that’s still pretty prevalent and I’m pretty annoyed by it. There are so many rad things that you can do that are objectively cooler than sending hard that are like 5.7 or whatever.

If you wanna try hard, that’s cool for you. But I want you to not invalidate people that don’t want to try hard. I am a climbing guide that doesn’t like climbing harder than 5.7. You can be an incredibly effective climbing guide and only climb 5.7, if what your clients want to work on is not really hard grades. Most people seek out a climbing guide because they want to have an experience or they want to learn skills. And I think that having really rad experiences and learning skills does not actually require a certain grade.

I would love to see gyms start shifting their attitude… Most gyms require you to be able to lead at like soft 5.10 or a hard 5.9 in order to lead climb. I think that’s bullshit. I think that you should be able to learn how to lead climb at any grade, so long as you have the skills and competency to do it.

I would really love to see brands- and I think some brands are starting to do this, but there is like a pretty significant token around it- I would love to see brands supporting athletes that are doing more for their community than just like sending hard. Not that pro athletes shouldn’t also be people who like to send hard, but there should be a mix of all of that.

I really want people that are interested in the sport to understand that you don’t have to be good at the sport to try the sport. Like, how many people play soccer for fun that aren’t trying to become pro athletes? That should also be the way that climbers approach climbing. 

I want to teach people how to love the sport that I love. Not because I want people to like, try their hardest grade ever and like, push themselves really hard. Not that I don’t like encouraging people to push themselves, but what I want people to get out of an experience of climbing with me is like a love of the land, a love of the sport and more personal autonomy about the sport than they had going in.

Most gyms require you to be able to lead at like soft 5.10 or a hard 5.9 in order to lead climb. I think that’s bullshit. I think that you should be able to learn how to lead climb at any grade, so long as you have the skills and competency to do it.

I really like teaching people how to do what I love without me there. I want people to like, have agency to go out and try things without a guide. I focus on education more than I do on them just going out and climbing as much as possible. And I think that there is space for both of those things and I’m taking up space in the ways that I like to take up space.

NORTHER EMILY: Can you share a little bit about what it’s like to represent as a plus size climber and a plus size climbing guide? Is that ever a struggle for you, to have to be this role model for other people? 

BENNETT RAHN: I got an Instagram following probably the same way that Ash Manning did, which is that I posted about my life, it resonated with people, I blew up. I now have a public voice and I have to be really conscious about what I’m posting and why. 

I am under even more scrutiny than like your average White Man guide because if something that I do is not the 100% best recommendation and it gets posted on the internet. Not only is my qualifications as the guide going to be questioned because of that. But also because I’m fat and a woman and queer and have darker brown skin-  all of those things. I am a little bit more under a microscope. 

I also get in my DMs like, if not daily, then at least weekly people being like, “thank you so much for doing what you do, I tried climbing” or like, “thanks to your recommendation on this harness, I was able to get out and I had a really good time” or like, “thanks to you, I’m feeling really confident and I’m gonna go try and do this trip” or whatever and like, that’s the kind of impact I want to be having on the world. And so, if that means that I have to be more conscious about how I show up in public and on the internet and, I have to deal with trolls and people calling me names-  I’m gonna be dealing with people calling me names anyway. 

Like, I’m a fat person that shows up in athletic spaces full of straight size white people. I’m gonna get hate no matter what, doing what I like to do. So I might as well take the brunt of it and keep turning that narrative around. 

And who knows? It might not last forever. I might get tired. I might get fed up and change my mind. But right now this is the right thing to do and I feel really responsible for my community and the people that I represent, as I take up space and try to create more opportunities for us.