Correction appended: A previous version of this article listed the name of the Bernens as Vernens. The change has been made.
Humans have always sought to accomplish the impossible, a concept that serves as the core of adventure sports. One of the oldest adventure sports is rock climbing, born out of necessity and transformed into a hobby, career or lifestyle for many. From the first Alpine mountaineers to disciples of Alex Honnold and his historic “Free Solo,” rock climbing has manifested in many people in many unlikely places; it has even trickled down the hills of Appalachia and nestled within the small city of Athens.
Modern rock climbing comes in many variations: some indoor, some outdoor, some with the aid of ropes and safety devices, some without. Those interested in indoor climbing in the Athens area have two main options: the 36-feet-tall rock wall at Ping Recreation Center or Blockhouse Bouldering Gym in The Plains.
The latter began as the notion of a thought in Ted Welser’s head circa 2017. Welser, a professor of sociology at Ohio University, is one of the founders of Climb Athens, a nonprofit group of local climbers with the mission of developing climbing resources and a strong network in the area.
“Prior to the start of Climb Athens I had built a bouldering wall in my garage and I had mostly just used it for my own climbing, but for a couple years I made good connections with the climbing community at OU and also at Hocking (College),” Welser said. “(Climbers) would come over and climb in my garage.”
The goal of the organization's early stages was to grow this community of climbers and create a space for indoor bouldering to thrive in an area without an official climbing gym. Two members of the group are Kate Bernens and her husband, Zach. The two met climbing at the rock wall in Ping Center during their undergraduate years and continued pursuing the passion alongside Welser. Just before the pandemic, the couple decided to buy a property and open a climbing gym, now known as Blockhouse.
“The organization succeeded beyond our hopes because I have a job, I have other things to do,” Welser said. “I couldn’t really manage and start a climbing gym, so I’m super psyched they did it.”
To this day, Blockhouse utilizes equipment from Welser’s homemade climbing wall, continuing the connection between the early days of indoor bouldering in Athens and its current iteration. Now that the initial goal of Climb Athens has been fulfilled, the group exists as a community resource while anticipating the next step up for local climbing culture.
“Our focus is … using indoor climbing as a way to reinforce connections between people … to practice and enjoy it, and then to try bridging into the outdoors in ways people are excited about,” Welser said.
A current Climb Athens volunteer working hard to build up a community of outdoor climbers is Lucas Blankenship, a second-year graduate student studying sociology, as well as parks, recreation, hospitality and tourism. Blankenship also serves as the Southern Ohio stewardship director for the Ohio Climbers Coalition and spends many of his volunteer hours exploring local areas, looking to understand the landscape and find areas for improvement.
Through his experiences in different realms of climbing, Blankenship has learned that the university's involvement in Athens is undeniably important.
“What makes (the Athens climbing scene) unique is the presence of the university,” Blankenship said. “You always have seemingly very excited and stoked individuals to contribute to the climbing community.”
Blankenship also recognizes the difficulties of having an ever-rotating group of university-affiliated climbers take part in the community.
“I feel like so often a group gets really excited about climbing at OU, then they graduate and then the next group kind of has to rebuild,” he said. “That’s really hard and it kind of feeds into the accessibility component, so I think finding ways to have more longevity (is important).”
The decision to locate Blockhouse just outside the Athens city limits was intentional for reasons pertaining to this crossover between Athens climbers and the university.
“From the beginning we knew the student population would be a big part of the demographic, and if we were a little bit closer to campus that would be great, but we were also like ‘it would be nice to not be on campus because then the community members can feel like it’s also their space,’” Kate Bernens said.
The intersection of students and locals in the climbing community, as well as the range of skill sets present in this demographic, has helped encase all forms of rock climbing in a supportive atmosphere.
Katie Bullock-Gawf, a second-year graduate student studying parks, recreation, hospitality and tourism, is the graduate assistant in charge of the climbing wall at Ping. In addition to working at the wall and helping organize outdoor climbing trips through Outdoor Pursuits, Bullock-Gawf enjoys spending time at the local climbing gym.
“Blockhouse is one of my favorite places to go in all of Athens just because people there are always so positive and always so supportive,” Bullock-Gawf said. “I’ll be climbing a route at Blockhouse that is hard for me and somebody I don’t even know and haven’t talked to will be cheering me on.”
According to Kate Bernens, this atmosphere was one of the key goals of the facility when it was initially under construction.
“It’s super inclusive because of the students and because it’s a small community there’s a lot of beginners … we were all beginners once … so it’s just very accepting,” she said.
The supportive energy of Blockhouse is something Bullock-Gawf felt immediately upon arrival in Athens for her master’s degree. She cited Clint Young, a junior studying outdoor recreation and education, as well as physical activity and sport coaching, as one of her greatest supporters during her initial learning process.
Additionally, Young is the president of the Climbing Club at OU and the skills clinic supervisor at the Ping rock wall. Young has also noticed how the combination of university students and community members affects the way climbing is regarded in Athens, especially with some climbers just beginning their journey and others deeply entrenched in the obsession.
“The combination of those two things, along with the age group here with how young everyone is, creates a really welcoming environment for beginner climbers and it also creates an environment where they’re able to learn so much about the sport so quickly,” Young said.
Another member of the Climbing Club’s executive board is Brenna McFarland, a junior studying environmental science and sustainability. McFarland also works at Blockhouse and is the climbing wall supervisor for Outdoor Pursuits. In her tapestry of involvement, she has witnessed how the many crossovers in the community encourage skill development by constantly feeding into one another.
“The niche of people interested in outdoor climbing has been increasing,” she said. “You’ll see people who go to the Ping wall and then eventually they start going to Blockhouse, and then after they go to Blockhouse they get interested in outdoor bouldering or outdoor sport climbing.”
Bullcock-Gawf believes this snowball effect is a result of the passion climbers share for collecting and distributing knowledge, a quality Young attested to.
“It’s important that we’re able to pass down this knowledge and we’re able to get people into the sport, because that’s how they are able to climb those harder grades,” Young said.
Young is in the process of receiving his Single Pitch Instructor certification, a credential that would allow him to teach climbing professionally.
“I would love to guide full-time when I graduate for as long as my body will let me and coach climbing, and honestly just teach people about the sport,” Young said. “Get them into it and show them the amount of happiness and passion you can find in the outdoors through climbing,”
Although Bullock-Gawf doesn’t quite know where climbing will slot into her future career, she hopes to engage in the local climbing community wherever she ends up.
“I definitely want to keep sharing climbing with other folks,” she said. “It’s something I love so much and I think it is a really powerful way of moving our bodies.”
Bullock-Gawf mentioned her interest in climbing comes from the diversity of the sport.
“I feel like it is a sport that inherently celebrates people’s own unique skills and the diversity of people’s bodies,” she said.
There are countless other incomprehensible reasons people take on certain risks and dedicate so much of their lives to the sport, one of which Blankenship believes has to do with self-expression.
“There’s a lot of different theories and perspectives as to why people participate in adventure sports,” Blankenship said. “I would say (broadly), it’s a subjective experience. In my personal opinion, I think it reflects someone’s reality back to them and they realize climbing is this expressive avenue to create an identity and portray that identity in a way they are excited about.”
Blankenship shares Young and Bullock-Gawf’s desire to include climbing in his future and help uplift climbers in Athens, Southeast Ohio and Appalachia in the process.
“I would like to continue to instruct but maybe take these experiences I’m currently having and have them culminate into contributing to projects like the Bailey’s Trail System,” he said.
Many of Blankenship’s fellow local climbers have also found areas of improvement that, if acted upon, have the potential to bring the cohort of climbers to another level. For example, McFarland hopes to normalize climbers of all genders on the wall by dipping her toe into areas of climbing with low female involvement and supporting events like Womxn’s Climb Night at the Ping wall.
“The scene of female climbers at OU is small, so something I want to do is try to make a community where female and genderqueer or non-binary climbers can feel more included,” she said. “I really want to increase my skill set so I can share those skills with others.”
Blankenship noted another facet holding the local climbing network back from achieving its full potential.
“One thing that would be beneficial as a climbing collective community is more direct contributions to the development of our regional assets,” he said. “Climbing in Southeast Ohio is really good, really fun and there’s a lot of potential. But in a regional context, it’s not as glorious as some of the other areas.”
These referenced areas are Red River Gorge and New River Gorge, both under four hours away from Athens and famous pilgrimage points for climbers all over the country. The proximity of Athens to these spots serves as an inspiration for many local climbers to develop immediately accessible climbing resources into something similar. Welser hopes these could someday be a setup akin to Miguel's Pizza in Red River Gorge.
The initial mission of Welser’s passion project is soon to be completed: the half of Blockhouse still under construction is scheduled to be finalized in 2025. As the first phase of the nonprofit enters its final stage, Welser looks toward the next step of Climb Athens as a resource-development collective, which will hopefully also be the next step for the local climbing community as a whole.
“We need community first, and we need people experiencing the value of what we have and then seeing what else needs to be done,” he said.
