Mo Beck is an elite climber who was born with a limb difference. For Mo, rock climbing is a puzzle, requiring her to find unique routes up the wall. Over the course of her career, Mo earned a spot on the national paralympic climbing team and has been a top tier competitor at countless national and international climbing events. Now, she's encouraging other adaptive climbers to rethink the limits of what their bodies can do.
Mo Beck is an elite climber who was born with a limb difference. For Mo, rock climbing is a puzzle, requiring her to find unique routes up the wall. Over the course of her career, Mo earned a spot on the national paralympic climbing team and has been a top tier competitor at countless national and international climbing events. Now, she's encouraging other adaptive climbers to rethink the limits of what their bodies can do.
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Mo Beck:
If there was a me 20 years ago that I could have heard on a podcast, I'm just like, man, I think of how many years of trial and error I could have saved. I would have skipped trying to climb with my prosthetic or trying to tape a freaking ladle to my hand so I could grab whole... I could have skipped all that stuff.
Shelby Stanger:
Mo Beck is an elite climber who was born with a limb difference. Her left arm ends about halfway down her forearm and she has no left hand. For Mo, rock climbing is like a puzzle. She can't follow the route that other athletes use, so she has to figure out how to get up the wall her own way. Over the course of her career, Mo earned a spot on the national paralympic climbing team and has been a top tier competitor at countless national and international climbing events. Now she's encouraging other adaptive climbers to rethink the limits of what their bodies can do.
Shelby Stanger:
I'm Shelby Stanger and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studios production presented by Capital One and the REI Co-op MasterCard.
Shelby Stanger:
Mo Beck, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living. I'm really excited to talk to you.
Mo Beck:
Thanks for having me.
Shelby Stanger:
You have always been outdoorsy. Is that the real story?
Mo Beck:
I think so, but not always from like a place of intent that I think that you become as a grownup. Just as a kid it was more of the classic mom wanted to get us out of the house in the summer and I went to a really cool Girl Scout camp where you camped all summer long. I don't know, there's no real definition of outdoorsy, right? But I definitely grew up living outdoors, out in nature in whatever form that took.
Shelby Stanger:
You were born with a limb difference and for those who don't know can you just talk about what that is?
Mo Beck:
Yeah, so limb difference can be a lot of different things and it's a huge spectrum. So I can really only tell my story. My parents had no idea it was long enough ago that there's no fancy three-dimensional sonograms like they have now. I just came out total surprise, missing my hand from just above the wrist. And my parents kind of just, I imagine took it in stride. I was there, but I wasn't there. I'm sure they had their panicked moment. I was their first kid too, so I always say that's probably for the better because they didn't have any clue what they were doing anyway. So why not add some total curveball to the whole thing? And I think at the end of the day, I'm sure when it started it was something my parents like hyper fixated on and they were great at getting me support. They drove me seven hours to the Shriners Hospital so I could get top of the line prosthetics as a kid and get training with them.
Mo Beck:
But at the end of the day, I was just like another kid who was like breaking curfew and staying up too late and trying to make sure I did my homework on time. I oftentimes get pinged by parents who find out they're about to have a limb different child, and they're like, "What do we do? Do you have any tips?" And they're kind of panicked, understandably. And I always just tell them, look, when they're 16 and stealing the keys to the car, your last concern is going to be if they have a limb difference. They're going to be fine.
Shelby Stanger:
So you did have a prosthetic when you grew up?
Mo Beck:
I did. I got a prosthetic growing up from a very young age. I got one really young and I had a hook. They ended up taking it away from me because as a toddler I would just sit there and bash on the table and ruin all my parents' nice furniture. So they took that away. I had a cosmesis, which is pretty much just a mannequin arm. And then I did have a myoelectric, which is a powered one, but all it really did is open and close slowly, and it was heavy. It didn't really do much.
Mo Beck:
But the human brain, if you were to see me in the grocery store, if you saw I had two hands, even if one of them had broken fingers and was purple because it was old and I didn't take care of it, your brain still is just like, oh, move on. But if you see someone missing a limb, you can't help it. Your monkey brain's like, oh, that's a different... We should look at that and see what that is. And we all do it. I do it. There's a guy at the Home Depot I go to here who has one arm, and every time I'm like, oh yeah, that's my dude. We notice differences, that's just who we are as a species.
Mo Beck:
It's exhausting to be on the receiving end of that. Even if everyone's nice about it and catches themself and says, oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to look. It is just exhausting. So I found that if I wore an arm, I would just save myself that sort of emotional labor of being like, yep, there's another person looking at me. But I kind of over-corrected and got to the point where I couldn't leave the house without it. This hunk of plastic was just like it became a part of me and who I was. And all of a sudden I realized it's not helping me live my life. It's wildly uncomfortable. And so I stopped wearing it outside of work.
Mo Beck:
When I moved to Boulder I just only wore it to the office, I can't tell you why. And then one day I went right out to dinner with friends after and still had my arm on and my friend Dan looked at me and said, Mo, you have two hands. That's weird. And that was the light bulb moment for me was, yeah, this hunk of plastic, that's not helpful to me, it's not who I am. It's a tool. And there are people out there who as adults wear them every day. And that's great. It's such a personal preference and I have the absolute privilege of it being a choice because I'm an arm amputee. I don't have a mobility disability, I don't need a prosthetic leg to move around. So I have the chance to sort of jettison it that a lot of people don't get.
Mo Beck:
It's kind of like I've always equated an upper limb prosthetic to a ski boot where while you're skiing, fantastic, best tool for the jobs. But it sucks walking around the parking lot in the ski boot and the lodge in the ski boot, imagine going to work in your ski boots. That's kind of what the prosthetic was like for me.
Shelby Stanger:
Mo doesn't wear a prosthetic anymore. It never made a difference in her physical abilities anyway. From a young age, Mo's parents taught her that she could do anything that someone with two hands could do. They empowered Mo to be a confident headstrong kid. Her rebellious spirit turned out to be a real asset that came in handy when she got the opportunity to try rock climbing for the very first time. Tell me how you got into rock climbing.
Mo Beck:
I got into rock climbing at Girl Scout camp. It was in the middle of nowhere, Maine, and this was in like the mid '90s and so climbing gyms weren't a thing yet, not really. But I was so lucky that, all the activities to do at this camp, there's archery arts and crafts, canoeing, we had a rock climbing session, and this is where I was super lucky, it wasn't on some plywood wall, it was an actual giant granite boulder. And at some point some camp counselor just put a giant bolt on the top of this boulder. And looking back, this is super sketchy because the counselor would just scramble up with the rope in their hand, thread it directly through the bolt, and then climb down with it and then tie the girls in to just kind of climb it. Which is definitely not the AMGA certified appropriate way of managing a top rope. But it was really fun and cool.
Mo Beck:
But I distinctly remember the one counselor telling me, oh, I don't know how you can rock climb, like physically. We can't fake it. Other things we could like tie the bow for archery, we could duct tape it to my prosthetic. But she was just like, I don't know how you can rock climb, so feel free to set this out. Here's some friendship bracelet kits to make if you want. And by that point I was really into doing what I wasn't supposed to do or expected to do. And so when this counselor was like, you can set this out, I was kind of like, in my own 12-year-old way, just like, screw you, watch me. And I did it and I don't think I did it well, it's mossy, it's buggy, it's not a premier climbing destination.
Mo Beck:
But what stuck with me with climbing is when I was up there, no one was paying attention to me anymore, right? Like even though I was only 20 feet up, I was still like out of that world of the gaggle of Girl Scouts. And no one noticed me. I wasn't up there doing this one-handed thing or being inspiring or just being defiant. It was just like me and the rock. And it was such a cool relationship I had never had before. And I think that was why climbing stuck with me. I don't play soccer anymore. I don't do archery. But rock climbing is the one thing that stuck with me since the age of 12.
Shelby Stanger:
After that first climb at Girl Scout camp, Mo became fascinated by the sport. She started reading all the magazines and books about climbing, ice climbing and mountaineering that she could find. She even became the climbing counselor at that Girl Scout camp. This was the late '90s. The internet was young and Mo didn't know that any other adaptive climbers existed. She couldn't just Google adaptive climbing, so she had to pave her own path. How do you climb?
Mo Beck:
Some days not well. I keep it simple. I just put athletic tape on my stump and go. That way I can feel the rock still. I feel like every other week I get an email in my inbox that says, hi, I'm an engineering student who has designed this crazy new hook or this like cam hand and all this crazy stuff and it's really cool. But I'm of the philosophy that simple is the way to do it. I want to be able to feel the rock. I can do a lot of things with my stump that are actually probably an advantage. When I put it in a crack, if it's the right size crack I can hang out forever. I did a move in the gym just yesterday that my partner, her fingers got too tired to do it. And I was just like, well, I don't have fingers so I can just grab this and climb forever.
Mo Beck:
But it's the technical skills that I did have to learn, like belaying and how do I lead? How do I clip? How do I coil rope? How do I do all this other stuff? But the actual movement of climbing was pretty pure because for most people there are no adaptive devices.
Shelby Stanger:
Eventually Mo attended University of Vermont where she joined the climbing club. While she was at college the internet became more accessible and she discovered that there were other adaptive climbers out there.
Mo Beck:
My entryway into the adaptive climbing community was actually ice climbing.
Shelby Stanger:
So hold on. You found other people that were adaptive athletes finally when you found the internet. This is like 2002, late 2000s.
Mo Beck:
I would say I think the first time I ever went to a gathering of adaptive humans was in 2009.
Shelby Stanger:
What was that like?
Mo Beck:
It's kind of funny because I became the looky-loo. I was just like, that's a dude in a wheelchair. How's he going to ice climb? That dude's blind. How's he going to do it?
Shelby Stanger:
Back up. So your first experience in late 2000s was you went to an ice climbing competition with other adaptive athletes?
Mo Beck:
A festival, just to hangout [inaudible 00:10:42]-
Shelby Stanger:
A festival.
Mo Beck:
Yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
How did you find out about this?
Mo Beck:
So I had built an ice ax arm in my buddy's garage and I went onto rockclimbing.com, may it rest in peace, and posted a photo of it and I was like, look at how cool this is. I'm the only disabled climber in the world. And this guy, Malcolm Daly logged on and saw my post and said, no, you're not. He's like, I run a nonprofit that takes disabled people climbing. You're not the only one. And I was kind of like, what? And in that exchange he was like, by the way, we're having a big adaptive ice climbing festival in Ouray, Colorado. You should come, it's free. That's a huge thing for me in college. And it's called Gimps on Ice. And I was like, okay, I like that name. I have a hunch that you guys have a good attitude, you're lighthearted about it.
Mo Beck:
I had done a couple disabled kids camps as a kid, soccer sports and stuff, and I hated it. I think that's why I associated... All the volunteers there were just like, oh, let us help you. Let us do that for you. Oh, you missed the shot, but you try hard, maybe you'll get it next time. And I'm like, I don't want to be a baby. Just because I have a disability doesn't mean I'm soft. And so when I met this crew that was like, oh yeah, it's Gimps on Ice. We get really drunk every night after climbing. I was like, oh, people with disabilities can be cool actually.
Mo Beck:
And that was kind of the beginning of my new life was buying a ticket to Colorado, meeting these people. And ice climbing is fantastic because it's an adaptive sport for everybody. Everybody needs crampons and ice axes.
Shelby Stanger:
Tell me more about what it was like when you met this adaptive community in Ouray.
Mo Beck:
I was still so hesitant to go because my only experience with adaptive community had been like very curated and protected and we weren't allowed to take risks or fail. Lord forbid the poor little disabled kid hurt herself rock climbing, right? Was kind of a lot of what I was dealing with from a lot of people, and sometimes still do. But then here's this community in Ouray that wanted to climb so badly they woke up before the sun rose to get their kit on. They got to the bottom of the gorge however they could, whether it was snowmobile, whether it was going physically lowered because they couldn't walk, whether it was just kind of literally blindly groping their way down the guide ropes, hand ropes to the base of the gorge. Climb all day, bleed everywhere, ice chunks to the face, spikes to the leg, you name it. And then they'd go into town and just party harder than any frat party I had been to. And I was just like, I think these might be my people.
Shelby Stanger:
After graduating from college, Mo moved to Denver where there was a more outdoorsy and active community. There she was able to spend time training with the people she met in Ouray and she became an even more skilled climber. A couple of years later in 2014, Mo competed in the first ever USA Para Climbing Nationals.
Mo Beck:
I won the damn thing, out of one person. I was the only [inaudible 00:13:49] because I think there was 30 of us that year.
Shelby Stanger:
Wait. There were 30 of you and you're the only woman?
Mo Beck:
I was the only woman with an upper limb difference.
Shelby Stanger:
Wow.
Mo Beck:
In my class, yeah. But USAC was like, that's still got you spot on the team if you want to do some car washes and fundraise some money to go to Spain and compete in the World Championships. And I went home to my husband and I was like, hey, I never knew this was a thing, but now I really want it. How do you feel about going to Spain? And he was just like, sure, I guess. And we went to the World Championships and I won that out of three people, which is better.
Shelby Stanger:
I want to hear about some of these competitions where you've won. Was there a memorable one?
Mo Beck:
Probably my most memorable one was the first world champs, the second world champs that I didn't win. Winning was great, it was fun. But it wasn't because I was consistently just doing so well. I wasn't super motivated to become the best I could be. And so when the competition got stronger, more women were showing up who had also been climbing their whole lives and somehow stumbled on that there was a community for it, that empowered me to then try hard. I bullied myself into being like, well shoot, I want it back. I want that gold medal back.
Mo Beck:
I'll probably never win again no matter what just because I'm a competitive spirit, but I don't have that grit that it takes to wake up at 5:00 AM, do these drills, do that core workout, have a healthy breakfast, do workout number three. I'm much more of, oh, a squirrel or let's go climb outside. I don't have that dedication that it now takes because the level has just gotten so high. So I kind of struggled with that. And in 2019 at the World Championships, I was training really hard. I was trying to be the best I could be because I had just lost my title in 2018, here's my chance to get it back. And then two weeks before the World Championships, I tore my hip labrum climbing outside. It was awful. I was hobbling. But I was just like, I'm still going to go. We'll just see what happens.
Mo Beck:
And at finals, you're in isolation for hours. You don't know what's going on. You can't talk to anybody from the outside. You're just waiting there for your turn to climb. And something flipped in my brain at that competition. We're in a field in the Alps of France on this artificial climbing wall. It's nighttime. The spotlight's on you. And something clicked in my brain where I just turned into a monster and I didn't feel the pain of my hip. I just fought for it harder than I ever had before. And I didn't win, I got silver. But that is the most important medal to me because that was the best I could have been was that night on that stage.
Shelby Stanger:
I love how Mo values effort over outcome. She never set out to be a pro climber, but her success in competitions won her sponsorships from brands like The North Face and Scarpa. In 2018, Mo embarked on a groundbreaking expedition in Canada's Northwest Territories and she was named one of National Geographic's Adventurers of the Year. Are you a professional athlete for work?
Mo Beck:
Yeah, and I don't ever get used to saying that because it was never a goal of mine.
Shelby Stanger:
Cool.
Mo Beck:
It just kind of fell in my lap. I had a film made about me. I had won a couple of world championships. Things just kind of built up and all of a sudden I was just like... And I went on my first expedition and National Geographic named me Adventurer of the year for that. And it just all added up to all of a sudden I was just like, I think I could quit my job and do this. And I had the support of my husband, thankfully. And it was nothing I sought out. I was happy in my career. But I was just like, man, there's people out here who spend their whole lives hoping for this opportunity. It fell in my lap. So I'm just going to try to honor the process and just see where this goes.
Shelby Stanger:
Did it really fall in your lap or did you just keep following these breadcrumbs?
Mo Beck:
Probably breadcrumbs without realizing it, maybe. Even moving to Boulder where you're surrounded by professional rock climbers I was still just like, well, I'm not one of them. I just really like rock climbing. And it's funny, I definitely don't feel like I get paid to rock climb. I get paid to talk about rock climbing and teach rock climbing and tell stories. I never feel like I'm outside climbing being like, oh yeah, The North Face has paid for my gas to get here to go cragging today. That's not how I see it.
Shelby Stanger:
Mo Beck is a professional adaptive climber who has won competitions around the world. When she was in college, Mo attended an ice climbing festival that changed her life. The adaptive community there taught her about all the ways that people with limb differences and other disabilities can get on the wall. Mo went on to compete on the international stage and become one of the top female adaptive climbers in the world. Eventually she got an opportunity to work with the Adaptive Climbers Festival in Kentucky's Red River Gorge. Every year over 150 people camp out, climb together and party for four days in a beautiful forested canyon.
Shelby Stanger:
So tell me what goes on at the Adaptive Climbers Festival?
Mo Beck:
It's pretty rowdy. A lot of people get home from that and they don't talk about the climbing, they talk about the after party. But it's amazing. We take over an entire campground, they rent out the entire place to us.
Shelby Stanger:
Where is it?
Mo Beck:
In the Red River Gorge in Kentucky. Their first year they went through and added ramps to all their showers and handles to everything. It's not perfect accessibility, but the outdoors isn't. And that's one of our baselines we tell people, don't expect us to hold your hand. This is going to be tough. And if you're into that, this is the place for you.
Mo Beck:
The local climbing coalitions, Red River Gorge Climbers Coalition and Mira Valley, they donate crags to us that they just close down for our exclusive use because we do kind of take it over, and they don't really do that for anybody else. And the local search and rescue sends guys in with their golf cart gator thing so they can ATV people who can't walk to the base of the crag. And we have phenomenal support from the greater climbing and outdoor community-
Shelby Stanger:
What does that support look like?
Mo Beck:
We have volunteers on hand that can help someone put up a tent. We have a designated village called VI Village. So that's where we recommend people with visual impairments stay because we have lines up in the trees to help guide them to the outhouse and guide them in the right direction towards the food hall.
Shelby Stanger:
I didn't even think about that. So [inaudible 00:20:34]-
Mo Beck:
We didn't either the first year-
Shelby Stanger:
... hold onto a line, like a clothesline?
Mo Beck:
Exactly, yeah. And we didn't think of it either because none of us on the committee are VI. But then that was feedback from that year and we're just like, cool, let's do that next year. So it's kind of become self-sustaining already where it's just people give feedback like, hey, it'd be really cool if we had extra golf carts at base camp so that I don't have to walk back and forth to my tent because we do have some people that just the act of being mobile will exhaust them too much to then rock climb. So we got quad bikes donated for the weekend. And we have affinity clinics, so we have clinics where you can learn to rappel where you can learn to lead climb. But then on Saturday it's just, hey everybody with an upper limb difference, the clinic's called Armageddon meet here at 10. Hey, Broke Back Mountaineers, you guys are over at this crag. Everybody has a goofy name. Neuromusketeers for people with neurological conditions.
Mo Beck:
I think that's the secret sauce there is they get to learn technical skills from the technical clinics. But then we have our own affinity groups within our own affinity group to just really kind of put a bow on the community.
Shelby Stanger:
And then there must be like music, dancing-
Mo Beck:
And then Saturday night is a themed after party, this year was glitter. I'm still finding glitter. We had a couple meet at the festival and get married at the festival the year later. That was our wedding theme year. It's so impactful. And even though I probably cry from stress at least four times during the weekend, it's always been a beautiful thing.
Shelby Stanger:
Do you have any stories of participants who've come and how it's affected their life?
Mo Beck:
One of my favorite stories is Trevor, he's local to me here in Colorado and he's a blind climber. But he had been doing other adaptive trips with other adaptive nonprofits and they're all great, right? They're all doing great work. But he was always told, well, our insurance will never let you lead climb. You can't lead climb. How could a blind guy possibly lead climb? And he came to ACF and he took the intro to lead clinic, which is usually just you're mock leading or still on a top rope safety line. But he was just like, yeah, I know how to do that. I just want an opportunity to lead. And we looked at each other and we're just like, why not? If someone who's able-bodied or sighted can take this risk, why can't you? This is why we're here is to facilitate this risk taking that everyone else has told you you can't do. And so he did his first lead climb. It was a bolted climb, it was like a 5-2, which is quite easy and he's a much stronger climber than that. But he gets to the top and I try not to get sappy, but like he was in tears, I was in tears. It's just like he got to realize this thing and sort of achieve this independence he never thought he could have.
Mo Beck:
And I think if I had had a resource 20 years ago, I'm just like, man, think of how many years of trial and error I could have saved. I would have skipped trying to climb with my prosthetic or trying to like tape a fricking ladle to my hand so I could grab whole... Like I could have skipped all that stuff. And then it's also like somewhat selfish is the more I advocate for the community, then the more friends I get to have. And it's tough cause because I always want to be a climber first and never want to be pigeonholed. But then the most fun I have doing expeditions are my like all adaptive efforts, my all adaptive first ascents, these adaptive festivals that we put on. I'm like, that's just also what resonates for me because we have such a huge shared experience.
Mo Beck:
It's like any affinity group really. It's like the same reasons that you want to have women's groups, BIPOC groups. It's the same thing for adaptive. You just want to be in a space where it's like, cool, that's out of the way. We all have this in common now let's focus on why we're here.
Shelby Stanger:
Organizing the Adaptive Climbers Fest requires a lot of creativity and logistical prowess, but it's one of the most rewarding experiences of Mo's life. She enjoys empowering other adaptive athletes to learn the sport she loves. For Mo climbing provides a profound sense of freedom and perspective and she wants to share that with as many people as she can.
Shelby Stanger:
I'm curious how you feel when you climb. Regardless of the fact that you're an adaptive athlete, what does that sport give you that, you've made it a big part of your life?
Mo Beck:
Yeah, I think it's being in a place that, this is not a figurative form of speech, you are literally seeing the world from a vantage point that such a small percentage of people do. 100 feet up. 1,000 feet up. I haven't been so immersed in an experience as I have been while rock climbing. And then there's the personal relationships. I spoke about how when I'm climbing it's just me and the rock and the rock doesn't care and that's great. But then in climbing you also have a partner and while you're moving you're also thinking, okay, well I'm trusting quite literally my life to them. You get so much downtime on ledges in the middle of nowhere that you could be your second day climbing with someone and you knew all about them. You know their darkest fears, their secrets. You just share so much. I just don't think you can be so emotionally intimate with somebody as you are rock climbing. It's a crazy human connection that comes out of that sport.
Shelby Stanger:
Tell me more. What do you mean?
Mo Beck:
Maybe because it's more risky or because there's a certain point where if your partner's not paying attention and you slip, you could die. It's high consequence. There's so much more safety involved. If I'm alpine climbing, I'm like as a team, are we moving fast enough to beat the storm? Or like what's our plan if we can't summit and we have to do an unplanned bivy, or how are we going to move our gear stashes to like have the best chance of success at this mountain?
Mo Beck:
To have to build that relationship with somebody and know what they're thinking. And you also have to have a person that you can talk to about your fears. I had to bail on a climb we really wanted to do and we put a lot of effort to get there and we wake up on the Sunday day and I just felt off. I looked at my partner and I said, I can't tell you why, I don't have like a real solid reason to say we should turn around, but I want to turn around. I don't think we should do this climb. And because this is my best partner. He just said, all right, we're bailing. No questions asked. And I just can't think of another activity, sport, hobby, otherwise that you get that kind of relationship with. For me, it really is the people that you climb with that makes it so special.
Shelby Stanger:
If you want to see what Mo is up to, you can follow her on Instagram at Mo.in.mountains. That's M-O dot in dot mountains. To learn more about the Adaptive Climbers Fest, check out adaptiveclimbersfest.org.
Shelby Stanger:
Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI podcast network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, produced by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas, and Sam Peers Nitzberg. of Puddle Creative. Our senior producers are Jenny Barber and Hannah Boyd. Our executive producers are Paolo Motola and Joe Crosby. As always, we love it when you follow the show, take time to rate it and write a review wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.