Climber Alannah Yip spent this summer in Tokyo representing Canada. As a competitive climber since she was 6, Alannah has a lifetime of lessons she's applied to the sport she loves.
Climber Alannah Yip spent her summer competing on the international stage in Tokyo, Japan. Even though she’s been a competitive climber since she was six years old, this competition was unlike anything she’d ever done before. It was the first year that rock climbing was included on the international athletics circuit, and in order to participate Alannah had to overcome some major obstacles. Following a stunning qualifying performance, she was one of the climbers on the wall making history in Japan.
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Shelby Stanger:
We just got done watching a bunch of amazing athletes compete in Japan. And believe me, I was glued to the TV. One of the athletes I watched was Alannah Yip. Alannah is known as Canada's top overall rock climber. She's been competing since she was kid, but there haven't always been opportunities for her on a global level. This year was different. It was the first year that rock climbing was included at this international competition. Through her hard work and training, Alannah qualified to be one of the climbers on the wall, making history. I was lucky enough to interview her before she headed to Japan.
Shelby Stanger:
I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living. In the past five years, Alannah has broken national and international records. She's the first Canadian woman to make it to the final rounds of World Cups, and she holds seven national rock climbing titles. Becoming such a skilled athlete takes years of training. And Alannah started climbing when she was just six years old. She was first introduced to the sport in the same way many of us are, some family friends were into it and they brought her along to a climbing gym. By the time Alannah was eight, she was hooked and so she started competing.
Shelby Stanger:
Alannah Yip, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living.
Alannah Yip:
Thanks. It's exciting to be here.
Shelby Stanger:
Yeah, we're excited to just watch your career thrive and just keep blowing up. So, you started rock climbing at age six. What was it like to compete in rock climbing as a kid?
Alannah Yip:
Climbing was a bit different back then. I think, in Canada, in my age category, there were only really three girls that were competitive. So, it was pretty exciting. You would pretty much make the podium every time, because there were only three of us. Maybe there were four of us at some times, and then occasionally somebody would move away or quit and then somebody else would join. But I really loved the competitions. The format that it was, back in those days, was called scramble format. So, they would basically reset the entire gym and there'd be like 60 new climbs from pretty easy, for me as a 10-year-old, to quite hard, for one of Canada's top climbers. And you basically just got three hours, you'd go in there with all your friends from the climbing team and you just see how many you could do.
Shelby Stanger:
So you won your first national competition at age 12. What did winning feel like on that big of a level?
Alannah Yip:
It was pretty exciting. I remember the weekend. It was a very stressful weekend. It was actually, it was so hot. All the competitors were stuck in this tiny little area, because, I don't know if you know how climbing competitions work, but you've never climbed the route before, and you can't watch anybody else climb it. So, they stick you in this little room called isolation. There was pretty much no ventilation and it was tiny. It was cramped. It was sweaty.
Shelby Stanger:
How long did you have to stay in there before your climb?
Alannah Yip:
Because I was young, so my category usually went out quite early, I think I was only in there for two hours or so. But I know some of the older kids were in there for six, eight hours waiting.
Shelby Stanger:
Six to eight hours? That's a long time.
Alannah Yip:
Yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
That's crazy. I thought that was going to be like 40 minutes max.
Alannah Yip:
No, sometimes it can take quite a long time.
Shelby Stanger:
How did it feel to win?
Alannah Yip:
There were all these kids that were so much bigger than me and scarier, all I remember is being afraid of other people, because I was very shy and stressed out. But getting to stand on top of the podium that day was a pretty amazing feeling.
Shelby Stanger:
And you were a shy kid. So, I'm curious, did anybody in your family climb? What did they think of you climbing?
Alannah Yip:
Nobody in my family climbed before me, but when I started climbing, my mum started climbing as well. The parents group of our youth team, they were all really close actually. And they would do a lot of stuff together. They would always volunteer for the competitions that we were competing at. My mum trained actually all the way up to being a continental level judge at one point.
Shelby Stanger:
That's so cool.
Alannah Yip:
And our parents would travel together, even not climbing. My partner, actually, we grew up on the same climbing team and he's five years older than me. So, when we were kids, we were not friends, because that 13 to 18 is a big gap, but our moms were really good friends. Our moms took a trip to Quebec together to go cheese tasting and biking.
Shelby Stanger:
That is so cool. So, then when you guys finally introduced the parents, it was like a breeze.
Alannah Yip:
Yeah. Yeah. I think the first year that we were together, we had like a family Christmas.
Shelby Stanger:
That is so cool. I love that story. I just got goosebumps. Vancouver is a really special place to grow up. I love it. Every time I've been there I've felt so at home, there is something about trees for me, that's really, really calming. And Vancouver is full of the most beautiful trees. Did you guys just grow up hiking, outside, in the trees?
Alannah Yip:
Yeah, both my parents hike quite a bit. We've had dogs my entire life and my dad has worked from home since I was six and he walks the dog every single morning. They actually live, their house, their backyard borders on the forest in North Van, which is just a huge collection of trails for hiking and mountain biking. And my mum hikes maybe three times a week, she's a doctor, and her schedule is pretty intense, but on the weekends we all hike together.
Shelby Stanger:
Alannah's parents had a huge influence on her. They're smart and outdoorsy, and so is Alannah. She's naturally analytical. When Alannah graduated high school, she decided to make a big decision about her career. At the time, there was no Canadian women's climbing team that competed on a global stage. So, since there wasn't space for her to continue professionally as a climber, Alannah decided to stop and focus on something else.
Shelby Stanger:
All right. So, you competed when you were 12, all through high school, and then you went to college. And I know you studied like, no joke, engineering, which is amazing. And I want you to talk to me about that later on, but you took some time off of climbing, and I'm really curious why you did that. You'd climbed your whole life, you go to college, why did you take some time off? And then how did you get back into it?
Alannah Yip:
So, I took time off, because I wanted to do engineering right. I wanted to give 100% of my focus and my energy to engineering. It was always something that I had wanted to do. My dad's a mechanical engineer, and literally, from kindergarten, I used to tell people that I wanted to be an inventor, just like my dad when I grew up.
Shelby Stanger:
What did your dad invent? Tell me a little bit about your dad real quick.
Alannah Yip:
My dad is amazing. He is so smart and right now his big project, super cool, it's an electric race car that he designed and built himself and he maintains it. He works pretty much every day on it. It's his baby.
Shelby Stanger:
Yeah. So, basically you're from a family of bad-asses, dad was a bad-ass engineer, you're becoming an engineer. So, you want to do engineering right, so you just kind of give up climbing altogether? Or how do you do this?
Alannah Yip:
Yeah. I was moving out to UBC, the university I went to, it's in the same city that I'm from, but it's about a 45 to an hour drive from my parents' house. And it's a 45-minute bus ride from the closest climbing gym, which that was more the issue. It was just too much time out of any school day to go take the bus for 45 minutes, train for a couple of hours, then take the bus 45 minutes back. So, I just decided that for a couple of years, I would just not climb. I had just aged out of the youth competition circuit and I didn't really see a real future for myself in the adult competition circuit. At the time, to be honest, there wasn't, had I taken a year off of school to pursue climbing, it wouldn't have gone well.
Shelby Stanger:
Right, because at the time the international circuit didn't even exist. So, you chose engineering, but I heard you did a study abroad in Switzerland and you rediscovered your love of climbing. Tell me about studying in Switzerland and how you did this.
Alannah Yip:
For sure. It was actually, I got back into climbing just before I went to Switzerland. I was pretty miserable for a year without climbing and, in that year, I probably climbed maybe three or four times. It was a complete break for me. It was going almost cold turkey. And there was a good friend of mine who was also on the youth team with me. And that summer, after my second year, we both got back into it. Then, I randomly picked Switzerland to go for my academic exchange. A coach from the Vancouver area knew the coach over there. The coach was super welcoming as were all of the athletes. They taught me a bit of German. Then, I got the opportunity to train with the local team there. We did a lot of different climbing trips together, all the way around Switzerland, to South Africa, and to France. And I'm still good friends with a lot of them today.
Shelby Stanger:
So, did you climb outside? Did you climb mostly inside? What was your aha moment when you were there, where you're like, "I need to get back into climbing in a more robust way than I had been."
Alannah Yip:
It was both. So, the team that I trained with was training indoors a few times a week. And a lot of the people on the team loved climbing so much, that every weekend was also climbing outside. So, I would train with them during the week and then we'd go outside climbing somewhere on the weekend. I was just so happy with that. I remember that's what life can be like. That was the sort of lifestyle that I wanted. I realized, in the gym, in training, that I could keep up to this group of women who had all made world cup semi-finals and finals. So, that was my aha moment of being like, "I could do that too." I love both indoor and outdoor climbing for different reasons and in different parts of my life, but I could compete well on the international circuit like these women do.
Shelby Stanger:
That is so amazing. That had to have been such an incredible feeling and probably really empowering, hanging out with these European kick-ass women, who were climbing outside. And I'm sure you were on these beautiful European landscapes. What do you love about rock climbing that's like no other sport?
Alannah Yip:
What I first loved about climbing is the same thing that I still love most about climbing. It's the fact that it's a mental and a physical puzzle. I'm a super logical, analytical person, and that really appealed to me. It really kept me engaged, both my brain and my body. So, that's why I loved it. Then, when you're outside climbing, it's a way to connect with the land like no other that I've ever found. I also love the community of climbing, although we compete, you're not very competitive with the other people, if that makes sense, because it's always you versus the wall. It's not you versus another person. So, it's actually a very supportive competition community.
Shelby Stanger:
When Alannah came back from studying abroad, she was ready to start competing again. She took her training seriously and it paid off. In 2020, Alannah had the most memorable indoor climb of her life. When we come back, Alannah talks about that triumphant win and how it qualified her for Japan. She also talks about training and how she deals with her fear of falling.
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Shelby Stanger:
Alannah came back from Switzerland. She graduated from college. She was ready to put everything into her career as a climber. She trained hard and on her last chance to make it to Japan, she had a victorious comeback.
Shelby Stanger:
Okay. So, tell us about qualifying for Japan. This is an incredible achievement, and congratulations. Tell me about this.
Alannah Yip:
Yeah, I'm obviously super excited that I made it and it's been a long journey to qualify. It was announced in 2016, this competition. So, it took me about a year to fully be okay with saying publicly that I wanted this, that this was my goal. Then, in 2019, the qualification process started. For 12 months straight, I competed almost every month, sometimes two, or even three times, in a month to try to qualify. And I was flying all over the world. I was barely at home. It was really hard and stressful. I was really close in the first two qualification competitions. When it came to the very last chance in LA, in February of 2020, I had to win that competition to make it. So, it was more pressure than I've ever felt in my life. I knew I really, really wanted it. I had trained so hard and yeah, it all came down to that, that one last day.
Shelby Stanger:
So, after some pretty intense training, you made it to Canada's national competition. You really had an incredible comeback. You were in sixth place until the final climb, and you ended up winning the entire thing. Tell me about that.
Alannah Yip:
Yeah. So, after the qualification day, I was in sixth going into the final round and we had a day or two off in between when the men competed, and I was freaking out. I had many, many conversations with my coach, who was there, my partner, my parents, my mental performance coach, basically everybody who has been along the journey with me. They all reminded me that this was kind of my plan, that I had talked about beforehand to maybe not put 100% effort into the qualification day, so that I could save some for the final. Well, it worked, but it was super nerve-racking going in.
Alannah Yip:
So, there's three events that make up our overall event. So, the first is speed climbing. So, that actually went quite badly for me. I did end up out of eight, I think I was sixth out of eight. So, going into the next one, bouldering, I was already sixth, but that was my best discipline, and I managed to win that one. And I think coming from behind helped me a little bit mindset-wise. In climbing, I've always been a bit of the underdog really. I've never been the best. From the time I was young, when I was saying that there was only a few girls in my category when I started climbing, there were, but I wasn't the best one. I was usually second or third, more often than not. So, that's kind of been my whole life, it's been trying to come from behind. So, I think that helped me in that situation, on that last day, for that last climb.
Alannah Yip:
Then, when it came to the lead climbing, I was in a good position, but I knew that I just had to kind of turn off my brain and climb how I knew I could. And if I did my best, I would probably qualify, but there was nothing... It was only me that could do anything about it, so I couldn't freak out, I couldn't panic or anything. I just had to stay as calm as I could.
Shelby Stanger:
Yeah. It's a lot of pressure.
Alannah Yip:
I have never been so calm. And so 100% focused. I've also never, I think, performed so well on a lead climbing competition.
Shelby Stanger:
What happens to you when you get to that state? Does like time stands still? Does noise fade? I mean, that's when you're in flow is what you're describing.
Alannah Yip:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. Time slows down a little bit for me, and I'm not nervous, if that makes sense. I'm just thinking about the next move, the next hold. I'm not thinking about how far I've come or how far I've got left to go. I'm just confidently moving.
Shelby Stanger:
In the present moment, that sounds so nice. So, you talk about how at climbing competitions, people have to stay in one room for several hours in isolation before their race. It won't be like that in Japan, will it?
Alannah Yip:
No. So, this summer, it's a similar format, but there's only 20 people. So, it goes a lot faster. So, what we do is the speed climb, you know what it looks like. There's just a standardized wall. So, we all go out, do our speed climbing, and then we go back into isolation. And what they'll usually do is cover the other climbs or at least project something on them, so you can't see what anything looks like. They project some sort of like pattern that looks cool from afar, but it really covers what it looks like.
Alannah Yip:
Then, for bouldering, we can't see the climbs until we turn around, for five minutes. And then for lead climbing, we'll all go out together and we get four minutes to look at the climb and try to read it. But altogether, we can talk through it. Then, we go back into isolation and then come out one at a time to try it.
Shelby Stanger:
So, you can talk with the other climbers about the lead climb?
Alannah Yip:
Yeah. Before anybody's actually tried it. You can talk about it with other people.
Shelby Stanger:
Is that something you wouldn't do though with people who are on another team?
Alannah Yip:
No, you do it. Climbing's pretty... Like everyone supports each other. So, I think sometimes what happens, there's a language barrier quite often. I'm lucky to have English as a first language, but oftentimes teammates will stick together so they can speak their native language.
Shelby Stanger:
What are some of the things you talk about with other competitors?
Alannah Yip:
We talk about the sequence, which is the order in which you might grab the holds, or where you might clip the quickdraws from, any weird movements or body positions that you see. Sometimes there might be hidden holds. So, you try to find those and talk about them.
Shelby Stanger:
I'm surprised. In other sports, they would be like, "Oh, do this." And then they're like messing with you. And like, I don't know. I don't know.
Alannah Yip:
I've never done that. That would never really occur to me, because if you have something to share, they might also have something to share.
Shelby Stanger:
While competitions themselves are usually held in controlled environments, a lot of climbers also do challenging ascents outdoors that can be a bit wild and pretty dangerous. One wrong move, and they could fall several hundred feet. Even though Alannah has been rock climbing for almost her entire life, she still gets scared and nervous.
Shelby Stanger:
I know you said you're a shy person, but at competitions, there's crowds, audiences, press. How do you deal with that?
Alannah Yip:
I don't look at them. That's my main way of dealing with it. If you watch me during a bouldering round, I will either be looking at the ground or facing the wall. I might look around just very briefly, so I can see my coach or a teammate, because that will make me feel better, but I don't look out at the crowd.
Shelby Stanger:
So, you really don't like people in those situations.
Alannah Yip:
I try to not think about how many people... Like I like people, but when there's so many people it's really overwhelming for me.
Shelby Stanger:
Wow. Tell me about that, because I'm such an extroverted person that I'm always curious like how my introvert friends deal with that.
Alannah Yip:
Well, I guess I really just, I'd prefer if people weren't watching, if when I was climbing, they can just turn around or something, that would be great.
Shelby Stanger:
But you're so fun to watch. Like I want to watch you climb. Everybody wants to watch you climb. You're an incredible athlete, the way you move, the way you do it all. It's just not something that you're comfortable with.
Alannah Yip:
Yeah. But it's fine. As soon as I get on the wall, I'm not thinking about that anymore. I'm totally focused on what I'm doing. I'm not stressed about other people. I've practiced that quite a bit, but I'm pretty good with it now. But still, if I come out onto the mat and I'm looking out, I'm like, "Oh, there's actually like a thousand people or more out there." Sometimes it's a little scary.
Shelby Stanger:
So, how are you training for that knowing there's going to be a few people watching you coming up?
Alannah Yip:
When it's just live-streamed, it's not a problem, because I can't see any of the people that are watching on TV back home. That doesn't really bother me.
Shelby Stanger:
It's kind of a perfect year, because there's not going to be a lot of people watching live.
Alannah Yip:
I know, right?
Shelby Stanger:
You said you have a mental performance coach. What's that look like?
Alannah Yip:
So, I guess a mental performance coach is like a sports psychologist. I work with somebody who works with a lot of climbers in Canada.
Shelby Stanger:
I love that.
Alannah Yip:
Yeah. She's awesome. And staying calm in important moments too. She helped me a ton with that.
Shelby Stanger:
So, what have you learned from this coach about staying calm, especially in stressful situations?
Alannah Yip:
Paying attention to the sensations in my feet really helps me stay grounded when I'm really nervous. It really just helps me focus back on my body and what's actually happening for me in that moment. If I get into a panicky state when I'm climbing, I might stop and try to breathe and think about the sensations in my feet again, because that really it's a good cue for me to help stay centered.
Shelby Stanger:
Take me into your world, for someone who hasn't really climbed, and by the way, gets terrified once I'm up there, outside, on a rock, it's different than, even at the gym. Sometimes, if I'm bouldering, I get a little spooked if I'm higher up. Any advice for a hack like me, who's 41 and trying to be a climber?
Alannah Yip:
Well, I think the best advice for facing your fears, or when you have a fear of heights, is just face it and kind of exposure therapy. You do it in a way that you know that you are physically safe, but that it still scares you. And you just push outside your comfort zone bit by bit like that. I am not the most comfortable with heights either. This is something that I work on as well, especially outside.
Shelby Stanger:
So what do you do?
Alannah Yip:
Same thing. Yeah. You just push bit by bit. You might get to a point on a climb, mostly outside is where I can get spooked, but I might get to a point where I get scared, and so I might stop. And the first thing I do is say, "Okay, time to calm down, look around. Are you actually in danger? What are you scared of? Are you scared just to have the adrenaline rush when you fall? Or are you scared for a legitimate reason that there's a chance you might fall and hurt yourself?" Because those are two different things in my head. And I try to push myself or I do push myself a lot harder if it's just me getting spooked of taking a fall that's actually physically safe.
Shelby Stanger:
What advice do you have for people who want to start climbing?
Alannah Yip:
Yeah, it's definitely a sport you can do at any age, especially the roped versions, there's a lot less impact, because you're not jumping down every single time. You're doing it for fun. And always remember to have fun. I enjoy the climbing sessions where I'm out just playing with my friends the most.
Shelby Stanger:
Alannah has climbed in some high stakes situations, but at the end of the day, it's all about having fun. It's inspiring to remember that we don't have to be a big time athlete to start rock climbing, even if it might seem complex and really intimidating. Alannah's back from Japan, we're all so proud of her. She even broke her personal record and the national Canadian record in her speed climbing.
Shelby Stanger:
Alannah, thank you so much for coming on the show. You've personally inspired me to climb more. In fact, I just joined my local indoor rock climbing gym because of you. And if you'd like to learn more about Alannah, you can visit her Instagram page @alannahyip. That's A-L-A-N-N-A-H Y-I-P on Instagram.
Shelby Stanger:
Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI podcast network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, written and edited by Annie Fassler and Sylvia Thomas and produced by Chelsea Davis. Our executive producers are Paolo Mottola and Joe Crosby. As always, we read every single one of your reviews. So, take a minute and please write one. We also appreciate when you follow this show and when you rate it, wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.