Climbing is supposed to be scary, but if you’re queer, trans or gender non-conforming, it can be terrifying. The ClimbingQTs Membership Launch Party at Northside Boulders. Riley Edwards For a first-time climber, walking into a gym can be bloody terrifying. Seeing people fall off walls, contort their bodies into impossible positions and hear people use words like ‘beta’ and ‘dyno’ can intimidate even the boldest newbie. But for some people, the idea of entering any sporting space induces anxiety. ‘The…

We are all but fish in a pond or in the sea. We are the product of our circumstances, we might imagine ourselves independently thinking, autonomous, conscious beings, but we are really just animated sacks of pressed sausage meat being guided around by the remote controls of our pasts. It is for this reason that I can’t really be that proud of me for hating banal motivational quotes and the cookie-cutter, you-can-do-it-ism of FitSpo – I was just born this…

It was exhausted in thinking about who we were and what we did. It was used up by the insatiable energy of squabbling and shitting on each other. It was suffocated by bans. It was sideswiped by change. It was burnt in the fires. I saw a photo the other day and it had a question with it; the fires, have they sucked the psych out of climbing for anyone else because they have done for me, it asked. There…