Climbing to new heights with Rebecca Hounsell

Congratulations to Rebecca Hounsell (11SE) on her recent gold medal at the National Climbing Championships held in Rotorua. with Rebecca HounsellQA

Rebecca was selected for Climbing New Zealand’s NZ Youth Team last year, to compete in the IFSC World

Youth Championships. She has been climbing since she was a little girl and talks here about her love of the sport.

HOW DID YOU GET INTO THE SPORT?

I got into rock climbing quite by accident. When I was four my mum was ill with leukaemia, and my dad was looking for things for me to do – one of his friends suggested going to the climbing gym for the day. I loved it so much I wanted to stay all day and I got him to take me back every day he could. After a year I was allowed to join the climbing club and my passion has grown since then.

WHAT INFLUENCED YOU TO DO IT?

Although it is hard to remember what attracted me as a four-year-old, I have some early memories of what I liked and my dad recalls things that I told him when I was little. I liked the physical challenge of climbing – you need to pull hard. I loved the mental challenge of working out the puzzle of how to do a climb. I made a lot of really good friends of a wide range of ages and I was able to compete in a sport that I liked. There

was a more serious aspect to why I climbed. Sometimes my mum was very sick and we were scared she would die. When I was about five or six my dad remembers me saying to him: “I need to go climbing because I just need to not think for a bit.” Even at that young age, I discovered the value of active relaxation.

WHAT SORT OF TRAINING DO YOU HAVE TO COMMIT TO?

Training for climbing is exciting because it has so many aspects to it. In common with many sports, climbers do a lot of work to make sure they maintain their general strength and conditioning, as well as flexibility. In addition to these general aspects, you must practise climbing technique and learn to master different routes and different holds. There is a lot of rope craft; how to tie knots, how to use safety gear and not least of all, how to secure yourself to the wall. There are also different types of climbing. There is indoor and outdoor climbing on the real rock. In addition, competition climbing requires a lot of different training too.

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT OR PROUDEST MOMENT?

Although competitions are very rewarding, I receive the most joy from climbing hard outdoors. This involves trying a climb for days on end and memorising each move, each feature and each foot placement on the wall. It’s one of the most difficult things to do in climbing because it requires you to grapple with failure whilst persisting to make progress. Over the summer, I projected a route called ‘creative confusion’ in Golden Bay. When I started I never expected I’d come home successful. It was far harder than anything I had done before. It is a well-known route across New Zealand, seeing very few female ascents, and when I clipped the chains at the top the triumph I felt could be compared to nothing else.

WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF IN THE FUTURE?

I’m only 14 (almost 15) and not yet fully developed. It’s hard to imagine where this sport will take me, but I see it being a large part of me for the rest of my life. I dream of travelling across New Zealand and the world to test myself against some of the most classic routes and hopefully push the boundary of what female climbers have achieved.

IF YOU COULD GIVE AN ASPIRING YOUNG SPORTS WOMAN A PIECE OF ADVICE WHAT WOULD THAT BE?

Do the hard thing. Do the thing you do not think you can do. Always look for the challenge. For the obstacle is the way. That obstacle might be a cliff or a tall craggy mountain range. It could also be an expanse of water that you need to sail or swim across. It is the reckoning with that obstacle that is important. The challenge will change you. You will need to look inside yourself for answers and the struggle will make you grow. During this journey you will find remarkable people and make lifelong friends, because these people are made of the same wood that you are. They always want to go a little further, try a little harder... and they stop when they’re finished, not when they’re tired.