Grasp For Meaning: Margo hayes rebuilds her relationship with climbing
Margo Hayes at a training session in San Diego, California.
Margo Hayes is at the nail salon.
The nail technician delicately coats thick, rose-colored polish onto her fingernails, illuminating her hands with each stroke. Her hands are her most valuable instrument. Her skin is often torn, and her nails are kept short and dull. But today, her nails are bright – disabling her from working the next week. The tangy, dizzying scent of polish, acetone and flowery lotion swarms the room, stinging every nostril in the place.
Hayes slides her hands under the curing light, and the glow heats her fingertips for a moment, before it illuminates the bottom of her face with a sky hue.
She goes to the counter to pay, and smudges her ring finger nail on something on the counter. Two women insist on fixing the smudged paint, and Hayes refuses. She remarks that they’ll get messed up eventually.
The glossy, and now imperfect, manicure signifies something more than style. She’s not attending an event or anything, she’s resting.
“If I get my nails done, I won't climb for that week,” says Hayes. “I love having nails. 80 percent of the time my hands and my nails are all torn up, but I feel like I can really embrace that period of rest when I have them done.”
Seven years ago, Hayes’ hands were bloodied and worn, her muscles depleted, and she almost packed up and left for the day. She was on a trip to Siurana, Spain, She was standing at the bottom of the crag, facing the 135-foot La Rambla route in Siurana, Spain. The 19-year-old Hayes tried the route one last time.
It’s been described as three climbs – a 5.13c crack which follows a traverse to the left, becoming 5:14b as it moves to the right, and finishing with 35 feet of 5.13c climbing. A climber must preserve their energy tactfully throughout the route, utilizing rest holds while comprehending their own body’s needs.
In the meantime, they must memorize each hand hold, foot hold, and quality of movement between precise placement in order to make it up to the chains. Not to mention finding moments to clip their rope into each clipdraw, ensuring a short fall if the climber slips off the wall. But that day in Siurana, Hayes didn’t fall.
As Hayes reached the top of La Rambla, she became the first woman in the world to climb the 5.15 grade, making history.
The climb was one of the hardest in the world in 2017, and when Hayes reached the top,she became the fifteenth person ever to complete the route. The 5.15 grade wasn't even achieved in rock climbing until Chris Sharma climbed Biographie, in France, in 2001. A year after Hayes' La Rambla achievement, she too climbed Biographie, making history in the sport not once, but twice.
The pressure was on her quickly, though. The climbing community spotlighted Hayes for her records, and she gained 60,000 followers on Instagram overnight. She received sponsorships, competed in world cup events, and left fans wondering what she'd do next.
"When I sent La Rambla and I gained 60,000 followers overnight, I cried." said Hayes. "People asked me, why are you crying? Before then I had 11.1 thousand followers and that was the perfect number, I just thought it was so many people and I was so afraid of the pressure. At 19, I wasn't prepared for what came with that kind of success in the sport, because it really changed my life."
She was swarmed with emails, requests for interviews, and events to attend.
"Because of that I lost a lot of my joy in the sport,” says Hayes. “It felt like a job, and pressure, and now I've had a beautiful rediscovery of the sport."
A few years after climbing La Rambla, Hayes took time off from competing. The pressure was off in those moments, and she spent the time listening to her body and learning to rest. She climbed for herself for the first time in years, and it ignited her love for climbing once again.
"In life there's that thing where you find yourself over and over again," says Hayes. "I think as a professional in a sport you also have to over and over again find that love you have for the sport and come back to doing it for the reasons that you started it."
When Hayes was in middle school and high school, she watched the clock and waited for the bell to ring because she couldn't wait to climb.
"I didn't have to go through anything for anyone, I was climbing for myself,” said Hayes. “Within climbing, I think I've come full circle, like, to my inner child of climbing. And that has been really beautiful."
Last summer, she revealed she'd been struggling with Lyme disease. With that came the internal battle of dealing with a chronic illness while professionally climbing. Hayes is on a new journey of climbing for herself- something she hasn't done since she was a kid - and balancing her health with her pro-climber status. It's a new task for her to block out the noise, and create new goals based on her body's new limits. She describes it as going at 90% rather than her regular 120%. She said it makes life more enjoyable.
"I've had to accept more periods of rest, because of my health as well.” said Hayes. “Life sometimes, you know, gives you beautiful lessons in a way that it breaks your idea of what you should be doing."
For Hayes, it’s been incredibly important to take control of her own narrative. People on the internet, who know her only through her professional career, make comments and pass judgment on Hayes’ progression through the sport in the last seven years. Making comments like, “Why isn’t she climbing as much” or “Why hasn’t she sent something lately?”
For Hayes, advocating for her health is about more than just her own narrative, it’s about setting a precedent within the climbing community; one that can help uplift others to do the same.
“We all have our own struggles, whether that be within our family, within society, within our health, and you never know what someone is dealing with.” Hayes said. “When people comment about someone’s accomplishments, their health, their body, whatever it may be, there are probably already people in their life who actually know them and can help them manage the problem. Talking about it online is not the answer.”
Climbing is a social sport. It requires an immense amount of trust, compassion, and support from the people you are surrounded by. The sport can be male-dominated at times. It’s hard for Hayes to accept that women face serious hurdles in the climbing world. As a woman in the industry, Hayes focuses on keeping her circle full of supportive, kind people that uplift her through her biggest goals.
“I have guy friends that really support me, and don’t care if I’m climbing something before them. I love those men in the sport, who hype me up and push me to challenge myself, who aren’t threatened by my climbing,” she said.
She’s also experienced the opposite, though. Even through her prowess in the sport, Hayes faces discouragement from men in the industry. She’s been discouraged from trying routes by other men in the sport.
“You’re not supporting a woman in the sport,” Hayes said, “If you’re only supporting her up to the moment she starts threatening your confidence.”
Sometimes, though, the intensity comes from other women.
“I’m a girl’s girl,” Hayes said. “Within this sport, all women are on the same team here. I want to try whether or not I do something first. If another woman does something first, it’s also pushing the court forward to women, and opening doors for little girls to see that women can do this.”
With the age of social media, Hayes often faces adversity online - double standards between men and women, body shaming, bullying and even stalking situations.
“I think the internet is really not a safe place for women,” she said. I think we need to make an effort in our sport to not support this double standard.”
Hayes finds herself being constantly questioned on social media, and other women within the sport, too. Her solution? Two phones. One with her social media and emails, and another with ten contacts total.
“You can’t get away from your phone, and from the internet, and from the judgment.” Hayes said. “I think all of our brains need a reset, so I really try to have moments in my life where I’m really focused on being present and not on screens.”
“I’m honestly praying that some satellite crashes or something, and there’s no Instagram, no internet for like a month. We need an internet pandemic,” Hayes said.
Within her illness, she's come face to face with this concept in the climbing industry, when working with companies and sponsorships. "Within certain companies they want younger girls, “In my eyes, I'm not retired. I've just been through a plethora of really bullshit situations in the last few years, which I'm grateful for in the end because it's made me so much stronger.”
Hayes began climbing at age 10, which is late in terms of the sport.
"When I see kids climbing at the gym at three, I think "oh my god, you're on a hang board at three years old? When I was three, I was naked in the dirt. I see that and I think, "I hope you still love climbing when you're older,’" Hayes said.
"I think within the US we have an unhealthy obsession with youth, and how success often comes when you're really really young, but I think with climbing it's really interesting because, in my eyes I still have, if I want to, a very bright future within our sport."
Hayes describes herself as a dreamer, even a bit delusional at times. "If I know I can do it, it's not as exciting to me."
Hayes has been known to keep her goals close to her chest, but her main focus is to not let those goals define her. "I don't feel like I need to do it to prove my worth. I don't feel like I need to do it for people who expect me to do the next big thing. I feel like if I want to climb 9a+ again, or 9b+, or whatever, I can do that for myself. If I want to climb 9a or 5.15's or whatever it may be I can do that for myself because I don't feel like my worth relies on the number grade I climb."
Hayes thinks of climbing as an honor system in all aspects. The sport is based on trust: trust with a belayer, being honest about what you've done when you're outside alone, trust to interact with nature intentionally, and leaving things how one found them.
"I think because people are constantly pushing to do the next thing. When sponsorships start getting involved, the integrity of the sport starts lacking, and that will be so heartbreaking if that becomes an issue,” Hayes said. So I think that if we put all of the focus on the grade, that system will crumble. That's the opposite of what our sport means."
Hayes is pursuing her bachelor's degree, and wants to give back to the climbing community that has done so much for her. At the top of her to-do list? Finding the time to be present and mindful, and maybe spend a little more time sporting bright blue nails.
