Anne Yeagle, American West Center: an interview by Matt Driscoll, 9 March 2010

Transcript (27 pages) of interview by Matt Driscoll with Anne Yeagle on March 9, 2010

Yeagle (b. 1962) was born in Utah and attended Westminster College. She started climbing with friends while attending graduate school at the University of Utah. She had an ex-boyfriend who climbed, and her brother was in a climbing accident when he was young, so she had a bad association with the sport for quite a while. She thinks there is a climbing culture that consists of "innies" and "outies," and that it can be very hard to be accepted, especially as a woman. She's not sure if the male dominance and ego have changed over the years or if she's just gotten older and wiser about who she surrounds herself with. She knows a lot of people who are judgmental towards her for being an older woman climber who still climbs hard, because most give up by her age. Anne speaks about the importance of finding a good climbing partner and how you have to want and help them to succeed. The relationship with your belayer is an intimate one. There are too many climbers out there who don't want you to succeed because they want to be better than you. When the ego is involved in climbing you find yourself only enjoying the successes, rather than the other all experience. She found that sometimes her succeeding as a climber put a strain on her relationship with her husband, who was also her climbing partner and sometimes she'd find herself purposefully failing. She has put up a lot of routes, especially in the Swell and a remote backpacking location in Wyoming. Mentors are very important in introducing people, especially new types of people, to the sport. She had mentors which encouraged her. She thinks that is how the sport should access minorities, it's not just an economic barrier. She wishes the climbing community had a mentoring program to encourage minority kids to start. Interview is part of the Outdoor Recreation Oral History Project. Interviewer: Matt Driscoll