Up the Wall: Climbing and Bouldering Stories

Inside this volume

Fifty first-person accounts describe climbing and bouldering, mostly at indoor walls, by people who rarely planned to take up a sport. Some arrived through a work team day, a daughter's class, a granddaughter, or a friend who would not stop asking. Others came with a health reason: prediabetes, depression, ADHD, social anxiety, fibromyalgia, long COVID, osteopenia, type 1 diabetes, asthma, back pain from a desk job, a weak hand after a stroke, a stiff arm after breast cancer treatment, two years of sobriety. The writers include a carpenter, a route setter in Prague, a PE teacher in Limerick, a Marine veteran, a deaf climber in Aberdeen, a woman with very little vision guided by her partner, a man climbing on a carbon foot after losing a leg, and beginners at sixty-seven and seventy-one. Places run from Sheffield and Keswick to Bengaluru, Nairobi, Tokyo and Oslo. The injury stories are told plainly: a pop in a ring finger, climber's elbow, a dislocated shoulder on a dyno, a broken ankle, a wrist in a cast, and a lead fall that changed how one climber climbs. Others describe learning to fall, belaying a spouse, climbing within limits while pregnant, and finding a harness that fit. A few are still unsure the sport suits them, and one shoulder has not fully recovered.

Who it's for

For anyone standing at the bottom of a wall wondering if they are too old, too unfit or too nervous, and for climbers nursing an injury or a health condition.

Format · Instant download · PDF & EPUB · Fifty first-person accounts · PDF: 233 pages

A collection of personal testimony, offered as companion reading — not medical advice.

• 50 single-author testimonies from real people
• A short, plain-language introduction to the topic
• Editor's note, contents page, and curated resource list
• Professional interior typesetting and an original cover

Every purchase includes a print-quality PDF (best for desktop, tablet, and printing) and a reflowable EPUB (best for Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, and phones). Files are DRM-free. You can download both instantly from the order-confirmation screen, and we email them to your inbox as well, so your books are always within reach.