Plus-size mountaineering answers call for body inclusive backcountry camps
Editor’s Note: ACC Adventures camps are typically formed every year in our national office by our Programs Director and Adventures Coordinator, but sometimes a few of them come from ideas of people outside of our office, one recent example being Pat Morrow’s 2019 Himalayan Giants Photo Workshop.
For 2020 we’re proud to announce Intro to Mountaineering Body Inclusive, a new program for plus-sized women which came from an idea brought to us by Diandra Oliver. The camp is sold out at the time of this post, however we thought it would be helpful to shed light on why we feel that camps like this are important for the fat-identifying outdoor community and for the ACC.
To be clear, the ACC has always welcomed climbers, hikers and skiers of all body types (as well as genders, sexual orientations, races, religions, etc) onto our camps. We’ve always said “everyone is welcome to come along”, but that’s different from saying “everyone will feel welcome.” This is an intro to mountaineering camp where women of all sizes will feel welcome.
If you have any feedback on the ACC offering any type of inclusive courses in the future, please send us an email. We thank Diandra for bringing this camp idea to our attention and for contributing to this story.
Photo: Bennett Rahn
The first of its kind in North America, the August 2020 camp is an opportunity for plus-size and fat-identified women to learn new mountaineering techniques, knowledge, and skills to be able to embark on their own independent alpine adventures. Offered in an inclusive environment, climbing objectives on this course are snow and ice mountaineering objectives with grade II alpine climbs. Because fat and plus-size folks often experience an outdoors community that restricts or reduces their opportunities for participation, the camp creates an encouraging space for participants to learn alongside like-bodied individuals.
A year developing the fat-identifying community
Photo: Bennett Rahn
There is a really good chance that we will look back at 2019 as the year when fat and plus-size women began to take full strides in the outdoors community.
For example, this year Sam Ortiz launched Big Girls Climb Too and asked her Washington-local climbing gym to offer larger-sized harnesses so she could host plus-size climbing nights in her community. They said yes and Ortiz has trained others from her local fat climbing community to belay at these regular events.
Jenny Bruso also grew deeper into Unlikely Hikers this year continuing to offer inclusive hikes and outdoors events across the United States. Tackling the exclusion of plus-size folks from the size charts of most, if not all, outdoors brands, Bruso continued to push for an increase in size ranges throughout 2019 and supported brands such as REI Co-op, Merrell, and Eddie Bauer to offer more products up to sizes 2X-3X.
Similarly, Fat Girls Hiking founder Summer Michaud-Skog supported more local fat hikers to open FGH chapters across North America. In dozens of communities, hikers are invited into a body-diverse outdoors community that encourages hikers to embrace fat activism and body liberation while spending time together outside.
And in March 2019 the Curvy Kili Crew, a group of twenty fat and plus-size women, climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in efforts to normalize fat hiking and to increase the visibility of fat people outdoors.
Photo: WHOA Travel
A member of the Curvy Kili Crew, Diandra Oliver, reached out to The Alpine Club of Canada in Spring 2019 to ask if the club would be interested in hosting a plus-size Intro to Mountaineering Camp in summer 2020. Spoiler alert: we said yes!
“For many of the women on the crew,” Oliver says, “Kilimanjaro was full of firsts.” For some it was the first time they had hiked all day and then slept in a tent and then repeated that pattern for a total of seven days. Or it was their first time hiking off of a graded trail and really exploring a diversity of terrain. Or it was their first time gaining such incredible elevation and mileage over a short period of time.
“Whatever their ‘first’ was,” Oliver says, “it really stood out for me that the outdoors communities where we lived were not inclusive of fat and plus-size folks, so many of us had traveled all the way to Kilimanjaro so that we could have some of our ‘first’ experiences with other fat people.” As she hiked down the mountain, Oliver committed to herself that she would work to create more spaces for fat and plus-size folks to participate in backcountry trips and learning opportunities back home in Canada.
Photo: WHOA Travel
Going forward with Fat mountaineering
Photo: Diandra Oliver
“I launched Fat Mountaineering this past summer because I really wanted to move the needle on the ways that fat and plus-size folks participated in the outdoors industry and its communities,” Oliver says. “The most basic way that the industry discourages the participation of fat bodies is by continuing to refuse to make technical gear in plus-sizes and when they do, they’re slow to carry those items in their stores. Many fat and plus-size hikers report that empathetic hiking buddies are hard to find and are often faced with disparaging comments about their weight or weight loss.”
Because of these experiences, opportunities like Intro to Mountaineering—Body Inclusive 2020 are important because they create space for and the visibility of fat and plus-size folks outdoors.
“The positive response to Fat Mountaineering has been really encouraging,” says Oliver. “Fat and plus-size folks have always been outside, doing things like hiking, rock climbing, or skiing. But, as we create new opportunities and share our stories, we continue to lift each other up into those outdoor spaces where we want to be.”
Diandra Oliver is a hiker and community organizer who lives on unceded Wet’suwet’en territories in Telkwa, B.C. Instagram: @sink.ships
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We believe mountaineering (in all its forms) provides significant mental and physical health benefits to participants and connects them with their mountain environments so that they’ll help to protect them. For this reason, ACC Adventures aims to grow and develop Canada’s mountaineering community, make it accessible to everyone, and to promote considerate, responsible, best practices amongst its members.