Kiersch shares her story to be first

Michaela Kiersch is the first woman to have reached both 8C and 9a+. At age 15, she was #22 in her Boulder World Cup debut in 2010 and the next year she was #18 in a Lead World Cup. Her competition career did not take off and instead, she focused on outdoors and University studies. The Doctor in Hand Therapy has completed 17 boulders graded 8B or harder and along with 17 routes rated 8c+ and beyond, no other female can match her outdoor ticklist. Remarkably, nearly all of the 29-year-old’s toughest ascents have come in just the past 2.5 years. Here she shares her great story. (c) Jan Novak

"I first started climbing at the turn of the century — a time I look back on as a golden era in climbing. My local gyms had torn up rubber on the floors, boulders and routes were marked with all colors of tape (and there was a giant resident tape ball next to every hand me down couch), and RJD2 was playing on someone's iPod shuffle (they probably got the album off limewire). Posters of my climbing heroes hung on every wall and I fervently flipped though the pages of all the classic climbing mags at the gym. Right at this time, 2000, Fred Nicole established Dreamtime as the world’s first V15. Shortly after, in 2001, Chris Sharma achieved the first ascent of Biographie, instituting the world’s first 5.15.

V15 [8C] and 5.15 [9a+] became a little Mich’s gold standard in climbing — the absolute limit and something only giants are capable of. One thing did stick though, I was determined to find my own limit (at the time, it was toproping an overhang which my dad bribed me to send with a blue gatorade). But I was set down a path of seeing how high I could go.

My path in climbing has been my own and that is something I am immensely proud of. It is still surreal to have found myself standing among those same giants as the first woman to have climbed both V15 & 5.15. So what’s next? I’m still chasing my limits and catching stars along the way. I haven’t exactly decided where my next ambitions are (sport?? boulder?? Pls cast your votes) but I’m due for some time at home to celebrate my 30th birthday, the holidays, and my sister who is graduating with her nursing degree. The only thing I have left to say here is thank you. I am eternally and inexplicably grateful to those who showed me how big I can dream and those who supported me along the way."