Khaled: First question: how did you meet?
Molly: We met in a hostel in Vietnam.
Talia: We were both solo travelling. I was with my younger brother at the time, but we just met in a hostel.
M: I think I was three months into my trip and I was missing home, but I saw her and her brother in the hostel and I thought “These guys are totally Canadian”—just looking at them, it felt like a piece of home. My best friend moved to Fernie last year, which is where Talia is from, and she knew who my best friend was. Such a small world.
K: That is beautiful.
T: Then I said to Molly, “Oh I’m going to move to Victoria and I’m going to go to school in the fall,” and then Molly said, “Oh my god, I live in Victoria!” Then we didn’t see each other for ten months and then we went on a backpacking trip as soon as I got here.
M: We did Augerpoint Traverse together.
T: The rest is history.
K: That’s really nice. Had you guys climbed with each other before the hike?
M: Not until September when we started climbing at Crag X together.
K: What brought you to Crag X?
M: We had been texting about it all summer. I got really into sport climbing last summer and spring and we were texting and I was like, “We need to go rock climbing together!!! I have the stuff for rock climbing.”
T: “We need to get a membership!” I had never really top roped before other than in high school, but Molly was really into it and I thought it seemed really cool, so then… I feel like this is the only gym that really interested us. It’s so big, it’s easy to get to…
M: And just walking by, when you see the big windows—
T: It looks so cool.
K: Ah, so it was the big windows that attracted you.
T: Yes, for sure.
K: It’s fun to walk on the street and see all these people climbing. Especially if you don’t already climb, you think: “What the heck are all these people doing?”
M: All the vibrant colours…
T: Or when you bring people in—we brought some people in last week—and you say, “Let’s go upstairs,” and their eyes go wide and they respond “There’s an upstairs…?!”
M: Any time we bring people that have never been here before, they’re always so shocked and excited. I feel like they think that it seems so crazy.
K: What do you think the best thing is about this sport? You do a lot of sports, right?
T: Yeah! I grew up swimming competitively, I mountain bike, gravel bike, and we’re both surfers. We both run. I ran a marathon in October. We came to the gym the day after that, it was a little bit painful.
K: The last marathon here, I accidentally ran half of it. I was supporting my friends on my e-bike, giving them their salts and gels at different locations, and then my e-bike died around Willows Beach. It was raining, I had a huge backpack and converse, and I ran from Willows to the Parliament buildings. They were sleeping at my house afterwards and I think I was more dead than both my friends.
T: You had the bag, you had the converse…
M: And you did some mileage on the e-bike first… What’s different about rock climbing compared to the other stuff we do?
T: I feel like we’ve gotten to know quite a few people climbing. The community is really cool and I like coming to the events here.
M: I feel really present when I’m climbing, like I don’t have to think about anything. You’re just in the moment completely.
K: Yeah! When I run or lift weights, I’m still in my head.
M: With climbing, it’s just you in the wall.
T: We come Sunday morning and study after and it gets your energy out, lets you have fun—
M: And it’s something to look forward to during the day. When we come on weeknights, we’re just excited that we get to climb later that night.
T: Literally all day, we just think, “We get to go climbing tonight!”
K: I realised you guys come to so many events. You came to Rock Talk—
M: Yeah, we loved Rock Talk!
K: You came to Market on Mats… How do you feel about these events?
M: We’re always so excited. Whenever we see them on Instagram we send them to each other every time and the other goes “Yeah I already saw it.”
T: I love the events that you do that are films. We went to the Banff Film Fest too, there was a really cool climbing one. It’s a great way to get to know things, like with the person who went to Mexico, to see about her trip and to rethink how we were in Asia. We could make a trip there and center it around climbing, which is so cool.
M: I thought it was interesting how she was talking about taking multipitch courses, too. We haven’t taken one yet but we really want to.
K: That’d be awesome. We have the Transition to Outdoors here, which teaches people how to go from indoor climbing to outdoors. It teaches you how to do the anchors, to rappel, stuff like that. It’s a great way to learn some stuff before going out with a guide.
T: How long is it?
K: Two sessions and I think three hours.
T: How often do you run it?
K: I think once a week you can book it and then it’s over two weeks.
M: I had a friend teach me a lot of outdoors stuff, but I’d love to learn rappelling and how to multipitch. Belaying someone up… I don’t know how to do that yet.
T: We’ll have to start thinking about that once it’s dry outside.
K: Here’s another question: Do you have any goals for the future of climbing together?
M: sigh
K: That was a big sigh!
M: So many goals.
T: We were talking about how we need to determine a climb day that is an easier climb day and one where we work on our projects and stuff like that. We do want to improve, but we get distracted just talking and having fun.
M: Last time we were climbing I noticed that we were just giving up. I didn’t get it so I just went, “Let me down.”
T: My thing with Molly now is I go, “No. You can’t come down.” And then she finished it! So we push each other.
K: Pushing each other and knowing the limits, that’s what it is. Sometimes you don’t want to be pushed, sometimes you just want to try a little bit. I always tell people that it’s nice to try a climb way harder above your grade and you can use the other colours. It’s fine, it’s not cheating. You are trying new moves, putting your hands on different holds you’re not used to.
T: I remember you said that a month ago and we’ve been doing it since.
K: It’s really good! You just try some moves on the harder climbs and it’s a good way to get a feel of that grade. Okay, last question: Do you have a funny story from some of your time together?
T: Oh, we have a very funny story from Augerpoint Traverse.
M & T: laugh
M: Oh no…
T: We were doing the hike and it’s supposed to be two nights, three days—what was it, 50k in total?
M: No, I think 35…
T: Something like 18 each day. Lots of elevation. The first day we summit Mount Albert Edward and we think, “Oh, we can camp here. It’d be nice. We should camp on the top… Actually, you’re not allowed to camp there.” We got told off. Anyways, we got to the top and noticed it was not windy, it’s a beautiful August day outside.
M: We were so tired and I did not want to go to the summit that day. Talia said we have to get to the top and I just thought “I do not want to.”
T: Yeah, we could see the sunset because of the long day… It’d be worth it. So we get to the top and I take the tent out of my backpack and I’m setting up the tent, I’ve taken out the poles and I’ve laid down the tent. I’ve done some of the pegs in but not all of them so about half the tent is up and I noticed Molly is taking the fly out of her bag and a big gust of wind comes. I jump for the fly and we turn around and what do we see? The tent. Up in the air.
M: It was crazy. It was so scary because we were fully on the summit and you instinctively want to run after it, but on one side is a whole drop off—
T: A sheer cliff.
M: But we see that the tent kind of looks like it wants to drop back down. Talia’s freaking out, she’s crying.
T: I’m bawling. It’s my dad’s tent, so I’m like “Noooo.”
M: It was a nice, expensive tent. And another gust comes.
K: So it’s gone.
M: There’s service at the top of Mount Albert Edward, so she FaceTimes her dad… She’s crying and her dad says, “At least you’re alive.”
T: He says it’s not the end of the world and he’s laughing hysterically because his tent is floating away.
K: How did you camp then without a tent?
T: We just cowboy camped.
M: We just slept on our mats. Neither of us had cowboy camped before and we had really wanted to, so it was kind of gorgeous. We decided to do the Traverse in two days instead of three because we didn’t want to do a second night without a tent.
T: It’s the ridge and a sheer cliff on the other side. It went deep to Mount Washington.
K: That’s a great story. Do you want to add anything to this interview?
T: We love climbing at Crag X!
M: We love it here.
K: Nice, well thank you guys.