"Climbing is this sport where there is no gender division," says Sasha DiGiulian. "The course is the course, and the rock doesn't care about anything: who you are, what you look like, if the weather is in your favor or not." If anyone should know, it's DiGiulian: In December 2025 the 33-year-old climber became the first woman to ascend the Platinum Wall at El Capitan, a feat that required 23 days of slowly working her way up the face of the rock—nine of which were spent weathering a rainstorm in a portaledge tent hanging some 2,000 feet above the floor of Yosemite National Park, where she dried her clothes, cooked freeze-dried meals on her jet stove, and waited for the rain to subside so she could continue on to, eventually, make history.
But while these rocks have acted as a silent witness to generations of climbers who have chalked their fingers and attempted to move valiantly upward, the sport on the whole is at a unique inflection point, with women increasingly stepping in and showing their prowess on new routes. DiGiulian, a three-time US national champion recognized for holding one of the highest numbers of First Female Ascents, meaning she was the first woman to complete a specific outdoor climb, deserves a great deal of credit for this shift. "Climbing has such a male-dominated background, and when I started, I didn't have a person that I looked to [and] wanted to emulate," says DiGiulian, who began actively climbing at the age of seven. "I was an outsider but I learned about this sport, I loved it, I pursued it, and it has enabled me to live this incredible lifestyle of exploration and adventure."
Climbing has been her "passport" to far-flung corners of the world, she says, taking her to limestone cliffs on the remote island of Makatea in French Polynesia ("a speck on the map"), walls in magnificent Madagascar, and a volcanic rock tower on São Tomé, off the coast of Ghana. After her recent achievement, she's stepping back to remember what it feels like to stand on solid ground and dreaming about what's next: Turkey is on her list for 2026, she says, with an air of intrigue as to where she'll go or what she'll climb. Whatever this goal turns out to be, it will be not only for her but for others as well. "When I see a woman do something in climbing, I feel inspired because I think, Oh, if she can do it, I can do it too. That's where my optimism lies—in achievements that can have a snowball effect." —Megan Spurrell
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