Maureen Beck - Paraclimbing Champion

Maureen (Whalley) Beck was lucky to grow up in the Maine woods scrambling and playing in the dirt. She roped up for the first time at age 12 and hasn’t stopped since. Cragging her way through New England, she developed her potential as a one-handed climber.  

Prior to the advent of social media and the Internet, Maureen believed that she was the only differently abled person in the world that climbed. She and her friends invented techniques using a trial and error process, slowly (and sometimes painfully) learning out how to climb one-handed. Just because Maureen went to the school of hard knocks and just because she thought she was the only one-handed climber, doesn't mean others have to have the same experience. She loves introducing other people with disabilities to climbing and growing the gimp squad.

Now based in the Colorado Front Range, Mo spends her nights training at the gym and her weekends climbing all over the American southwest. She works closely with the adaptive climbing community and the Paraclimbing section of USA Climbing. As a competitive climber, she has won 10 national titles, a gold medal at the 2014 Paraclimbing World Championships in Spain, and defended that title with a gold medal at the 2016 World Championships in Paris. In 2017, Maureen became the chair of the USAC Paraclimbing Committee. After an expedition to the Northwest Territories Cirque of the Unclimbables, she was named one of National Geographic’s 2019 Adventurers of the Year. She now serves on the Board of Directors for both the American Alpine Club and USA Climbing. She is also the Programming Director for the wildly successful Adaptive Climbers Festival.

In addition to climbing, Mo loves gardening, her chickens and dogs, sleeping in cars, and fine Scotch whiskey. 

For more, see blog post 'Growing up Gimpy'