Becoming a Professional Adaptive Rock Climber with Mo Beck

Wild Ideas Worth Living

REI Co-op

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4.7 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 15 April 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mo Beck is an elite climber who was born with a limb difference. For Mo, rock climbing is a puzzle, requiring her to find unique routes up the wall. Over the course of her career, Mo earned a spot on the national paralympic climbing team and has been a top tier competitor at countless national and international climbing events. Now, she's encouraging other adaptive climbers to rethink the limits of what their bodies can do.

Transcript

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0:00.0	If there wasn't me 20 years ago that I could have heard in a podcast, I'm just like, man, think of how many years of trial and error I could have saved.
0:11.4	I would have skipped, you know, trying to climb with my prosthetic or trying to like tape a freaking ladle to my hand so I could grab hole.
0:18.5	Like, I could have skipped all that stuff.
0:24.6	Moly. my hand so I could grab hole. Like, I could have skipped all that stuff. Mo Beck is an elite climber who is born with a limb difference. Her left arm ends about
0:30.4	halfway down her forearm, and she has no left hand. For Mo, rock climbing is like a puzzle.
0:39.8	She can't follow the route that other athletes use,
0:45.6	so she has to figure out how to get up the wall her own way. Over the course of her career,
0:51.1	Mo earned a spot on the National Paralympic climbing team and has been a top-tier competitor at countless national and international climbing events.
0:55.1	Now she's encouraging other adaptive climbers to rethink the limits of what their bodies can do.
1:01.2	I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studios production, presented by Capital One and the REI Co-OPE MasterCard.
1:15.5	Mo Beck, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living. I'm really excited to talk to you. Thanks for having me.
1:21.5	You have always been outdoorsy. Is that the real story? You know, I think so, but not always from like a place of
1:29.2	intent that I think that you've become as a grown up. Just as a kid, it was more of the
1:34.5	classic mom wanted to get us out of the house in the summer. And I went to a really cool Girl Scout
1:40.0	camp where you camped all summer long. And so like, I don't, I don't know. There's no real definition
1:45.4	of outdoorsy, right? But I definitely grew up living outdoors, out in nature, in whatever form that
1:52.9	took. You were born with a limb difference. And for those who don't know, can you just talk about
1:57.6	what that is? Yeah. So limb difference can be a lot of different things.
2:01.6	And it's a huge spectrum. So I can really only tell my story. My parents had no idea. It was long
2:06.8	enough ago that, you know, there's no fancy three-dimensional alien sonograms like they have now.
2:13.3	I just came out total surprise missing my hand from just above the wrist. And my parents kind of
2:19.1	just, I imagine took it in stride. You know, I was there, but it wasn't there. I'm sure they had
	...

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