ven before I became a climber, my dad was always my rock. He was always willing to teach me how to throw a baseball or shoot a basket, or just to listen when I needed him to. No matter what, he was quiet but supportive, wise but with open ears.

It was my dad who first took me and a friend to the local climbing gym one Sunday afternoon, when I was 14, and from that first taste, I became obsessed. I jumped in head first, and my dad was with me all the way. He and my mom would cater to my growing list of superstitions at each competition I entered: always eating at the Olive Garden the night before, always renting a Mercury Mystique from Hertz, always flying Delta.

Within a year, I competed in my first junior world cup, in France. I was still a teenager when I became a professional rock climber, and the world opened up to me. When I was a green 19 year old, I was invited on an all-female expedition (unheard of back in 1999) to the near virgin valley of the Tsaranaro Massif in southern Madagascar.

A year later, I found myself in the remote Kara Su valley in Kyrgyzstan—a trip that resulted in a violent kidnapping and a dramatic escape that made headlines around the world. Even after that, travel was part of the fabric of being a professional climber: almost a requirement. I sought out destinations that were better known, more tame, after being held hostage, but my goals didn’t change.

I wanted to push the sport forward, climb the hardest lines I could find, and always challeng.