Are You A Climber If You Don’t Lead?

A well-reasoned essay on being a climber without being an enthusiastic leader. Here’s the nub of the issue for these two:

“Over the past year, our climbing relationship had some emotional ups and downs — or, it might be more accurate to say, we were that couple you saw fighting over something stupid at the crag. Steph wanted to push her trad leading threshold higher, and I wanted to help her, and we didn’t know how to do it. By the end of last year, she was questioning whether or not she even liked climbing. At all. And I love climbing.

She ended the year telling people she was ‘taking a break from leading.’ At some point, one of her friends introduced her to someone and said, ‘Steph’s a climber,’ and Steph interjected, ‘No, no, I’m not, really.’’ When she got home that night, we talked, and she asked:

‘If you don’t lead, are you still a climber?’”