During Angelika’s 20-year career, she helped set new world standards, including becoming the first woman to send D15.
🧊 About the episode
Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right, or so goes the pithy expression. But at least in Angelika Rainer’s case, it does seem to bear out.
During Angelika’s 20-year career, she helped set new world standards, becoming the first woman to send D15 ✅ and routinely finishing first or second on the Ice Climbing World Cup circuit 🥇. That’s a far cry from the kid whose favorite catchphrase was “I can’t do it”. What changed?
Well, you’ll have to listen to find out.
In this episode, we chat about:
- 🧊 Struggling with confidence and how climbing helped
- 🧊 Developing a love for the mountains thanks to her mom
- 🧊 Going all in on drytooling and how the sport evolved
- 🧊 The importance of an “off-season” for recuperation
- 🧊 Her mental battle with “Iron Man” (D14+)
- 🧊 The decision to retire from competitions
- 🧊 Sending her first 9a
- 🧊 The story behind a cappuccino-inspired route
“There is a route called ‘Cappuccino’ in Tomorrow's World, and there is a little story to it. One day, I picked up Tom in Val di Fassa to go to the cave, and uh, after Fedaia, he told me, ‘yeah, you can leave me out here, uh, at the parking of the crag.’
And it was getting dark. It was already six or seven o'clock in the evening. And Tom said, ‘oh, no, I'm not going to join you in the apartment tonight because I'm going to sleep at the at the crag because tomorrow morning I want to finish bolting this route, so it's ready for you guys when you arrive.’
And I was really surprised because we were going to spend the night in this nice heated apartment cooking something and then sleeping in our warm beds. And Tom, he was ready to sleep in his sleeping bag at the crag, so we told him, I told him that we were going to bring him takeaway cappuccino the next morning.
And so he said he was going to call the route ‘Cappuccino’.”
🧊 Resources and links
Angelika is spending a lot more time on rock these days, and to see what she’s working on, you can follow her on:
📸 @angelika_rainer | 🔗 angelika-rainer.com
🧊 Credits
📸 Cover photo courtesy of Jonathan White
Intro music by Hannah Noelle Enomoto (thanks, sis!). This episode was edited by Andrew Salomone of salomonesound.com.
🧊 Sponsors:
A huge thanks to Aniiu Gloves and Furnace Industries for supporting this show!
Aniiu Gloves: What do you get when you combine 30 years of ice climbing and product design chops? Well, if you’re into gloves you get Aniiu — a boutique climbing brand on a mission to produce the best ice climbing and drytooling gloves around. Doug, Jun, and the rest of the team spare no expense in the pursuit of durable, dextrous and waterproof. Best yet, they are made from recycled textiles — which saves waste from the landfill — and they are robustly built so they won’t end up there anytime soon. To learn more about your friend in the cold, head to aniiu.com. That is aniiu.com.
Furnace Industries: We get it, ice season never really ends… it just kinda blends between rock, plastic, and plywood until waterfalls freeze over again. No matter how you train in the off-season Furnace Industries keeps you going ‘til your next bout of screaming barfies. With their gym-safe DRY ICE Evolutions you can keep up your fitness indoors. And if you’re looking to challenge yourself on your homewall, they have the largest stock of drytooling holds in America. Check out their full lineup of ice and drytooling gear at furnace-Industries.com… where It’s Always Ice Season.
🗣️ Leave a review!
If you enjoy the show, please consider leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice.
Related posts
Written by
