Climbing
The trailblazing journey of climbing sensation Angie Scarth-Johnson
Australian free climbing phenom Angie Scarth-Johnson is blowing expectations out of the water as she revolutionises climbing.
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Born in 1994, Angie Scarth-Johnson started out, like most of us, climbing trees. Flash-forward to 2023, and the 19-year-old has already broken a lifetime’s worth of records.
The climbs she completes are so hard, they’ve not only revolutionised women’s climbing – but galvanised climbing as a whole. What Scarth-Johnson does is so difficult that people of any gender would struggle to keep up. See how she's pushing the boundaries of climbing by watching Momentum: Angie Scarth-Johnson in the player above.
She currently spends six months a year in the Blue Mountains, the focal point of Australian climbing, and the other six months travelling the world, visiting major climbing destinations in Spain, France and the USA.
This is how she does it...
01
Early beginnings
Angie Scarth-Johnson pauses for a portrait in Australia
© Kamil Sustiak / Red Bull Content Pool
“I started climbing around the house, in the trees and pretty much everything,” says Scarth-Johnson. She’s lived in Barcelona since 2021, but she’s talking about her childhood in the Australian capital city of Canberra.
“I would climb everything in the house. It's funny because normally, when a parent wants to hide something from a child, they put it really high, whereas my parents would always put it really low because the first place I would look for things was high.”
02
Falling
At the age of seven, Scarth-Johnson experienced her first major setback, falling out of a tree and hurting her back. “I don't know how high it was, but it was high enough to scare my parents,” she laughs. Her parents were worried. Which parents wouldn’t be? But they also had a solution. “I guess my parents after that were really scared that I was going to break something or have an accident, so they started to take me to a climbing gym that was close to my house.”
“I was very determined,” Scarth-Johnson remembers of those initial sessions alongside older athletes at the local gym. “I never really liked team sports because I really liked to be in control of how I do things. It sounds selfish, but I like to have that [control] to push myself to the next level. I guess that's why I don't really like competitive climbing, because I find it difficult to find the same push against other people. I really have that with myself. So climbing was this perfect sport for me, because I really liked the idea of competing against yourself.”
03
Squad goals
Scarth-Johnson had an instant connection with rock climbing
© Kamil Sustiak / Red Bull Content Pool
At the local gym, she was climbing with adults when she was eight. By all accounts, she was the best climber there. “I just managed to climb really well with them and I thought maybe I should try and train myself,” she says. “I'm very stubborn, so I don't often like people to tell me how to do things. I'm much better now, but I think at that age, I always wanted to do my own thing and to push myself.”
“I started climbing alone and I found this group of friends who knew about rock climbing, I didn't know that rock climbing existed, I thought you just climb in the gym,” she says. “And that was it, they told my dad “Maybe we can take Angie out rock climbing because we think she could be really good because she's really good in the gym, and she really likes it.” So I went rock climbing for the first time with my dad and this group of people. Straightaway, I felt it was where I was supposed to be. I never missed a weekend.”
04
Setting records
No one from Scarth-Johnson’s family was a climber but, recognising her talent, her dad learned to belay her, which allowed her to up her game. As did being homeschooled by her mum, who was a teacher.
“I was travelling a lot with my parents,” she explains. “And I was climbing everywhere. It was on one of these trips, at the age of nine, that Scarth-Johnson became the youngest person to climb a grade 8b, completing Swingline in Red River Gorge, USA. Climbing gyms usually go up to 7a+, in increments of a,b,c so an 8b is (in theory) four higher than the highest indoor climb.
“It was a family trip to Disneyland. My parents took me to Red River Gorge, in Kentucky,” she remembers. “I found this climb that I really liked, and it happened to be this grade. I wasn’t climbing because of the grade, i just liked it. I knew no one had done it, but I tried and eventually I did.”
She didn’t stop there. A few days later, she climbed her first 8c+ – the most difficult level in the 8th grade. “I went back after I did the first one. Normally my process is like, I find it, I really like it, and I decide: “OK, I'm going to try and do it.” And then this could mean that I come back home and I train, or I stay and I try it and try to find different techniques until I'm ready and strong enough to do it. So, I think that's why every process and every ascent for me is very important, because every one of them was so hard that I remember every part of everyone.”
The wall was 20 metres high with a 45 degree overhand. “It was very crimpy, the holes very small,” she says. “I don’t remember how long it took me. Maybe three weeks? It takes so much strain that you can't just say: “I'm going to do it in this many days.” It's something you try to do every day and maybe one day, it will happen.”
On the day she did it, after three weeks of trying she managed it in six minutes.
05
Above and beyond
Climbing in the Blue Mountains in Scarth-Johnson's native Australia
© Kamil Sustiak / Red Bull Content Pool
Her next achievement made her 8b and 8c+ look like child’s play. Back home in Australia, she completed a 9a, becoming the first Australian woman to do so. “This was my life goal,” she says. “I remember thinking ‘Imagine if I could do one day or imagine if I could be so strong to do a 9a.’ And now I've done three, but that was another moment where I was like ‘OK, I can be even better.’ So, this would be another marking point in my career.”
She was 15 at the time.
Despite achieving so much so young, Scarth-Johnson says she doesn’t actively set objectives, but lets ideas come to her. “I don't ever plan to do anything. I just sort of think about my goal and then I look for something that fits the goal.”
In summer 2022 she completed more 9as, Víctimas Pérez and Pornographie in Spain.
“It's hard to explain to a non-climber, but 9a is the level that you reach – and especially for a female – and you could become professional,” she explains. “Everything below 9a has been done a lot before. Physically, it's very, very, very intense, [you’re] in your fingers a lot of the time. Every route, every climb can be a different style, it could be very technical, or endurance or power-based. But normally it's very hard because the holes are very bad or it's very hard to pull yourself up. You need a certain level of endurance, a certain level of experience.”
06
Girl power
It wasn’t just achieving these climbs, but being one of the first women to do so that meant a lot to Scarth-Johnson. “I want women to say that it's possible for them as well,” she says. “Men have different bodies and [greater] physical strength. A lot of the time it's hard to know if you can do [the same climbs] as a woman. So, I guess it's nice that women are like “OK, so maybe this is another 9a I could try because I know it's possible, as a woman has done it.”
Her mother is Spanish, and Scarth-Johnson says being brought up in a family with Spanish women made her mentally strong. “I think I'm really mentally strong. I come from a line of Spanish women so I learned how to be very independent and to speak up and how to sort of control myself and control my mind really well,” she says. “I honestly feel like it comes from my ‘abuela’ [grandmother]. That made me very determined in my climbing.”
Outside of her family, American climber Lynn Hill is an inspiration. “She just pretty much shaped climbing for women in a time that women couldn't or didn't climb at all,” she says. “She was always probably in a group that really looked down on her and didn't believe that she should be there and had the right to be there. So, I looked up to her because I feel like she pushed her way to have her place. And she deserved it.”
07
Strength and feeling
Angie Scarth-Johnson checks out her line
© Kamil Sustiak / Red Bull Content Pool
Both of the above are essential to a climber. Scarth-Johnson says she feels relaxed and focused when she climbs. “I’m not thinking about anything else. Climbing relaxes me. Climbing is where I'm most in my happy place.”
Because she’s been climbing for such a long time, Scarth-Johnson says her fingers are really strong – essential for those 8-9 grade routes. And, because she’s studied climbing so long, she’s great at reading a route. “I was always very good at reading how to move on the wall,” she says. “It just came natural for me. And I'm really good at just pulling hard, like holding on. A lot of things can make a good climber: you'll never meet a climber that has everything. Everyone has different qualities, and it makes you your own type of person, but a very good climber.”
08
Leading the way
As well as the climbs mentioned above, Scarth-Johnson says feeling the strongest she’s ever felt is a career highlight at the moment. She’s ready to lead the charge, accepting her place as a role model in female climbing.
“I had a lot of climbing role models when I was growing up,” she says, “so, it would be nice to think that I am one for someone else, maybe a little girl, like I was climbing. I want to show that it's possible to even come from a non-climbing background and become whatever you want in the sport.”
As for beginners, boy or girl, “My advice would be that when you feel like you're not motivated, or you don't want to push anymore, it's nice to come back to the basics of why you love doing something, not just in climbing, in everything,” she says. “I think sometimes when things get hard, it's very easy to just give up and just walk away. It's nice to bring it back to the very basics of why you love it, that can really help you to continue to push, and go for it.”
Don't miss her in action in series 10 of Reel Rock, Yeah Buddy – Part 1 and Part 2 as she discovers mastering the climbing competition Pscicobloc and tackles Mallorca’s thrilling deep-water soloing routes.
17 min
Yeah buddy – part 1
Aussie climbing prodigy Angie Scarth-Johnson and Hazel Findlay explore Mallorca’s deep-water soloing routes.
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