Allison Vest Climbs V14 After Leaving Competitive Climbing
Allison Vest becomes the first Canadian woman to climb V14 after taking a step back from the National Team
Photo by: Sean Faulkner
I realized that I wanted to be in a place where I was excited to have an opportunity to showcase my climbing at a competition and not feel like it was going to be the end of the world if I didn’t do well. I couldn’t figure out a way to mentally get there without taking a step back.
Three-time National Champion Allison Vest moved to Canmore when she was seven. At nine, Vest began to push herself into competitive climbing. In the years that followed, she became one of Canada’s rising stars, and joined the National Team as a teenager. As she grew up, Vest became a more potent force in National level competitions, earning gold in the 2018 and 2020 Canadian Boulder Nationals. She won Lead in 2019.
On the rock, Vest is quick to qualify her experience as “limited,” but in 2019 she became the first Canadian woman to climb V13. Although she progressed in Canada, Vest had long wanted to move to America for some time. Current roommate and best friend Kyra Condie and Vest planned for an April 2020 move-in date before the pandemic hit.
As the pandemic crashed down on western Canada, Vest left BC and returned to Canmore. As the lockdown progressed, the curve flattened, and Vest one more made her plans to relocate to Salt Lake City.
Despite the complications of the pandemic, Vest became stronger training with America’s best climbers. As more climbers flocked to Salt Lake, some of Canada’s strongest also began to find a home alongside Vest in America’s climbing capital.
As her time in Salt Lake increased, so did her strength, but the competition results she wanted eluded her. “I felt like I’d been training really hard. And I’d made this big move to Salt Lake and I was out around all these great people and then I just got a couple rounds where I did okay, but it wasn’t anything special.
“A good part of that comes from my mental state when I’m competing,” Vest continued, “I find it easy to spiral.” Vest said she struggles with confidence in competition. When the first boulder does not go her way, she gets in her head. “It’s something I’m still working on,” Vest noted, also citing her troubles with self-comparison. At a certain point, she said she needed space.
“I realized that I wasn’t having fun anymore, and I wasn’t motivated by competition. It’s not what motivated me to train. I was more excited to do a hangboarding session than I was a walk around or a mock comp. I was motivated by my strength gains, and I couldn’t figure out how to transfer that into competitions.”
Vest decided to focus her attentions on outdoor climbing. After ticking her first 5.14 and scoring second in the world in Boulder on 8a.nu’s ranking game for 2021, to all eyes, Vest seemed primed for another strong season. What many didn’t expect was that she would become the first Canadian woman to climb V14 so early into 2022.
After setting goals heading into the new year, she directed herself toward Show Your Scars for its proximity to her home and its style. The problem is not precisely what Vest looks for in a new project, but the wide-set grips fit her plus-seven ape-index.
“It is wide, which does suit me well,” she said, noting her wingspan’s use on such problems. Still, the physical compression style is not what Vest most appreciates, and she mentioned that many may have expected her to progress more on a heinous crimp line. Although she ended up progressing on this instead, Vest said it wasn’t entirely anti-style, either.
Vest took down the Ogden test-piece in 10 sessions of two or three weeks, excluding one session over a year ago. She noted persistent progression on the climbing breaking her way into falling on the last move the session before she sent.
In an interview in Spring of 2020, Vest mentioned that V15 does remain on her list and so it will be interesting to see what projects she picks up in these last months of winter. Her climber partner, Alex Johnson has begun work on the stand start to the Nest, raising questions for both ex-National Champions about the possibility of the V15 low.
In the meantime, many Canadians will wonder whether Vest will return to competitive climbing some time down the road. To that, she shared her thoughts. She mentioned she is not sure. “I think I’m sort of still discovering it. I have the intention of going back, at least right now, but I’m letting my motivation dictate when that will be.”
Featured image by Sean Faulkner.
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