Maureen Beck

BOULDER, COLORADO
 

"Maureen Beck was born without her left hand but that didn’t stop her from picking up the sport of climbing at the age of 12. Now based in Colorado’s Front Range, Mo spends her nights training at the gym and her days climbing all over the American southwest. She works closely with the adaptive climbing community as Program Director for the Adaptive Climbing Festival and is the Para Athlete Rep on the board of USA Climbing, as well as serving on the board of the American Alpine Club.

As a competitive climber, she has won 10 national titles, a gold medal at the 2014 Paraclimbing World Championships in Spain and defended that title with a gold medal at the 2016 World Championships in Paris. She retired from international competition in 2023, having never missed an IFSC podium. In 2018, she went on her first alpine expedition to the Northwest Territories in Canada’s Nahanni National Park where she and fellow adaptive climber Jim Ewing attempted the legendary Lotus Flower Tower, for which she was named National Geographics 2019 Adventurer of the Year.  Maureen starred in the 2017 Film “Stumped” which has won numerous awards and toured hundreds of cities all over the world, and in the 2019 film ‘Adaptive’. Mo is an athlete for The North Face, Petzl, Sterling Rope, Scarpa, and TinCup Whiskey and a speaker for National Geographic.

In addition to climbing, Mo loves gardening, her chickens and dogs, sleeping in cars, and sipping a fine Scotch whiskey on the front of a raft, fly rod in hand.