Dealing With Female Stuff While Climbing

Attention male friends: do not read this!

You’ve been warned.

Hey Steph…

Was puzzling out a dilemma about climbing the North Chimney at Castleton with a really good guy friend of mine (muy guapo), dilemma, flow came to visit a day before we leave for Moab….but I don’t want to bail. Have you ever braved this new world?…I have always managed to bail or luck out. And usually dehydrate myself significantly enough I never pee on a multi….(bad I know) I was thinking stashing wipes and tampons in a ziplock in my chalk bag…and just yelling at him to look the other way……horrible horrible dilemma….any advice?

-Michelle

Hi Michelle,

With regards to being dehydrated so you don’t have to pee on a multi-pitch route ever: don’t do that. You should always hydrate like crazy before and after climbing so you can carry less water up the rock! Remember, if you are wearing elastic waist pants, all you have to do is squat and yank the back of your pants down and the elastic of your legloops is going to stretch too, and it’s literally easy as pie. If your pants have a fly, you just undo the fly and proceed to step B: cake. You can even do this in a hanging belay, and if you have any kind of ledge it’s a 2 second procedure (well, depending on how fast you empty).

The Diva cup is one of the best things I own, and totally eliminates any of these problems. If you’re on a heavy bleeding day, you may want to go hide behind a boulder, dump it out and rinse it with water and put it back in right before you start the climb. Usually I can go many hours without having it overflow.

Phew, this post is really bordering on TMI. But, we’re climbers and we’re not scared.

🙂 Steph