The Beta Club

The Beta Club is a climbing community for (cis and transgender) women and non-binary people. We offer inclusive, curated climbing events, retreats and training that are designed to:

#1 Support the building of friendships on and off the wall

#2 Provide instructor supported climbing opportunities to build confidence

#3 Support the growth of an inclusive climbing community

The Beta Club was officially established by Director Emily Ankers in 2025 but it has been unofficially in the works since 2023 and is the successor of Beta Magazine.

Our Story…

Emily created Beta Magazine in 2020 alongside Annie Martin and Catherine Evans as a direct response to her academic research findings that women who climb were tending to not engage with rock climbing magazines and media (Ankers, 2020). The aim was to host a platform for people to share their stories, experiences, conversations and issues. Whether that be through articles, poetry, journal entries, illustrations, doodles, photographs, collages. You name it, we wanted to showcase it. We also had merch runs and International Women’s Day online events. We’ve done Instagram livestream interviews, takeovers and a couple of giveaways. We still have back Issues and merch on our Etsy site if you would like to support us. Over the years we got to know our supporters and realised that people were looking for the opportunity connect with community.

In her continued academic research career, Emily found that women and gender diverse people were often not climbing outdoors due to a lack of self-confidence and trust, a lack of appropriate/preferred climbing companions to go with, lack of equipment, lack of time and knowledge gaps around accessing crags. Plus, there were many other reasons that are somewhat more nuanced. There was an expression of anxiety surrounding the build up of planning, logistics, and the effort required to execute outdoor climbing safely. To remove some of these stress inducing elements, Beta Club events are designed to take a lot of the thinking around climbing out of the picture for people. For our events, we provide a high level of information and detail – so you don’t have to think about so much! For our retreats we offer accommodation and catering – making it easier to focus on getting to know the others on the retreat and build connections.

Our (tiny) Team…

We work closely with our resident instructor Katie Mackay who delivers the climbing elements of our events.

Photograph of Katie, this is a selfie, Katie is a white woman in her early thirties with bright blue eyes and naturally brown hair. In the photo she is wearing a purple thin down jacket with a badge that says IMA. She is also wearing a black and orange helmet.

“I have been a keen climber and mountaineer since being introduced to it in my final year of University. I have been extremely lucky in that I’ve been able to make something I am passionate about into my job. I want to show everyone how great a time you can have in the mountains and crags, how to look after them and how in return they will help look after you. I have been based between Scotland and the Lake District for a few years now and love the contrasting beauty in both of these places.”

Emily Ankers is our Director and she hosts The Beta Club’s events.

The photo is a selfie of Emily, she is a white woman in her later twenties, she has blonde-ish brown, curly hair. In the photo she is wearing a teal green jumper.

“I have been climbing since 2017, when I began bouldering indoors. I worked my way through learning other disciplines and now I have sport, trad climbed and bouldered across the world. I’m a very average climber and pride myself on being a pretty ‘normal’ leisure climber. The other side to my professional life besides my PhD is writing, researching and consulting on equity, diversity and inclusion in climbing, the outdoors and sport.”

Ultimately, we want to help the community to have opportunities to grow into independent, outdoor climbers. We hope to see you at one of our events soon!

The Beta Club is registered as Beta Ventures Limited on Companies House.