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:

We know how difficult it is to get climbing outdoors. Our Director Emily Ankers is an expert in women’s and gender diverse people’s experiences of climbing, having built knowledge over years of academic research and through climbing herself. With this knowledge, we have crafted events that enable you to:

  • Build confidence
  • Find climbing partners
  • Meet like-minded people
  • Growing your own climbing community and network
  • Learn in a supportive, safe environment
  • Feel welcomed and included
  • Develop and build skills without judgement

Our Story…

Our Predecessor: Emily co-founded Beta Magazine in 2020 as a direct response to her academic research findings (Ankers, 2020). We built a platform for people to share their stories, experiences, conversations and issues in climbing. We still have back Issues and merch on our  Etsy site if you would like to support us.

The Beta Club: In her academic research, Emily found that women and gender diverse people were often not climbing outdoors due to:

  • lacking in self-confidence and trust
  • not having appropriate/preferred climbing companions to go with
  • being unable to access to equipment
  • not enough time
  • knowledge gaps around access and safety

Plus, there were many other reasons. There was particular anxiety surrounding the build up of planning, logistics, and the effort required to execute outdoor climbing safely. The Beta Club events are designed to address these challenges. We take a lot of the stressful thinking away for people, offering planned, safe, instructor led climbing. For all our events, we provide a high level of information and detail – so you know exactly what’s going on! 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 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.”

We are a super friendly team, so if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

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