Montague alum Jessica Perez has always been fearless. As mom Penny tells it, when Jessica was six or seven, there was a large hay wagon near the house - Penny grew up on a farm - and Jessica climbed all the way to the top of the hay piled on the wagon. Penny remembers the hay being four or five tiers high, and Jessica simply waved greetings to her mom when Penny came out to investigate the situation.
“She had no fear of heights, even when she was little,” Penny said.
Years later, Jessica still doesn’t have a fear of heights, and it’s a good thing she doesn’t, because she’s now a member of the USA ice climbing team. She traveled from her Golden, Colorado home to Finland this week with several teammates to compete in the International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation Continental Cup. (The competitions can be viewed on the federation’s YouTube channel by searching for UIAA.)
The American Alpine Club, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization headquartered in Golden with over 24,000 members, sponsors the USA team, which travels to events all over the world each winter. Jessica doesn’t compete on the entire circuit - she has a day job as a dental hygienist - but has done more than her share of travel in her two years as part of the team. She’s been to competitions in South Korea, France and Switzerland before, and this week’s Finland event will be followed by one in Scotland and the February 16-18 world championships in one of Canada’s largest cities, Edmonton.
“I get to see all these amazing places I never would’ve seen as a kid,” Perez said. “When I was younger, I never traveled except to Florida, so my first international competition was amazing.”
There are two different disciplines in competitive ice climbing - lead and speed. In speed ice climbing, athletes simply climb up an ice wall as quickly as possible using a special piece of equipment called a Fifi hook. Jessica said “at least once per competition,” an athlete accidentally stabs themselves in a hand or a leg with the hook.
Even if speed were her thing - she admits with a laugh that it is not - one can see where it would be risky for a dental hygienist who does so much intricate work with their hands to compete in such an event. She sticks, therefore, to the lead discipline.
The lead discipline bears a small similarity to skiing, in that climbers attempt to complete specific pre-set routes. The competitions take place on a man-made structure. While it is an ice climbing competition, routes can also include rocky terrain.
The courses are usually so difficult that few climbers are actually able to complete it, so speed does become something of a tiebreaker in ranking finishers if multiple climbers reach the same part of a course before bowing out.
Jessica, who graduated from Montague in 2001 and Ferris State in 2004, discovered ice climbing when she moved to Colorado soon after college. Although she didn’t consider herself the athletic type while in Michigan, Jessica was aware of the state’s vibrant outdoor scene when she made the move and quickly found a group of friends that enjoyed rock climbing. A few years into that, she was enjoying it enough (and was good enough at it) that when she heard about ice climbing, she couldn’t resist trying it.
“I had a friend who said they had a friend who ice climbed,” Jessica said. “I went out there and tried it at Rocky Mountain National Park. I liked it so much, I invited myself the following weekend to go again.”
Quickly sucked in, Perez ice climbed whenever she could, and when the sport’s World Cup circuit staged an event in Denver in 2019, she attended and found herself “blown away at what these athletes were doing.” A few weeks after that, Perez attended the Ouray Ice Festival, part of which includes the Ice Climbing Continental Open at the Ouray Ice Park, which draws athletes from all over the world. Seeing top competitors in action twice in a short span planted a bug in Perez’s mind that just wouldn’t go away.
“I thought, ‘This is so cool. How do I get to the next level to do this?’” Perez said. “The next few years I dropped everything and trained, and I made the team two years ago.”
Most of the USA team is from Colorado, Jessica said, but she is not the only Michigan native on the team; Lauren Shartell originally hails from Wyandotte. There are also team members from Seattle and from Wisconsin, she added.
Jessica is still a dental hygienist; there’s not enough money in the sport for many athletes to pursue ice climbing full-time. However, she has nonetheless held her own against some of the best in the world, occasionally finishing in the top three in USA competitions, though not yet internationally. She ranked 37th in the world last year despite only competing in two of the three events that factored into the rankings. Jessica feels like she’s close to pulling off a top-3 finish in a global competition, but would likely have to train full time to do it.
“I’m really considering taking a small sabbatical for the next winter season to join the whole circuit,” Perez said. “It’s honestly a tough balance, because I do love it, but I do love what I do for my profession too.”
Also a factor, though she, like any athlete, hates to admit it, is her age. Perez recently turned 40 years old, and the majority of her competitors are younger than she is. However, she does take inspiration from the fact that several top climbers in the lead discipline are of a similar age. Three of the top five in this year’s World Cup standings to date are 39 or older; last year, the third-place finisher in the world rankings was Woonseon Shin, a 43-year-old Korean woman. Perez particularly looks up to a 45-year-old climber from Northern Ireland named Eimir McSwiggan, who Perez said “makes finals at every competition” and was fifth in last year’s rankings.
With those women pushing her, Perez doesn’t sound like someone who will be finished with competitive ice climbing in the immediate future. The team’s roster is determined via annual tryouts, so she’s locked in through the 2024 season. She does, though, soak in every moment of the experience.
“Every time I make the team, I think, ‘I’m doing this,’” Perez said. “It’s so fun. I love the traveling. I love the community. I love my teammates. We’re all competing with each other, but it’s the most supportive group I’ve ever been a part of. We all cheer each other on.”
