What a week on the cliff taught meabout choice, fear andempowerment

I’ve just finished multiple days of abseil guiding with groups of teenage girls and a private tour group of middle-aged women. On paper, the work was about ropes, cliffs, harnesses, helmets, safety systems and helping people walk backwards off the edge of something their brain was very clearly telling them wasn’t a great idea. But in practice, it became a week about exploring fear, choice, language, dignity, humour, gender, and what happens when people are given permission to have a hard experience without being pressured to perform bravery.

Before people went over the edge, I found myself saying some version of the same thing again and again. Nobody here cares if you abseil. I care that you can be here and have a positive experience. If that involves abseiling, I will support you. If it doesn’t, I will support you.

"Nobody here cares if you abseil. I care that you can be here and have a positive experience. If that involves abseiling, I will support you. If it doesn’t, I will support you."

I said it to the teenage girls and to the women and I meant it every time. Because honestly, I don’t care if someone abseils. That might sound strange, but the rope isn’t the point, neither is the cliff or the activity. The point is the experience someone has and if they feel respected, like they have choice, or like they can ask questions without being made to feel silly? Also normalising that their fear is welcome, not something they have to hide and most important, that they feel like they have agency. That’s the art of guiding, the abseil is just just the hook.

One of the things we spoke about during the week was distress and how it affects our thinking. When someone is standing on top of a cliff, tied into ropes, looking over the edge, it’s easy from the outside to think, “come on, you’ll be fine.” And physically, they will be, in fact they were at much higher risk of harm driving here than they are now standing on this cliff with me and the multiple redundancy systems I have in place. They’re safe, ropes are checked, harness is fitted, and I’ve done this thousands of times. But that doesn’t always mean much in that moment. The body is busy saying, absolutely not, this is ridiculous, humans don’t walk backwards off cliffs. What are we doing? And honestly, fair enough walking off a cliff is not a normal thing to do it should feel scary.

"The body is busy saying, absolutely not, this is ridiculous, humans don’t walk backwards off cliffs. What are we doing"

Fear isn’t weakness, its information, it’s the body trying to keep us alive. When people become distressed, their thinking narrows and their ability to process instructions, make decisions, remember steps, or problemsolve drops to run, fight, or faint. That doesn’t mean they’re being difficult, not listening, or that they’re not brave enough. It means they’re human and my role as a guide in that moment is just as much relational as it is technical.

Yes, I need to know the systems, manage the risk, and keep the group physically safe. But I also need to pay attention to what’s happening for the person in front of me. I’m trying to read if they’re still with me, are they overwhelmed, do they need a joke, or for me to shut up and just let them do it. Sometimes they need to hear that the only person making them do this is themselves, because I will never try to talk someone into abseiling. I find that often the more helpful thing I can offer someone on the edge is permission to pause, breathe and say, “not today” and for that to belong in the experience just as much.

Adventure spaces can sometimes get weird about bravery. There can be this unspoken pressure that the successful version of the activity is the person who pushes through, conquers the fear, gets over the edge, and comes back with a neat little story about overcoming adversity. Sometimes that happens, someone is terrified and gets support, chooses to go, and feels amazing afterwards.

That is powerful, but that’s not the only version of success. Sometimes success is putting the harness on walking to the edge. Sometimes it’s watching someone else go first or getting halfway through the setup and saying, “actually, no.” Sometimes it’s choosing not to abseil and still having a great day.

If the only acceptable outcome is going over the edge, then choice becomes fake. We can say “it’s your choice” all we like, but people are very good at reading the room or maybe I should say the cliff. They know when the real message is, “you can choose, but we’ll be disappointed if you choose wrong.” That’s not consent, that’s pressure dressed up nicely.

For me, the line nobody cares if you abseil was a way of taking the pressure out of the space. It was a way of saying, you don’t have to earn your place here by doing the biggest, scariest thing, you’re already part of this and you deserve to have this experience in your own way. Because what benefit does sliding backwards down a rope really hold for you if you’re so terrified that you dissociate the whole time?

And the funny thing is, when the pressure drops, people often become more willing to try. Because they feel safe enough to make a real choice. That’s the magic bit, not the cliff or the rope; it’s their choice to try something unique to their day to day whatever that may look like.

“We’re tough, we’re not princesses”

One of my favourite moments of the week came during the private tour group with the women. We were on the cliff in the middle of this very real, very exposed experience and one of the women said something like; “We’re tough, we’re not princesses.” I get what she meant, it was playful and it was a way of saying we can do hard things. But I couldn’t help myself. I said something like “princesses aren’t weak, gender has nothing to do with whether this is hard or not. This is scary because it’s scary, walking off a cliff isn’t a normal thing to do.” Thankfully, they took it well, they took it beautifully. What followed was one of those great unplanned conversations that can happen in spaces where the activity creates just enough intensity, novelty and humour for people to talk about something real.

We ended up talking about language and about how girls and women are spoken to in adventure spaces. The way toughness is often framed as moving away from femininity, rather than expanding what femininity is allowed to include. Princess Diana was a force; Moana crossed an ocean, saved her people, challenged a god, and pulled Maui into line. A princess is brave, stubborn, kind, furious, funny, powerful, scared, determined, and completely in charge of herself. So yes, bring on the “slay queen,” “badass,” “princess,” bring on whatever language helps people feel strong, playful and connected to themselves.

What I saw that week was groups of amazing humans who when treated with dignity and respect, took control of their experience and appeared to delight in their agency and fear all at once.

What I loved most was that none of this was forced. I didn’t arrive with a grand plan to talk about gender, empowerment, distress tolerance, executive functioning, choice and agency. Well maybe a little bit, “no one cares if you abseil” is a standard line for me. But essentially, I was just there to guide. Often good work happens when you create the conditions, and then you stay awake to what emerges. The activity gives people something to gather around. It gives people a reason to laugh, swear, hesitate, encourage each other, and talk about things that might feel too intense if we were sitting in a room and staring at each other. That’s what I love about this work.

Outdoor experiences can offer people something different from their everyday life. Not better, just different enough to interrupt the usual script. For the teenage girls, it was a chance to be around challenge without pressure. For the women, it was a chance to try something unique, have a laugh, talk about fear, and somehow end up in a conversation about gendered language on the side of a cliff. For me, it was a reminder that the best parts of guiding often happen when I can be my authentic self. Not a polished, overly serious version of me, just myself. Warm, a bit cheeky, professional, interested in people, and willing to say, “Nobody cares if you abseil,” and mean it.

Adventure work is often sold through the image of the big moment and the summit selfie; some might say a peak experience. It’s also important to remember that people aren’t there to perform bravery for us. They’re there to have an experience and we’re there to empower that within our scope of skills as a guide. If that experience involves abseiling, beautiful I will support you all the way down. If it doesn’t, beautiful I will support you all the same. Because nobody cares if you abseil. And that’s kind of the whole point.