{"id":25662,"date":"2016-12-19T09:01:25","date_gmt":"2016-12-19T17:01:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/climbing-the-rock-of-life\/"},"modified":"2016-12-19T09:01:25","modified_gmt":"2016-12-19T17:01:25","slug":"climbing-the-rock-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/climbing-the-rock-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Climbing the rock of life"},"content":{"rendered":"

FAIRBANKS \u2014<\/strong> When a young gymnast named Emily Mengershausen fell from the balance beam in Kansas City, dislocating her elbow, her life\u2019s trajectory took a turn.<\/p>\n

Then 17, Mengershausen began physical therapy at a clinic with a climbing wall, reported the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt looked like a lot of fun,\u201d Mengershausen said of watching the climbers. \u201cIt looked laid back, and at that point, my heart just wasn\u2019t in gymnastics anymore. After four weeks of therapy, I climbed and people suggested I compete.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mengershausen taught herself to climb and started competing.<\/p>\n

At 36, climbing permeates every facet of Mengershausen\u2019s life and she is one of Fairbanks\u2019 premier climbing instructors at Ascension Rock Club.<\/p>\n

Her specialty is bouldering, a style of climbing with no ropes, on rock features that are generally smaller than 20 feet. Bouldering requires the climber to get on the roof of the rock feature. Crash pads are often used in bouldering to cushion the climber\u2019s fall.<\/p>\n

At Ascension Rock Club, Menger-shausen teaches teens and children who compete at state and regional levels.<\/p>\n

Recently, Mengershausen was in Portland, Oregon, for a regional competition with her teams.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe train really hard,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Mengershausen met her husband, Greg, in 2005 at the Anchorage Rock Gym when they were spotting each other on the rock wall.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were bouldering together but we hadn\u2019t introduced ourselves, and someone asked, \u2018Are you guys married?\u2019\u201d Mengershausen said. \u201cSo then we were both like, \u2018What\u2019s your name?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we started climbing there every day just so we could run into each other, and then we got each other\u2019s numbers,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Bouldering has continued to be a part of Emily and Greg\u2019s relationship.<\/p>\n

Since moving to Fairbanks in 2012, the Mengershausens have enjoyed exploring the Interior for boulders to climb. Emily said they\u2019ve helped map a few bouldering spots in Alaska while climbing with Tom Ellis, who writes for the National Bouldering Project, a climbing website.<\/p>\n

Mengershausen wouldn\u2019t say who is better at climbing, her or her husband.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of facets to climbing. I\u2019ve been climbing a lot longer, so I have more tools and I can find routes with my technique,\u201d Mengershausen said. \u201cHe\u2019s a lot bigger and powerful, so there\u2019s things that go into his climbing that I might not be able to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

With two children, Mengershausen said it\u2019s more difficult to get outside on long climbing excursions. But the children climb as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy kids are really climbers also. In the last competition, Gideon (7) made it to the finals and competed with the 10-year-olds,\u201d Mengershausen said. \u201cRory (5) is not too shabby, and she is actually quite a little monkey.\u201d<\/p>\n

When she is not climbing, Mengershausen homeschools her children and she is involved at Friends Church. She works in the youth groups and the meals ministry.<\/p>\n

To express her artistic side, Mengershausen designs chalk bags for climbers, under the name Vivid Designs.<\/p>\n

She said she isn\u2019t as busy as she seems, though.<\/p>\n

\u201cI sleep a lot. It\u2019s not as much as it sounds like,\u201d she said. \u201cMy husband helps out with a lot of things.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FAIRBANKS \u2014 When a young gymnast named Emily Mengershausen fell from the balance beam in Kansas City, dislocating her elbow, her life\u2019s trajectory took a turn. Then 17, Mengershausen began physical therapy at a clinic with a climbing wall, reported the Fairbanks Daily News<\/a>-Miner. \u201cIt looked like a lot of fun,\u201d Mengershausen said of watching […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":25663,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-25662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25662"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=25662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}