Ashima Shiraishi is a 14-year-old girl from Queens, New York who learned to climb at the age of 6 by scaling boulders in Central Park. If you’ve ever been to Central Park you’d know that some of the rock faces and boulders in there would seem like Mt. Everest to a child, but he fact that this prodigy learned to climb on the Central Park rocks and went on to become the greatest female rock climber in the world at the age of 14 is astounding.
Get ready to have your mind straight up blown:
Back when I was in college I was actually a rock climbing instructor at the Summer Camp I worked at, so this takes me back a ways. It’s absolutely astounding that someone that young could be operating at a skill level that professionals 2 to 3 times her age would never achieve. Just think how badass she must feel walking into climbing competitions and straight up beasting chicks twice her age who have been competing for longer than she’s been alive. It’s got to feel pretty damn empowering.
I’d like to say that it’ll be fun to watch her career and see if she can break any sorts of records in the future, but rock climbing is a sport that gets virtually zero mainstream coverage so sadly this might be the first and last time most of us hear about her.
[h/t Great Big Story]