June 2017
Katie Koach
Katie Koach is known by members and Aztec Adventures staff as a great rock climbing athlete and a regular participant in anything related to climbing at SDSU! Katie brings positive energy to the ARC Wall, is encouraging to everyone, has taken climbing courses with Aztec Adventures, and also serves as an officer for the SDSU Climbing Club. Katie started climbing as a freshman in Fall 2013. Having come from competitive tennis in high school, she did not have experience with most of the equipment at the ARC but she thought climbing looked fun and signed up for the climbing orientation class in the first week of school. After taking the class, she stayed at the wall, climbing and meeting people for hours! She says, “I felt strong for the first time in my life - like I could take on the world.” In other words, she was hooked!
She quickly learned that it is okay to go to the ARC Wall alone because there is always someone who will give you a belay and everyone is really friendly. Katie climbs several times per week now, both indoors and out. At first, she would go running after a climbing session to ensure she was balancing the conditioning of her upper and lower body, but after becoming a better climber, she found she uses her whole body with every climbing session.
Her first foray into outdoor climbing was while she was studying abroad at the University of Stirling in Scotland. There, naturally, she joined the mountaineering club. The club climbs and goes on “hill walking” trips (what we refer to as hiking). In Scotland she experienced bouldering, which is climbing low to the ground without a rope or a harness. That experience got her very excited so that when she returned to SDSU she began to explore outdoor climbing here in Southern California.
Once Katie caught the outdoor climbing bug, she took the Aztec Adventures ENS climbing intermediate course with the specific goal of learning her anchors and knots. These skills enable a person to lead a climbing group outdoors, which is where the SDSU Climbing Club fits in. The club is not intended to teach students to climb (that’s what Aztec Adventures does!), but rather is a social club of people who already know how to climb safely and enjoy the great outdoors together. Katie says she climbs with friends from the club every weekend and sometimes several times per week to climb.
Katie says that despite the fact that climbing is an intense fitness activity, she is really not there for the workout. “I’m there for the community.” Her advice for any new student coming to SDSU is to do something with Aztec Adventures! She also suggests,
“Find your community and then be a part of it as fully as you can.”
Katie is studying Journalism with an emphasis in Public Relations at SDSU and is pursuing minors in Women’s Studies and Recreation & Tourism Management. She has one semester remaining and plans to spend the summer working at Adventure 16.
