‘The Purest Feeling We Can Have in This Fast World’

Flow: Women’s Counternarratives from Rivers, Rock, and Sky
Edited by Denisa Krásná and Alena Rainsberry
Rocky Mountain Books (2025)

After Alena Rainsberry and Denisa Krásná completed a 23-hour rock climbing trek up and down Half Dome in Yosemite National Park, California, they were physically exhausted.

But, they say, the adrenalin had gone to their heads. As they recovered physically, they brainstormed a joint book proposal on the diverse experiences of women in rock climbing, kayaking and highlining.

With just the two of them on the climb up Half Dome, Krásná and Rainsberry had noticed how different their summit experience was than when they climbed with men.

“We might have let our male buddies lead. But because we were two women, we were so motivated not to let the other one down,” Krásná said.

“We want to read some stories that are inspirational to us, and we lack them in our sports. So we thought now was a better time than ever.”

Reaching out to other women who they looked up to in rock climbing, whitewater kayaking and highlining, Krásná and Rainsberry asked if they would be willing to write a chapter for a book sharing women’s unique stories and perspectives in these sports.

From there the concept for the book Flow: Women’s Counternarratives from Rivers, Rocks, and Sky, co-edited by Rainsberry and Krásná, was born.

Three years later, Flow will be published next month by Rocky Mountain Books.

A 50-minute documentary of the same name, focusing on three of the women athletes in the book, one per sport, is in the works too. Rainsberry and Krásná hope it will be screening as early as this coming fall.

Contributors to Flow include women with varying levels of skill and experience in their sport, among them an Indigenous Mexican highliner, an Indian rock climber and an Ecuadorian whitewater kayaker.

Many of the athletes featured in Flow are first- or second-generation immigrants, queer, Indigenous or women of colour, and they all face intersecting struggles in accessing their sports.

This includes overcoming barriers like pressure from parents to conform to societal expectations of women, lack of child care, domestic violence, racism and classism.

Each chapter is accompanied by beautiful full-colour, full-page photos of the athletes in action, including what Rainsberry and Krásná believe is the first-ever action shot of whitewater kayaking, rock climbing and highlining together.

But Flow isn’t your typical athlete adventurer book.

While women break records and ground in these sports, Flow’s focus is not collecting the fastest, strongest and most daring feats of athleticism.

The idea instead, says Rainsberry, was to explore what draws women to these sports — “the beauty, the connection, the community, pushing your own self.”

“Those stories matter, too, even if you’re never going to climb the tallest mountain or kayak the tallest waterfall,” Rainsberry says.

‘Don’t do that, you might get hurt’

Sports like rock climbing, the highlining Krásná enjoys and the whitewater kayaking Rainsberry loves, are often labelled as “extreme” endeavours.

With risky routes, fast moving water, death-defying heights and dangerous terrain, it’s an understandable label. They don’t call one of Half Dome’s rock climbing routes “Death Slabs” for nothing.

While the rush of fear and the high of adrenalin factor in, “extreme” sports also appeal to athletes looking to explore self-sufficiency and strength-building, create community and foster friendship.

For many athletes, their sport is also what lets them tap into a “flow state” — the sense of calm and happiness that comes from focusing intensely on an activity you enjoy.

“I feel so happy in the moment, and after that moment passes as well, because it’s the purest feeling we can have in this fast world,” said Krásná.

“We named Flow for the flow state, obviously. But also we thought it was a really nice descriptor for the sports and the nature: flow of the river, ‘going against the flow.’”

Each of Flow’s 19 authors faced their own barriers to the “flow state.” Highliner Dorothea Hamilton, a mother of four, writes about lacking the time and money to achieve flow state when each session on the line has to fit into a tight schedule of child care, a day job and housework.

Hamilton’s perspective as a mom also helped her to see more deep-rooted barriers, Krásná says.

“Usually boys are encouraged to fall, stand up and try again, while girls are often told ‘don’t do that, because you might get hurt,’” Krásná said.

‘My climbing friends get me’

For many of the women in Flow, providing mentorship or even an example to other women who want to get into these sports is important. Many athletes didn’t see someone like themselves participating in these sports when they were young, which made it more difficult to believe they could do it.

That includes rock climber Kavitha Mohan, originally from Kerala state, India, who started rock climbing in her early 30s and went on to mentor a teenage rock climber.

“Girls go through a lot of doubts in their heads,” Mohan says. Seeing another person who looks like them, achieving goals they want to reach, can help give girls and young women the confidence to pursue these sports, she adds.

“It helps me, too, because it helps me grow… to see the other person shine, it makes me happy, too,” she said.

Mohan hopes any aspiring climbers who read her chapter will find courage from her participation in the sport to try it for themselves.

A chemical engineer by training, Mohan recently quit her job to focus on improving her rock-climbing skills, with the goal of taking on harder climbing routes.

Having already gone against the societal grain by opting out of marriage and having children, she told The Tyee many of her friends who don’t climb question her life choices.

“My climbing friends get me, but my friends at my work… they think I’m a bit stupid,” she said during a video call from her home in Bangalore, India.

“But they don’t understand, because they don’t have a passion in life.”

Mohan’s parents didn’t really understand her initial passion for rock climbing either. But they came around.

“They’ve seen me really depressed with my work life, and I was not really happy for some time,” Mohan said, adding climbing has allowed her to experience a level of joy she hadn’t felt since childhood.

“And then they suddenly see me happy and pursuing some goal, and then I have something to do with my life. So they saw that difference in me; they were really proud of me.”

Physical drawbacks and physical benefits

Flow features many examples of sexism facing women in these sports, from people of all genders who assume that the typical smaller stature, lighter weight and strength differences of women compared to men disadvantage women athletes.

Not so, according to the athletes The Tyee spoke to.

“I’m not as strong as [the men], but sometimes my flexibility helps me a lot,” said Mohan, adding as her strength and skills have grown, she has noticed a new competitive energy from some men she climbs with.

“I don’t weigh as much as my 200-pound male friends, so when we’re making moves down the river, it’s definitely going to be different for us,” said Rainsberry, adding her best experiences with whitewater kayaking come from following another woman’s lead on the river.

“It’s not better or worse: there’s some things that I can do better, there’s some things that being an extra 100 pounds can make you do better.”

While many chapters feature accounts of the power of all-women teams rock climbing, highlining and whitewater kayaking, especially as a less intimidating space for beginners, Flow isn’t about championing any one gender in sport over another.

In fact Rainsberry, Krásná and Mohan all told The Tyee they prefer to do their sports in mixed gender groups, if they get the choice.

“Those experiences are so beautiful, people working together,” Rainsberry said. “The dynamic isn’t such that there’s one lady who has to be able to hang with the guys, drink like them and talk like them. Really, it’s just teamwork.”

* Story updated on April 20 at 8:07 p.m.

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