Hey, my name is Dr. Lena Heffern. I’m using the title of this wiki as a play off of Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time,” in which he talks in non-technical terms about the structure, origin, development and eventual fate of the universe. Well, I’ll be documenting the structure, origin, development and eventual fate of the sport of rock climbing… although I can promise nothing about it being non-technical; in fact, I actually aim to bring out a lot of technical terms and explain them.
The purpose of this is to introduce the reader to the history of climbing as well as the engineering, chemistry, physics, methodology, ecology, geoscience, physiology, and social/societal impacts involved in climbing. Climbing has always been about problem-solving, and the curious-minded are most often drawn to the challenges of rock and ice. My reasoning for this project is as follows…
I was born and raised in the Northern California Bay Area and began rock climbing and mountaineering at the age of eighteen. Growing up, I had always watched my two older brothers go out on their Boy Scout trips to places like Pinnacles, Tahoe, Joshua Tree, Yosemite, and even Philmont in New Mexico. At eighteen, I finally found a Venture Crew Scout troop to join at my local high school. Almost immediately, I fell in love with outdoor rock climbing. Our troop took its first outdoor trip to Joshua Tree in May of 2008, and then later summited Mt. Shasta that July after most of us had graduated high school.
College came around and I lost the time to climb due to focusing on my degrees in applied physics and mechanical engineering. Eventually, I got into a nuclear engineering graduate program in New Mexico. While in grad school I had a lot of free time (weird, right?), so I rediscovered my love for climbing. Every weekend I would go out hiking or climbing with friends in the areas around Albuquerque, Socorro, Taos, or Los Alamos/White Rock. When I wasn’t climbing, conducting research with Los Alamos National Laboratory, or studying, I was reading books by Jim Krakauer, John Muir, Steve Roper, Lynn Hill, Steph Davis, and others.
In 2014, I made the decision to finish out my MS at UNM and move home to California. I worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, designing space equipment for my career job, and in the evenings and on weekends I was training at TouchStone Climbing gyms. Eventually, I got back into a new PhD program at Arizona State University that was better-suited for me. I graduated in summer of 2022 with my PhD in Exploration Systems Design, which is an interdisciplinary degree in remote-sensing, nuclear physics, planetary sciences, and geosciences. My background in physics, engineering, and planetary/geosciences allows me to explain many of the topics in the world of climbing.
I’m not a great climber (my only claim to fame is 5th place out of hundreds in a bay area climbing comp many years ago), but I have climbed with many other great climbers and many inspirational people. I enjoy teaching and exploration, and I especially enjoy when I can combine science and engineering with my passion for the outdoors. Eventually, I hope to one day teach all of this as a University course in general sciences. For now, this is a side-project that I work on for personal outreach and interest.
Sometimes you can catch me climbing at Longmont Climbing Collective, The Spot in Louisville/Boulder, or Boulder Rock Club, or running at Shoes & Brews on Thursdays in Longmont. Please say hi!
If you would like to contribute to this project, please shoot me an email: lena@heffern.net