New River Mountain Guides

FAYETTEVILLE - Elaina Arenz-Smith knows from first-hand experience that you can learn a lot about a person while dangling from a crag with them.

After all, it's how she met her husband, who was a professional rock climber and now works as a sales representative for a company that makes climbing gear.

"Our first date was a 700-foot climb in Mexico," she said. "You really learn how well you can work together and communicate doing something like that."

Now Arenz-Smith meets people just about every day as the owner of New River Mountain Guides, a 13-year-old climbing school and guiding service she purchased three years ago.

"It's a lot of fun to be able to introduce people to rock climbing for the first time," she said. "I also get to meet people who have been rock climbing for years."

Arenz-Smith started climbing in 1994 while a student at The University of Texas in Austin. A friend of hers invited her to try it. As soon as she did, she fell in love with the sport. She admits she never really was athletic before she started rock climbing. But to her, this sport was different. It was as much a mental challenge as a physical one.

"It's like solving a puzzle," she said.

Since that first trek out. Arenz-Smith has been an avid rock climber, scaling seemingly sheer faces of mountains and outcroppings in every state in America, plus some spots in Canada, Europe and Mexico. She and her husband visited the Fayetteville area several times, climbing some of its vast walls before they decided to settle here permanently.

For them, it was a quality-of-life issue. They wanted someplace where they could afford to live and also pursue the sport they loved so much.

"We fell in love with the New River Gorge," said Arenz-Smith, who was born in Virginia but then moved around a lot with her family. She attended high school and college in Texas.

"(The Gorge's) climbing is world-class, and it's famous in climbing circles. There is an endless supply of rock and more than 3,000 different routes. Even if you climb every day, there are always new routes to explore," she said.

Three years ago, she bought New River Mountain Guides from some friends and now spends her days taking a mix of cowards, tough guys and rock-climbing enthusiasts up the world-famous climbing walls that pop from the mountains that surround the New River Gorge.

"We're both a guide service and a climbing school," she said as she drove down a windy road to get to a perfect beginner climbing spot on Beauty Mountain.

Her business employs a handful of full-time guides, but she sometimes has to hire extras if a particularly large group is coming in. The groups range in size from a few tourists to Boy Scout troops or youth groups that want an outdoor adventure.

She and her staff have also worked with members of the Navy SEALS and the U.S. Coast Guard who need training in special maneuvers. She also guides expert climbers who want to get the full experience of some of the Gorge's toughest spots.

"I also get a lot of people who have climbed indoors who are looking to transition to outdoor climbing," she said. "I help them work on skills they can't get inside a gym."

When she first started climbing, there were only a few women doing it. But the sport's popularity is growing. This spring, she went to an all-women climb in California's Joshua Tree National Forest. This fall, she and other outfitters in the Fayetteville area will sponsor a women's climbing fest in the New River Gorge. This will be the third year for the climbing fest, and Arenz-Smith said she expects 50 or so women from around the country to attend.

"It's so fun because it teaches women to rely on themselves ... and that can trans-late into a lot of different areas," she said.

Too often, women dismiss the sport, thinking they aren't strong enough to pull themselves up rock faces. She said that's simply not true. She likened rock climbing to climbing a ladder, where it's the legs doing all of the lifting, and the arms helping to support and balance.

"A lot of people who are good at dane and ballet are good at rock climbing be-cause they already have a sense of balance," she said.

She said the best part of her job is that she's able to make a living doing some-thing she is passionate about.

"Climbing has allowed me to travel the world," she said. "I feel so lucky."

Copyright State Journal Corporation May 25, 2007