Clinging to a Potomac rock face, I felt the power of ‘adventure therapy’

I climb for fun in a climbing gym. But none of my hundreds of ascents on off-white walls pocked with colorful hand and footholds prepared me for the 45-foot-high rock I faced a few weeks ago.

It had a name that didn’t make me any less afraid: Sterling’s Crack. I tried to remember that I was attempting to scale it for fun and to find out more about an increasingly popular wellness trend: adventure therapy.

Climbing guides Tim Murphy and Eunny Jang, of Rockville’s East Outdoors, coached me from the ground at the Carderock Recreation Area in Potomac.

I had ascended about 25 feet when I wondered aloud where I should go next.

“Up!” Jang teased.

She told me the beauty of outdoor rock climbing is found in its creativity — there is no right or wrong way to the top.

As I climbed and gained confidence, I felt my heart rate slow and my anxieties melt. My arms and legs figured out a rhythm, and I began to see how this adventure on high could be so calming.

Jang and Murphy are two of a growing number of Maryland outdoorsy types partnering with mental health experts to introduce people to the benefits of climbing, hiking, surfing and other forms of adventurous exertion.

They’re connected to a cadre of mental health practitioners prescribing physical challenges in forests, rivers and deserts to alleviate anxiety and depression, and to boost mental health.

The movement has also attracted those with a particular interest in introducing adventure therapy to members of minority communities in which few may consider scrambling over boulders a healthful way to spend an afternoon.

“I think everybody can benefit from adventure therapy,” said Sienna Lyon, a licensed mental health clinician who owns Ballast Health & Wellness in Chevy Chase.

“Even just being outside, being in nature, being in your community and challenging yourself — those are all really essential things for mental health and well-being," she said.

Jang and Murphy often work with Lyon and partner with groups in the region that formed to bring climbing to people who might otherwise never encounter it. These organizations include:

• Ladies Climbing Coalition, a national group with Maryland chapters “dedicated to breaking down barriers to entry, including access, opportunity, and cost” for “women and non-binary folks”
• The local chapter of Stonewall Climbing, a group for LGBTQIA+ people and their allies that frequently hosts beginner sessions at climbing gyms in Rockville, Frederick and Columbia
• Brown Girls Climb, another national group with a local presence
• Escala Climbing, a regional group that aims to “create a space for Hispanic and Latine climbers to connect through a shared culture and language”
• Pigtown Climbs, founded to “use climbing as a means to promote racial justice, health, and environmental initiatives within Southwest Baltimore”

Adventure therapy “isn’t merely throwing people on a ropes course or a hike and seeing what comes up organically for them,” Arizona therapist Christopher Sharp said on a podcast on the topic.

It’s a clinician using nature to guide a client “out of one’s head and into one’s body” to attain specific therapeutic goals.

Adventure therapy, its practitioners say, helps people of all ages and physical abilities.

One woman I met at Carderock found climbing helped her through a trying time.

Leila Phillips, now 41, was in a troubled marriage after she moved to Maryland from Connecticut in 2020 with twin toddlers.

A friend invited her to try climbing.

Phillips loved the way it strengthened her body. And it helped her cope with her marriage and the demands of motherhood.

“When I’m solving a route, I can’t think about anything else,” said Phillips, who is now divorced. “I feel better when I’m climbing.”

Now she is president of a cohort within the Columbia chapter of the Ladies Climbing Coalition that meets monthly at Movement Columbia.

“I think that the group is important for women since it can be intimidating to start climbing, and I want to promote a safer space for mothers, too,” Phillips said of the coalition.

Eric Dubrow, gym director of Movement Columbia, which offers indoor climbing terrains and a traditional weight room, said climbing, which requires participants to manage fears as they figure out a way up, is a natural fit for adventure therapy.

Movement Columbia works with businesses such as Kensington’s MoCo Movement, which uses climbing in its occupational and physical therapy practices to teach “resilience, problem-solving and fear management” to kids, he said.

Me? I’m keeping my membership in a climbing gym.

But now I’m going to climb on real rocks too. It’s a different kind of challenge that grounds me, I’ve found — even from 50 feet up.