Ali Taylor

Ali Taylor, a dance, PE and Outdoor Pursuits teacher started climbing in June 1989 after a school inset day in the Peak District at an outdoor centre. She begged, stole and bought gear and cajoled students from her school to join her in this new found passion on local grit stone crags.

Ali Taylor

Ali soon mastered the easy grades, always taking the lead and soloing routes to add to the spice. Later in the year Ali began climbing with a sport climber, which enabled her to climb harder routes and took her to foreign parts; Spain, France, Luxembourg and North America.

Red pointing in the Peak District became a way of life for Ali. Who took great delight in adding E5 and E6 to her climbing repertoire, and she became incredibly strong, but red pointing “Bored of the Lies” 29 times until the successful attempt grew a little tedious.

Climbing abroad always gave a fabulous variety of rock types and dimensions as well as endless new climbs. Ali always particularly enjoyed the multi-pitch routes that took all day to complete. Circumstances led to a 2 year break from climbing, although it was never far from her mind, but being a fitness fanatic she found other things to keep her body alive.

In July 2004 things took a turn for the good and she began climbing with Tony Penning who introduced her to a different side of climbing. Hard core adventure climbing, scary stuff, Monsterclimbs. Venues included Wintours Leap in the Wye valley and Lech Ddu in North Wales. The desire to climb more challenging monster routes led them to climb many multi-pitch routes in Riglos, Northern Spain and on the Penon on the southeast coast of Spain.

A most recent addition has been Sardinia where the scope for climbing is wild, everything from traditional to 30 foot run outs on sport routes! In August 2005 Ali went to the Italian side of the Mont Blanc range and climbed a new route with Tony. It was a 10 pitch climb with pitches of E3 5c, an experience beyond anything she’d done before, including a bivouac next to an avalanching glacier.

Ali’s done 4 more monster routes in the same area and will be back for more.

Ali is an enthusiastic climbing instructor with great empathy for her clients. She holds the Single Pitch and Mountain Leader Award and is Mountain Instructor Award trained.