Paraclimber Allie Redshaw

After a life-changing accident, a chef finds strength through climbing

ALLIE REDSHAW WAS NOT A CLIMBER BEFORE THE ACCIDENTAL ACTIVITY. She was focused on her life as a young mother and as a cook in some of Charlottesville, Virginia’s finest restaurants. But then one night at work in 2017, her right hand got stuck in a meat grinder and doctors at the University of Virginia ultimately decided it needed to be amputated.

At the time, Redshaw, a trained professional chef who graduated from the Culinary Institute of America, was pregnant with her second daughter. With her life changing rapidly, Redshaw decided her healing process would include new pursuits.

First came hot yoga. Redshaw received a gift certificate from a friend, and that generous gesture ultimately led to her completing a 200-hour teacher training (today she teaches Bikram to dozens of students each week). Then she moved from extreme heat to extreme altitude.

With no previous experience, Redshaw applied for a scholarship to take a climbing course with Kirstie Ennis, an experienced mountaineer and veteran who lost a leg in combat in Afghanistan and now helps trauma patients through outdoor therapy.

Redshaw says she was shy when she came to the seminar in Colorado four years ago, but Ennis recognized the potential of her skills and later asked her if she would be interested in being a sponsored Paralympic climber.

“She saw me as a great athlete when I felt so inferior,” Redshaw said of Ennis. “She believed in me when I was struggling with everyday tasks. That gave me strength.”

With newfound confidence, Redshaw soon signed up for the National Paraclimbing Championships and, although her performance fell short of her personal expectations, the competition motivated her to continue climbing.

“I definitely underestimated the athleticism that would go into it,” Redshaw recalled, “but it showed me that I was alive. I learned a bit of humility, but the whole experience spurred me on. It pushed me to get better.”

Last year, Redshaw joined a team of athletes with disabilities to climb Cotopaxi, a 19,000-foot mountain in Ecuador. The adventure benefitted the Range of Motion Project, a nonprofit organization that provides assistive devices and other resources to amputees. And in May, she traveled to Salt Lake City to compete in the Paraclimbing World Cup—another eye-opening experience that left her with an inspiring admiration for the achievements of athletes with disabilities.

“I’ve never seen so many people in a room that looked like me,” Redshaw said. “This community has been waiting for this platform to come in and be ready to be treated like athletes.”

Redshaw recently began working with a modeling agency that features people with disabilities in major media campaigns. Although she admits she never wanted to model before her accident, part of her mission is to raise awareness about transparency around physical differences and to help people who are seeking help.

“Where I live, I had resources and people around me to help me heal,” Redshaw said. “It was a privilege. Now I do everything I can to give people access and resources. I want to continue to ask, ‘How can we make physical and human differences cool?'”

Redshaw has spent the last few years training at Peak Experiences in Richmond with Sam King, the climbing gym’s director of education, who is looking for ways to make climbing more inclusive, especially for the adaptive community.

“Climbing is unique in that anyone at any level can experience success,” King said. “The goal doesn’t have to be to make it to the top, but to challenge yourself. We want to give everyone the opportunity to experience that, and instead of asking if it’s possible, we look at how we can make it possible.”

While it can still be difficult to find adaptive communities in smaller communities, people with physical disabilities benefit from finding pursuits they are passionate about and advocating for themselves, Redshaw said.

“There are people out there who want to support you,” she encouraged. “It may be the hardest thing in the world to call someone or show up, but if you do, a lot of magical things will happen. You just have to be open to what comes.”