Hello!

Hello! I'm Maribeth Olsen, a former K-8 teacher from Michigan who been busy playing outside and working with families in the Front Range since 2016. Using climbing as a teaching tool has been my dream ever since I stumbled upon it while I was a teacher, coaching youth in after school programs at Planet Rock Climbing Gym in Ann Arbor, MI. I moved to Colorado and found like-minded practitioners who also want to grow the field of Climbing Therapy, inspired by the need for neurodiversity-minded coaches and accessibility to social & emotional needs-based training. 

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In 2020, I founded The Young Ascenders, a trauma-informed climbing program in Fort Collins designed to teach life skills to youth in the foster care system.

 

Excited to see climbing enrich the lives of these youth, I continued my training with two climbing therapy courses in the summer of 2023. I am currently the only coach in the world that has been trained by both Alexis Zajetz, a climbing psychotherapist and author from Austria and Aleya Littleton, a climbing therapist from Colorado. 

 

The launch of Beyond Climbing closely followed my training adventure in 2023 and the rest is history! It has been an incredible journey so far, to see the joy and self-learning that climbing can bring and the impact that it has brought to BC families! 

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See you at the gym! :)