Until recently, there were few female stars in the burgeoning realm of bouldering. Enter Lisa Rands. In March of this year the 25-year-old California native, whose broad shoulders and powerful climbing style echo her past as a gymnast, shot to the top of the female ranks in America with her ascent of Chris Sharma's Plain High Drifter at the Buttermilks, becoming the first American woman to crank a V11. She's also shown, with her third-place finish amidst a strong multi-national field at the Pusher Open in Salt Lake City (see Inside Game, page 40) and second place at this year's Phoenix Bouldering Competition, that she's more than capable of competing with the world's top female boulderers.

Based out of Bishop, California, America's current bouldering epicenter, Rands is the first woman to climb many of the harder problems there, including a trio of V10s on the volcanic pockets of the Happy and Sad Boulders: Acid Wash, Beautiful Gecko, and most recently the sit-start to Red Rum.

I caught up with her just after she and her partner, Wills Young, had returned from RMNP. Her visit to "The Park" was brief, but she did become the first woman to climb Handy Capps (V9) and Gang Bang (V8), sending both in the same afternoon.

Why Bouldering? I started off bouldering because I grew up in Southern California. The bouldering there, in my opinion, is much better than the roped climbing. Also, as a full-time college student it was easier for me to go bouldering than it was to train endurance.

You continue to devote the majority of your climbing time to bouldering. How come? A big part of it is that it's more social, there's more camaraderie. It's a lot of fun figuring out sequences of a boulder problem, and you can work them with someone else. I like the movement and the fact that you're pulling very hard for a short period of time.

How many days a year do you rope up? Not very often. It's usually something I can count on both hands. That could change. We'll see.

You've committed yourself to becoming a professional boulderer. How is it going? It was a big risk for me. I've changed my whole style of living. I have a geology degree and had a full-time job. I quit all that, which allowed me to move to Bishop and travel around and boulder. It's a fun lifestyle, but it's not like it's super comfortable.

How do you make a living? I've been fortunate because I've gotten a lot of support from my sponsors. That's what's helping me improve. Plus I supplement that income with competition winnings.

What have you had to give up? I live pretty cheaply. I gave up going out to a lot of social things that people my age tend to do. I'm not out having a great time out on the town. I'm thinking long-term: I want to go on a trip, so I really have to conserve money.

How do you balance the thrill of highballing with potential career risks? I'm pretty careful because I do worry about hurting myself. I think it's more about preparation than how tall a boulder problem is. When climbers go high off the ground they are more aware of the potential to get hurt so they carefully prepare their spotters in the best places. A few years ago I was attempting a highball boulder problem with the crux at the top. My spotter never imagined that I would fall off the bottom of the problem. I was three feet off the ground when my spotter was dragging one pad over another to protect the top of the problem. I landed right on the overlapped spot and rolled my ankle.

What are your weaknesses in bouldering? Endurance is my weakness and always has been. I've never trained it and I don't really even know how. I'm really working on that. In bouldering it's pretty rare to do more than 10 moves, unless you're on a traverse or a highball problem. Also, I have enough power to where I can usually muscle through and not use good technique, so that's what I'm focusing on.

Strengths? I've always been a power climber -- good explosive power. It always changes, though. I think, "Oh, I'm really good on slopers," and then I'll climb at the Buttermilks for a few months and get really good at crimps, but suddenly I can't pull on a sloper. The one strength I always seem to have is good pinch strength and I have no idea why. I should go look at my parents' thumbs.

Do you think you can push women's standards higher? I definitely feel like I can. I don't feel like I've really put that much into my training yet; my body's not maxed out at all. I'm just learning how to train. I had such a big improvement in my climbing last season, and I feel like I'm going to be able to push myself a lot more this year.

How do you feel about how women's accomplishment in bouldering are viewed? In any sport, men and women have their own achievements. You don't want to judge them compared to each other.

Why? Because the rating system is geared towards people taller than most women are, and so it may not look like we're achieving that much. You know, "How come women have climbed V11, yet men have climbed V15?" When you suddenly try to compare the top women to Fred Nicole and Chris Sharma and Dave Graham, it doesn't look that impressive. What I find on the harder boulder problems is that the moves don't necessarily get harder in terms of the holds getting smaller; they just get farther away. Of course that's a generalization, because it can depend on the problem. But it seems that the rating system is just not geared towards women who are five foot four or smaller.

On what problems have you noticed a significant difference? An obvious example is Midnight Lightning. It's not that difficult, but the moves are quite far apart. To me, it's something you can't really rate, because it feels so much harder to me than it did for a lot of other climbers I've spoken to. I've heard it rated anywhere from V7 to V9. I'm not going to dwell on ratings, though; I realize the scale is not consistent.

Are your hardest ascents necessarily the ones with the highest V grade? No. Some of the hardest boulder problems I've ever done have not had that high of a rating. A great example is this highball in southern California called Sword of Damocles. It's 20 feet high. There's a technical crux farther down, but definitely a hard deadpoint at the top. I actually fell off there and it was a long fall and it hurt. When I finally completed the problem, it felt like such a great achievement for me, yet it's given V7.

So it's the experience that matters? A lot of times I'll go to an area and look at something that has a hard rating. It's just some little sit start that's maybe eight feet off the ground. Then there's this beautiful, proud highball next to it that doesn't get climbed as often, because it has a hard move at the top and you're going to risk taking a big fall. To me that's "the problem," the area classic. That's the problem I want to do. No matter what the rating, I want to be able to climb the classics.

-- Matt Stanley