Rodel Querubin first tried rock climbing in 2008, after a coworker introduced him to it. At first, he was only interested in the fitness benefits, but as he continued climbing and leveled up his skills, he fell in love with the sport and started taking people out to climb.
But he noticed one thing — there weren’t a lot of other people of color like him at the rock climbing gyms he visited.
“There would also be sometimes where it would feel uncomfortable in out of the way places where there would be some folks around that wouldn’t make it welcoming for POC folks,” he said.
In 2023, Querubin founded BIPOC Beta to help provide opportunities for a more diverse group of people to rock climb.
The group began in 2016 as a Twin Cities chapter of the BIPOC Initiative of the American Alpine Group, the oldest climbing organization in the country, but began shifting to address underrepresentation and accessibility issues in the climbing community after the death of George Floyd.
“When I started running our first BIPOC programming, it started as free sessions at Minneapolis Bouldering Project and soon grew to free or discounted sessions at Minnesota Climbing Co-op and Vertical Endeavors Minneapolis,” Querubin said. “In the end of 2023, we started developing what would become the leadership team of what we now call BIPOC Beta.”
The group now provides monthly and often bimonthly events, including a climbing night in mid-November at Vertical Endeavors in St. Paul with Urban Village, a nonprofit serving Karen and Karenni communities in Minnesota.
Mental health practitioner Chris Naw joined the November climb at Vertical Endeavors. She said the Urban Village events with BIPOC Beta have provided a safe environment for Karen and Karenni community members to try out climbing.
“I found that this is a great community where we could not just like doing rock climbing as a sport, but share what we are also going through and connect as a diverse community,” Naw said.
Naw said that she got into rock climbing during COVID because she likes the way it balances mind and body. But she said the sport has barriers for newcomers, including the cost of transportation, gym memberships and gear.
Kamilah Amen, a co-founder of BIPOC Beta and the group’s scholarship chair, said she knows firsthand the financial barriers that keep people from participating in the sport.
“The equipment can be very expensive,” she said. “I personally have benefited from a nice climbing scholarship and I was able to get equipment that would cost over $2,000.”
Minnesota has an active ice climbing community, but that requires an additional investment in gear including boots and helmets. And festivals tend to be outside of the Twin Cities, in places like Winona and Sandstone, which adds to the transportation costs.
Querubin said that BIPOC Beta’s ice climbing programs have helped attract new people to the sport. This will be BIPOC Beta’s third year supporting ice climbing clinics using grant funding, he said.
BIPOC Beta is currently run by volunteers, but the group is working to attract additional grants and other funding and hopes to become a nonprofit in the future, Querubin said.
“We have been lucky that we have been able to secure grants to help fund this programming, especially grants that don’t require nonprofit status,” he said. “These types of grants have been crucial, not only for ourselves, but for other growing grassroots organizations that for one reason or another haven’t gotten to the status of becoming a nonprofit.”
