Mayan Smith-Gobat is one of the most popular and richest Mountaineer who was born on March 10, 1979 in Christchurch, Canterbury, New Zealand.
Smith-Gobat is from Christchurch, New Zealand. Although she became interested in alpine and sport climbing around Mount Cook as a teenager, her focus turned to alpine skiing for several years. In 2000, she was competing in extreme skiing competitions and ranked as the best female extreme skier in New Zealand. Smith-Gobat recalls that “when I left school I became side-tracked by skiing – I followed winters around the world and barely climbed for a couple of years… until a skiing accident turned my attention back to climbing” at the age of 21. Smith-Gobat had been skiing in Breckenridge, Colorado at the time of the accident, a run-in with a pine tree. The collision broke a heel in one leg and ankle in the other, and left her with a temporarily wired-shut jaw and six months of crutches. Grounded from skiing, Smith-Gobat turned to climbing as an outlet for her energies.
By 2009, Smith-Gobat was climbing in Yosemite and interested in taking on big-wall challenges. The Salathé Wall is a classic route up El Capitan in Yosemite Valley. At approximately 3500ft and 35-pitches, it is also one of the longest routes, known for its difficult, off-width crack sections. A single female climber, Steph Davis, had previously free climbed Salathé. Smith-Gobat spent the summer of 2010 working out the beta for the crux sections before making a ground-up attempt. Unfortunately, a five-day rain storm hit while she was in the upper reaches of the climb, forcing her to bail out. In 2011, Smith-Gobat returned and, in a six day final push, managed to complete the remaining pitches, becoming only the second woman to do so. Later, she described the experience as “900m of air under my feet and only one single flared crack splitting the sheer overhung granite wall. It felt so good.”
Mayan Smith-Gobat (b. 1979) is a professional big-wall climber from New Zealand and, as of 2019, held the record for fastest all-female team ascent of El Capitan’s The Nose in Yosemite, California at four hours and forty three minutes. Smith-Gobat, along with climbing partner Libby Sauter, completed the climb in October, 2014. Other notable ascents include her 2012 first female ascent (FFA) of Punks in the Gym (5.14a) in the Arapiles climbing region of Australia, and the first all female Half Dome/El Cap link up in Yosemite in 2013.
