Accolades & Media

American Alpine Club Changemaker Award

Acceptance Speech Given on April 27, 2024, by Adaptive Climbers Festival Founder Ronnie Dickson

I started climbing in Tampa, Florida, in 2007, two years after losing my leg above the knee in 2005. I remember seeing my first photos of Joshua Tree in Climbing Magazine. Boulder problems like White Rastafarian, Slash Face, and the heroes like John Long and John Bachar captured my imagination. 

I remember having my first experience at the AAC (American Alpine Club) Hueco Rock Ranch in 2011. Being in that space and feeling generations of human and climber tradition coalesced together was really formative for my climbing. Walking the corridors of North Mountain surrounded by boulders first ascended by Fred Nicole, Todd Skinner, John Sherman. These were the histories and heroes that shaped me as a climber, and while I drew plenty of inspiration from this, none of it mirrored my personal situation of growing up climbing with a disability. 

We started Adaptive Climbers Festival in 2017, on a climbing trip in Utah. I hear of most people having lightbulb ideas in the shower. Similarly, this was born out of a hot tub. I’m largely credited as the founder, but those details are largely unclear still to this day. 

Adaptive Climbers Festival was our way of cementing our own history: a place where our whole community could come together in an accessible space because we love climbing.  We could share all the aspects that make it special like the campfires, camaraderie, and the other joys of life well lived. It is aptly described by Maureen Beck as a mix of an AAC CraggingCclassic, with the weird, zany energy of the 24 Hours of Horseshoe Hell, but with less goats. 

What started as a friends-and-family gathering of 25 people in backwoods Alabama has transformed into a four-day extravaganza approaching 300 total people in size at one of the nation’s most legendary crags: the Red River Gorge. 

I used to think that all heroics in rock climbing were performed on the rock. My preconceptions have changed, and my heroes today are right next to me on this stage. 

• Maureen Beck has been a partner in crime for over a decade now. We have grown together with the bond of growing adaptive climbing. 

• Brian Beck, having the hardest job of them all, as Maureen’s spouse, serves tirelessly at our festival, feeding over two hundred people through the course of the weekend. Brian has also piggybacked many an amputee, as they are having a rough day out on their feet, and has helped get some friends with more severe disabilities enjoying wilderness areas that none of the rest of us could ever have gotten them to. 

• Kristina Ericson, is the lifeblood and engine of our festival in addition to being a champion on Colorado’s front lines for disability advocacy and policy. 

• Last but not least, there is Wade Balmer. Wade has been the savior we didn’t know we needed. His fundraising and communication efforts have been outstanding, and without him we would have certainly drowned as our festival almost doubled in size from one year to the next. 

I feel really fortunate because I could tell one hundred more stories just like these. I get to work next to my heroes every day, and I’m so proud of our community and thankful to the AAC and everybody who has helped make it as strong as it is today. Thank you.