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Up for It: Women Who Dare
by Eileen Nicol

Exactly what constitutes an extreme sport? Asking Google yields some interesting answers. The inclusion of paintball is perhaps debatable, but Hummer rides? Extremely stupid, maybe, but not a sport.

Webster’s New World Dictionary lists five definitions for the word extreme. Among them are “far from what is usual or conventional and to an excessive degree; immoderate.” The three women featured in this article range in age and profession, but their dedication and commitment to potentially dangerous sports certainly fit the definition.

Nancy Erley knew at a young age that she was destined for sailing, and she pursued her goal doggedly, starting with Girl Scout sailing camp at age 12. Today she has circumnavigated the world twice in her 38-foot sailboat Tethys, and she makes a living teaching others to sail. In contrast, Susan Ershler wasn’t introduced to mountain climbing until her mid-thirties, but now at 49, she has climbed the world’s seven highest peaks, and has set a goal to summit fifty 14,000-meter peaks by the end of her fiftieth year. Rebekah Berg grew up skiing, skating and swimming, but just over a year ago found a new fix for her speed addiction: skydiving. Different in age and circumstance, these three women share one trait: an outsized comfort zone.

Let us count the ways you could die participating in these sports: drowning at sea, dropping into an ice crevasse, slamming into the ground when your chute fails to open. And yet none of these women describes herself as a risk taker.

“I was scared to death half the time I was on Everest,” says Susan Ershler. “And that’s probably a good thing, because being a little bit scared keeps you safe. We only take calculated and acceptable risks. If it’s not right, we turn around and go home.”

“I’m kind of conservative,” says skydiver Rebekah Berg. “I don’t do dumb things. But if there’s a cliff to be jumped off of, I’m there. As long as I can do it safely.”

Sailor Nancy Erley says she is “absolutely not” a risk taker. “Other people view me differently than that, but it’s all very calculated risks…Even with all my experience, I have a deep respect for the potential of water. It’s reasonable to have fear. But knowledge is the antidote. If you know what to do, it’s less stressful.” Through careful passage planning, she has avoided major storms on her crossings. The scariest thing about ocean sailing, she says, is encountering freighters. Her tensest minutes at sea have been spent trying to raise a radio response from big ships in her path. “On the ocean, this is a small craft,” she says of her boat Tethys. “They can turn their wheel a quarter inch and miss us, if they know we’re there. Once a guy came on the radio all out of breath and said, ‘Wait a minute; let me turn on my radar.’”

Susan Ershler describes one of her most frightening moments this way. “The Hillary Step is up near the top of Everest, in the 28,000-foot range. It is a vertical rock climb if it’s a low snow year. So you have crampons on your boots, you’ve got an oxygen mask on, you’ve got this big down suit on, and you’re trying to manipulate this thing – and I’m not a rock climber. And you can’t breathe! In high-altitude climbing, it’s very boring; you’re three breaths each step. You’ve got to pull yourself up over this thing, you look down and it’s all jagged rock and you’re trying not to hyperventilate.” Another moment of truth occurred at Camp II, where one of the most experienced Sherpas fell through the ice into a crevasse while taking pictures of the sunset. “So in the morning the rescue’s going on and you’re going, all right, here one of the best people died. Why do you think you can do this?” It helps that Susan is married to her climbing partner, Phil. They talked it through and decided to go on.

Rebekah Berg seems not to acknowledge fear. She’s a petite, striking blonde, who works at Gene Juarez. Like many first jumps, hers was a tandem, where the instructor jumps with you, sharing one big chute. “The only moment I was afraid of was looking out of the plane and going out, so we kind of scooted to the edge and I could see over the side, and then we did back flips.” By the time she landed, she knew she wanted to do more. “A lot of people think you just jump out and fall down. But there’s a lot of things you can do up there! I like the challenge of working on doing flips and maintaining stability.” Since then, she’s done 10 jumps, working toward her goal of free flying. Free flyers jump with smaller chutes and open them later, resulting in speeds of up to 160 miles per hour, rather than the paltry 120 mph reached with more conventional jumps. For Rebekah, it’s all about speed. “The fastest I can go is extreme to me. You always want more of it.”

Susan Ershler had climbed to the top of her sales profession before she ever strapped on crampons. “My sports weren’t extreme, but my job was all about high performance and taking a bunch of risks and working at a very high level.” She approaches climbing goals and sales goals the same way: setting them high and keeping them constantly in mind. “The mental preparation is going to sound corny,” she says, “but I took a yellow sticky note and wrote 29,035 feet on it and stuck in on my computer. I looked at it several times a day. That vision and focus sustained me.”

To prepare her body for the Everest climb, she hiked every weekend and spent lunch hours with a pack on her back, climbing the 32 flights of stairs at Bell Plaza. “You have to be extremely disciplined. You do this towards that Everest goal, and you do that towards your six-hundred-million-dollar sales goal.” Retired from sales, she now delivers that message of discipline and delayed gratification to Fortune 500 company audiences. She’s also working on a book with her husband, due out in 2007. “After climbing Everest and standing on the top, I don’t think there’s anything I wouldn’t try or do.”

For Rebekah Berg, the crossover between her sports and her profession is straightforward. “I work a lot of hours to support this habit. I have to work hard to play hard. For me, the more I get into the fun parts of life the more I get into work.” Her employer, Gene Juarez, allows her to arrange her schedule around regular ski and jump days.

Nancy Erley’s sport is her work now, and she can’t imagine doing anything else. Whether circumnavigating the world or cruising the San Juans, she takes clients along to literally show them the ropes. She uses her psychology background every day, assessing how people learn in order to most effectively teach them sailing skills. But it all started with setting a goal, even though she didn’t tell anyone about it for five years. After college she continued to work with the Girl Scouts, and attended a goal-setting seminar when she was 30. “I wrote down that I wanted to sail around the world within 10 years. That seemed so far away!” The years passed and the seed grew, and she began to speak to others about her dream. “I didn’t have enough money to buy an around-the-world boat or anything. But as time progressed, because I’d put the notion out there in the universe, some women came to me and said I’d love to do that with you.”

Now Erley has been around the world twice, and is planning a third circumnavigation. She’s come a long way from the 15-year-old whose Scout troop bought an old wooden boat and refurbished it in her parent’s yard, only to have it take on water during their maiden voyage. She smiles, recalling that summer day. “We did have one bailer with us, a number 10 tin can, and an excited girl can bail pretty fast. But she also threw the can out with the water one time. I learned about spare parts. And we also found out that we should have filled the boat up with water from the inside and let it soak up for a few weeks.”

In the end, these women pursue their sports for the best and simplest of reasons: love. “I love the ocean and I love boats. Actually I said it in the wrong order,” says Nancy. “Just dinking around in boats makes me happy. But then I found out boats could take me out on the ocean. And it’s a totally profound experience to be on the ocean.” For Susan, there’s a very spiritual aspect to climbing. “You get so connected with yourself. In our daily life we don’t have time to sit and contemplate ourselves. Everything is stripped away. The only thing you own is on your back.”

As for Rebekah, her Honda CRX is always packed with golf clubs, Rollerblades and skis. “I’ll continue to ski and skydive,” she says. “I haven’t actually done both on the same day yet, because usually if it’s a good ski day, it isn’t a good weather day for skydiving.” But knowing her sense of adventure, that day will come, and she’ll be up for it.

Eileen Nicol is a frequent contributor to Seattle Woman. She is also vice president of a computer services business.

©2005 Caliope Publishing Company