What impresses me is the quiet grace and determination they climb with. If you could give one sweeping over generalization about rock climbing, you could say males tend to under think and over muscle climbs.
We gave a weekend climbing course at our local crags once, and one of the attendees was a rippling, bulging muscled dude (steroids?) wearing a skimpy shirt. He didn't come back for the second day of climbing because he was consistently out climbed by a tad overweight 15 year old girl with cellulite on her legs. She was smart, kept in balance, used her feet more than her hands, and planned her way through routes.
We tried a lot of sports with our daughter, including climbing, but the one that stuck was gymnastics. Her strength to weight ratio was insane. She could climb up and down the rope hanging from the gym ceiling from a sit start, keeping her legs sticking out straight in front of her, without using her feet at all. The other gymnasts called her The Hulk even though she was as skinny as the rest of them.
I took her to an indoor climbing gym once that had a bouldering cave with handholds on the ceiling of the cave when she was about 10 years old. I was going to explain how to start the climb, by using footholds strategically for as long as possible to save strength in the arms, but she reached over her head, pulled herself off the ground, and levered her feet to the holds using her ab muscles. I kept my mouth shut!
