Margo Hayes

Margo Hayes is an American professional rock climber from Boulder, Colorado, known for pushing sport-climbing standards on the world’s harder single-pitch routes. Her competition background fed into a disciplined training ethic, and in 2017 she became the first woman to climb at the 5.15a (9a+) grade—an achievement that drew attention to both her physical capacity and her campaign-style approach to projecting hard sport lines.

The available film, Margo Hayes Makes History (Reel Rock), concentrates on her Biographie campaign at Céüse. Rather than a highlight reel of flash sends, the piece walks through Hayes’s process: the visualization and rehearsal at the base of the wall, how she breaks a long, pocketed route into measurable segments, and how repeated rehearsals and mental preparation translate to performance. The film also makes the demands of Céüse’s climbing concrete: long sequences of precise, pocket-oriented movement that require both strength and calm execution.

For viewers interested in high-end sport climbing, the film is instructive about training translation, route-reading, and the patient work involved in confirming a maximally difficult line. It shows Hayes’s methodical routines—derived in part from her gymnastics background—and how those routines shape attempts on routes that had been closed to many of the world’s best climbers for years.