Our History

Personal essay by Lizzy Scully

Heidi Wirtz and I founded Girls Education International in November 2006. For the duration of our climbing partnership and friendship, we had discussed different ways to give back to the global community. Traveling climbers of big walls around the world, we also visited numerous countries together, including India and Pakistan. It became obvious to us on our last expedition to the Karakoram Range of Pakistan that rather than just focusing on our personal journeys around the world, it was time for us to do something for others. Thus, we started Girls Ed. This is the story of how Heidi and I met and the evolution of our friendship, which culminated with our nonprofit.

I first heard about Heidi Wirtz in the dingy “Caff” at Yosemite Lodge on a cold, snowy, fall day in Yosemite National Park in the mid 1990s. She was climbing a route called Lurking Fear on the 3,000-foot monolith El Capitan, and apparently she and her partner were stuck on a ledge a few thousand feet off the ground. Rumor had it that her sleeping bag didn’t zip and that they were probably running out of food and water. “Bad ass chick!” I remember thinking. I hadn’t climbed El Capitan yet. A few days later, a haggard but smiling, physically fit woman with long, brown hair walked into the cafeteria and sat down at my table.

“Hi,” she said cheerily to me and introduced herself. Being two of very few women to be rock climbing it in the Valley that year, we ended up bonding and becoming good friends. When the weather continued to deteriorate, we decided to travel together, and over the next three months we went to Joshua Tree National Park, Calif., Indian Creek, Utah, and eventually to Crested Butte, Colo., where we worked for a few weeks at a catering company.

From the beginning Heidi’s drive and determination to rock climb as hard as possible inspired me. She woke up every morning at 6a.m., went on a run, did yoga, made tea, and then awakened me. We’d be climbing by 9a.m., with Heidi leading difficult pitch after difficult pitch. An avid athlete myself, I happily followed along and became a better climber because of her. Over the years, we spent countless hours together in the mountains. We did a defining first multi-pitch route together as a team of women, The Nose on Sundance, Lumpy Ridge, which is a ridge of granite formations in Estes Park, Colo. We also climbed in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, the Diamond of Longs Peak, and pretty much all over the United States. Eventually we ended up living next door to each other in Gunnison, Colo.

At about that same time, Heidi started talking to me about how she had been thinking about ways to give back to society through volunteer work and/or activism. While attending Humboldt State University she had worked with the Rainforest Action Network and protested logging by blocking lumber trucks, and more recently she had gone to Denver, Colo., on a solo mission to talk with Boise Cascade’s Board of Directors in an effort to get them to change some of their logging procedures. I had also been dabbling in activism, and had gotten petitions signed and written letters in order to keep Chevron from drilling for oil in a wilderness area in the High Uintahs, Utah. We both realized a desire to make a difference in the world.

Heidi eventually left Gunnison, and picked up various jobs, including working as a professional actor/climber at Sea World during the winter and guiding for her third summer at Colorado Mountain School. I moved to Logan, Utah, in order to get a master’s degree in communications and journalism. I wanted to travel the world and write about my experiences. I ended up organizing my first expedition to climb Shipton Spire (19,700 feet) in the Karakoram Range of Pakistan with an American alpinist named Nan Darkis and a Spanish big wall climber named Cecilia Buil. We climbed to within 200 feet of the summit of the 4,500-foot spire on the Trango Glacier before turning back because a sudden attack of altitude sickness incapacitated Nan.

While there, I began to learn about the discrepancies in health care, education, and even food made available to women versus men. Though many people in the region lived in abject poverty, women had access to far fewer resources than the men. Upon my return to the United States, I researched the subject and eventually wrote an article for the Mountain Hardwear Catalog about Baltistani women. You can find a PDF of the article on our blog here.

A few years later Heidi and I reconnected and decided to go on an expedition together to Canada, where we established the 2,500-foot route, Bad Hair Day, which was the first free ascent of the South Howser Minaret, Bugaboos National Park, Canada. It was an exciting time for us. Heidi pursued a professional climbing career and now works for The North Face, Black Diamond, and La Sportiva. And I launched into my writing/editing career, publishing articles in dozens of magazines and newspapers. I also became the features editor for the Estes Park Trail-Gazette, and then the founder/publisher of She Sends magazine, and finally the managing editor of FindYourSpot.com and a senior contributing editor for Rock & Ice magazine.

At about the same time we traveled to Canada together, we both also became increasingly involved with various nonprofit organizations. We volunteered at the HERA Foundation’s Climb4Life events as “pros”, teaching and climbing with beginner climbers and helping to raise money and awareness for ovarian cancer. And we raised money for the dZi Foundation. I organized a slide show tour for Heidi, and she traveled around the country raising awareness and money for dZi. I also set up various fundraisers for and volunteered teaching English as a second language at the now-defunct Round House Center for Language and Cultural Exchange.

Two years ago we decided to do our third expedition together. We went to Pakistan to climb some walls off the Biafo Glacier. Unfortunately, I sustained a chest injury after a bad fall on the glacier and our expedition was cut short. Instead, we visited Khane, a remote village in the Hushe Valley, in the Northern Areas of Pakistan, and home to our trekking guide, Ghulam Abbas. There, we were taken in and treated as family by local villagers. After learning of the deplorable conditions of Khane’s girls’ school, we decided to fulfill our dream to give back by renovating the school.

We returned to the United States, and Heidi promptly departed for her third year of teaching Sherpas mountaineering skills with the Khumbu Climbing School, organized by the Alex Lowe Foundation. I spent a few months contacting numerous nonprofits to find out if we could partner up to bring better education to the girls of Khane. The dZi Foundation’s Board of Directors had decided not to work in Pakistan, and the Central Asia Institute had too much going on to partner up with us. Thus, we decided to found our own nonprofit—Girls Education International (GEI).

Since it’s inception November 2006, GEI has been a work in progress and has taken a tremendous amount of effort to get going. However, we are incredibly lucky to have a very talented group of volunteers, including our current board members (please see the “About Us” section for more information). Plus, Heidi and I have boundless energy. GEI now works closely with local partners to bring education to girls and women in underserved areas.