She was kidnapped but ‘embarrassed’ to feel traumatized. Now, this climber is learning to be vulnerable

After her kidnapping, she was ‘embarrassed’ to feel traumatized. Now, this climber is learning to be vulnerable.

Weeks after being taken hostage by captors from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, American climber Beth Rodden was back home – but plagued by nightmares of her ordeal. Then 20, and one of the most revered climbers of her generation, Rodden was kidnapped at gunpoint alongside her then boyfriend, Tommy Caldwell, and two other climbers while on a climbing trip in Kyrgyzstan in 2000. The ordeal lasted for six days, with the young group forced to drink water from murky puddles and survive on a few energy bars as they were marched through the cold, wet mountain terrain, sleeping under boulders as their guards evaded capture. The team endured the horror of a fellow captive – a young Kyrgyz soldier who had also been taken – being shot dead nearby by the captors, who were part of the militant group which was based in Tajikistan and focused on a bloody incursion into Kyrgyzstan at the time. Rodden, the only woman in the group, also feared sexual assault and had the added horror of knowing that one of her captors regularly masturbated within close proximity to her. Eventually, after their captors split up to resupply, the American group managed to escape after Caldwell pushed their single remaining guard off a cliff, which the team presumed killed him. They later discovered the guard survived.