24 Important Women

A tomboy who refused to play with dolls as a child, Elaina Arenz is still teaching girls how to play their own game. As co-owner of Chicks Climbing along with Kitty Calhoun, Dawn Glanc, Angela Hawse, and Karen Bockel, she’s a member of perhaps the most experienced and stoked team of female mountain guides on the planet. And when she’s not working with Chicks, Arenz guides independently in Las Vegas and North Carolina’s New River Gorge, where she owns New River Mountain Guides.

Chicks offers clinics worldwide designed to empower women to turbocharge their climbing and backcountry skiing. As Arenz says, “The biggest challenge for female climbers is to be independent and not rely on others. It’s easy for women to get stuck in the backseat of the climbing process, so it’s been great to help women be more proactive, responsive, and confident—and I believe that transfers to other areas of