Mia Axon and Benjamin Rueck traveled very different paths on their way to becoming world-class rock climbers. Mia was captain of the gymnastics team at the University of Michigan and a conservatory-trained harpist — ideal for developing a strong body, strong fingers and a gift for memorizing complex sequences of movements. “I’m a kinetic learner,” she told me recently.
Ben, on the other hand, dug graves in tiny Loma, Colorado, where he grew up, and scrubbed toilets in return for a membership at the local climbing gym. He developed strong arms and a propensity for upward motion: He later managed that gym and now owns his own.
Mia went on to become a two-time national champion sport climber and a top finisher in World Cup and X Games competitions. (Climbers will appreciate that in 1996, she was the first woman in the U.S., and the fourth in the world, to climb a 5.14a. “Hanging on by your fingernails” pretty much captures it.)
A generation later, Ben traveled the world as a sponsored athlete, with “first ascents” from Brazil to Madagascar. He was among the first climbers to be allowed access to the crags in the Qingfeng Valley, at the boundary of Zhangjiajie, China’s first and largest national park. (The expedition is the subject of a short documentary film that will tie your stomach in knots.)
Both these wall climbers now work at High Country News.
After retiring from full-time climbing, Mia worked in fundraising at a long list of nonprofits, ranging from The Nature Conservancy and the Colorado Outward Bound School to the National Museum of Wildlife Art, the ACLU and the universities of Michigan and Colorado. She’s been acting as our director of philanthropy for about a year and a half, helping us streamline and focus our fundraising efforts and take good care of all of you HCN supporters.
Ben, too, has retired from professional climbing, heeding the adage, “There are bold climbers and there are old climbers but there are not old and bold climbers.” He joined us in April as revenue products manager, focused on increasing other forms of income, from ad sales and sponsorships to group subscriptions and a few new ideas that are still in development.
Condolences: We were sorry to hear of the death of longtime HCN reader William “Scott” McKay of Nephi, Utah. Scott was a middle school science teacher who “loved rivers, wild places, and wild things, particularly raptors and other birds,” according to an obituary shared by his brother Tom. When he wasn’t piloting a raft or surveying raptor nests, Scott played the flute for the Nephi city orchestra and served, along with Sharon McKay, his wife and fellow teacher, on the board of the Children’s Justice Center, which offered a safe space for traumatized children.
To honor Scott’s life, Juab School District staff and students took part in a day of service, and Nephi’s mayor, Justin Seely, issued an Arbor Day proclamation. “If you would like to honor this remarkable man,” his family members wrote, “go pick up some litter in a public place, play some John Prine, take a hike, do a good deed for someone, look up at the birds, and always recycle!”
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This article appeared in the June 2026 print edition of the magazine with the headline “All signs point up.”
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