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First off, get the name straight. It’s My-ka, but if you want to give her a hard time it’s Madge, or Maj, or, in the case of her 5th grade floor hockey coach, Ma-jock-ka. The real name is Polish, and Majka attributes most of her defiant personality to growing up with a hidden “J” and frizzy hair.
Majka’s first foray into climbing came when she was six years old as a byproduct of an obsession with cotton candy and fudge. Her local camp had adventure day at Taylor’s Falls, MN, and Majka agreed to tie in a rope and get vertical in exchange for all the sweats she can eat. Today she still searches the globe for the perfect combination of sugar and rock, as well as culture, and recently has concentrated her efforts in Africa (Ethiopia and South Africa already, Namibia next) to merge the three.
Majka grew up a paddler in northern MN and Canada and was a nationally ranked skier at age 12. She started mountaineering with a NOLS course at 15 (which she talked her way into as the minimum age requirement was 18 at the time). Back then, NOLS liked to torture its students with massive external frame packs and, by her third day, Majka had hip hickeys so big that she was forced to cut off the bottom of her foam sleeping pad to make salad-plate size foam doughnuts to make it through the rest of the trip. That was before she started working with Osprey.
Majka started working for Outward Bound at 18—their youngest hire at the time. Majka began guiding shortly after that in the North Cascades and went on to work in Ecuador and Alaska all before graduating from Princeton University in 1999. Majka has an undergraduate degree in anthropology and completed her Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing in 2007.
Majka describes her climbing career as a series of good decisions punctuated by bad injuries and good fortune. On and off the couch for the past 12 years, in her early climbing days she received AAC climbing grants, soloed Imje Tse in Nepal, racked up Valley free climbs, hard Colorado ice leads, and tromped around climbing and guiding in Bolivia, Nepal, Mexico, Ecuador, Alaska and the lower 48. After a forced break from a car accident—during which time she general contracted the building of her strawbale house: designing the septic system, laying the bales, stuccoing, laying the floor, and learning why metal and electrical wire really should only be combined by a licensed electrician—she turned back to climbing and began focusing on the world of rock.
Majka also works as a writer and has climbed and written about numerous places including Corsica, Poland, Ethiopia, and Argentina in publications such as The Explorer’ Journal, Patagonia, Men’s Journal, and Women’s Adventure. Her column “Whipped,” for Climbing Magazine, describes the underbelly of the vertical world, including what it’s like to try and merge dating and climbing, go from shoulder surgery to new routes in Ethiopia, and get petrified by attack pigeons in the dark.
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Majka’s first book, Vertical Ethiopia: Climbing Towards Possibility in the Horn of Africa, came out in February, 2008, from Shama Publishing. The coffee table book chronicles her teams’ discovery of northern Ethiopia as a place of adventure and opportunity. Part culture, part climbing, the book represents the way Majka tries to see and understand the world—as a place where climbing is possible, but can never be everything. Majka has been on a speaking tour since the book came out and has spoken around the US and Canada about the merger of adventure, environment, politics, press freedom, and national identity vis-à-vis her Ethiopia exploration Majka has been guiding since 1999 and in 2003 was the 4th woman in the US to become AMGA certified in any discipline. She is currently a certified Rock Guide and serves on the Board of Directors for the AMGA. She is also the Central Rockies Section Chair for the American Alpine Club. Majka is often found at rock and ice climbing festivals giving clinics and speaking. An extrovert from the get go, Majka’s clients often walk away from their time with Majka feeling like they have talked just as much as climbed. One day Majka hopes to be a surfer and pastry chef. For now, she’s the mother of a standard poodle and owns a freakishly geeky recumbent bike to which she refuses to affix an orange flag.
Currently alternating between living in Boulder, North Conway, or her van somewhere in the US, Majka is ramping up for an expedition to northern Namibia in spring/summer 2009. Part climbing, part trekking, part culture, her Namibia trip will result in a series of articles and a documentary that asks how to make adventure addictive.
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In May 2009, a small team of rock climbers departed for Namibia with two goals: to find a way up an unexplored face, and to find a way into a deeper understanding of southern Africa. At the heart of their trip lies the question, can adventure and culture combine to create understanding? “WayPoint Namibia” is the story of their journey.
With Majka Burhardt, Peter Doucette, and Kate Rutherford, produced by Alstrin Films. Now playing at select film festivals. Learn more at www.waypointnamibia.com
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