I first listened to Nikki’s story when she was interviewed from her home in Salt Lake City, Utah, at the 2020 Kendal Mountain Festival. I was immediately taken aback by the raw emotion in her voice. There was a sense of vulnerability that left me wanting to know more and to gain a better understanding of who Nikki is.

Nikki was born in Portland, Oregon in 1976. As a family, they moved out to Utah's rural landscape that same year, where her father Karl, a geologist and archaeologist, worked for the Forest Service.

Growing up, Nikki (like most transgender people, she goes by her chosen name even when discussing her early life) was heavily influenced by her father and their new surroundings, spending much of her time outside exploring in the woods climbing trees, fascinated by the further reaches of the Utah landscape. One of four siblings, they were a loving family, her mother Margery more the ‘arty type’, would teach her to draw, paint, sew and quilt.

As with much of Utah, the Smith family were practising Mormons and prayed together every night. At the age of five Nikki was expected to have individual prayer time before bed where she says, “I would kneel every single night and pray that I would wake up the way I was supposed to be… I knew I was a girl.”

But it was just a deep feeling, one which at such an early age came with an overwhelming confusion that Nikki just didn’t understand. She recalls, “I must have said or done something that worried my parents, because one day I woke up and things were different. I wasn’t allowed to quilt, sew or knit with my mum anymore. Most of my friends, including my best friend were girls, but we were not allowed to play together and I was made to enrol onto the soccer and baseball teams.”

At the age of eight, Nikki’s father was sadly diagnosed with Leukaemia and, with a modest income and medical bills mounting, this became a tough time for all the family, financially as well as emotionally. After a six-year battle with cancer, Karl Smith died and aged 14 Nikki stepped up to help her mother with her younger siblings and the daily chores. By now she had stopped praying to be a girl, almost accepting that her body just wasn’t built that way. Everything she was told suggested it, however, knowing deep down she was different, Nikki began to believe it was a fault of her own, that she was “messed up”, and she hated herself for it.

“knowing deep down she was different, Nikki began to believe it was a fault of her own, that she was “messed up”, and she hated herself for it”

To try and make sense of the situation, Nikki began seeing a family counsellor, as a way to escape all of the confusion. As a kind of extended counselling, she would help the therapist lead young children on desert trips and it was here that she found rock climbing for the first time. Wearing basketball shoes and a badly fitting harness, she scaled a 30 foot ‘easy, accessible climb’, and she was hooked the moment she was on the rock face. She says, “All of a sudden I wasn’t thinking about my father, or school, or my identity issues. I was completely focussed on the moment and everything was quiet.”

Acquiring some old gear, Nikki continued to climb at every possible opportunity, persuading her siblings or school friends to come along and belay for her (a safety method used particularly on a climbing rope, so that a falling climber does not fall very far). Joining a newly opened local climbing gym fuelled her passion for climbing further and Nikki was soon entering competitions, and seeing in the flesh for the first time, many of her peers from the sport’s magazines and videos. It soon demonstrated to her that the world of climbing was much more than she’d ever imagined and that maybe more was possible within it, mainly a sense of belonging. However, at this point it all still seemed out of reach.

The siblings all rallied together for the sake of their mother, but their father’s death impacted the family greatly. It was three years later that Nikki’s mother re-married and although their stepfather had a good relationship with her sisters, Nikki describes her own as “not great”. It was a major turning point and catalyst to her leaving home to join the army aged 18.

She says, “Joining the military was what I thought I needed, a way to cure this thing – whatever it was – that made me a girl. I wanted to be a man, to convince myself that I was someone I wasn’t.” This is a common trait within the trans community,to sign up to something that demonstrates masculinity, a welcome distraction to help convince yourself, and others, that you are someone else.

It was in the army that 19-year-old Nikki met her wife Cheri whilst stationed at Fort Hood, in central Texas. Cheri a 20-year-old fellow Mormon from Washington state, was visiting her sister for the summer and the two began dating. “We had such a good time together with so much in common” Nikki says. “I couldn’t be myself with myself, let alone anyone else. But I could be more of myself with Cheri than anyone I’d ever met.”

The couple married the following spring at the Salt Lake Temple. “Cheri’s family were heavily involved in the Church, so it was something we had to do in order to be married” Nikki says, “I tried hard to believe and do what everyone wanted from me, but we both soon fell away from the church.” I ask if she is still connected to the church today and she laughs, “No, they wouldn’t have me!”

State-wide, Mormons account for nearly 62% of Utah's 3.1 million residents, a number which is slowly decreasing as the state's healthy job market attracts non-Mormon newcomers from other places, but it remains a religion that is largely opposed to who Nikki is. She says, “In Salt Lake there is a strong western libertarian mentality of ‘live and let live’. We don’t believe in who you are, but we are going to leave you alone. A ‘We won’t bother you if you don’t bother us’ type mentality.”

However, there are also people who are not afraid to tell her that she is wrong to her face. It doesn’t matter who you are, or where you are from, that must be a really horrible place to be. I wonder if other places are more open to the trans community outside of any religious connotation. Specifically, in the US, I would think of San Francisco, as a place which boasts a liberal attitude, a mecca for acceptance, especially to the LGBTQ community. But even there it’s more complex than you would think. Trans people aren't fully accepted, even within the LGBTQ community. She says, “It’s a great place to be, but more so if you are gay or lesbian. It is a much better community, but there is still a lot of discrimination towards transgender people which makes you feel like an outsider.”

Following the army, the couple moved to Salt Lake City, where Nikki attended the University of Utah on an ROTC scholarship, a scholarship offered to students who commit to serve in the military. It was a revelation, exposing her to things she hadn’t seen growing up or in military life, specifically the existence of the queer community. Although finding information on being transgender was difficult, Nikki read about the club scene in other big cities where older trans women would act as mother figures to the newer arrivals, but she wasn’t aware of anything like it in Utah.

With notorious climbing spots just an hour’s drive away, Nikki and Cheri began to spend much of their time climbing obsessively. Every weekend and every holiday the couple took would be based around climbing and in 2001, it led to Nikki’s first job as a gear buyer and marketing manager for a popular climbing brand. With her dream job and married life suiting the couple, they bought a house together and started trying for children.

Nikki has gone on to work in the outdoor industry for over 20 years, now running her own outdoor design business. She has gained recognition for not only being a great climber and guide, but also for her published photography, (her dad was also an amateur photographer and taught her a lot) and her writing. However, as her career gathered momentum, the more recognition Nikki got, the more she felt like ‘a fraud’.

She says, “Everything people saw me as was a complete lie. What they knew was a character I had produced to hide behind and survive. But I wasn’t me. The more people came up to me to congratulate me at functions and launch events, the more depressed I would become. I’d be thinking to myself ‘if you knew who I really was, you’d punch me in the face right now’ and ‘if you knew who I really was, you’d be disgusted by me.’”

Nikki finally came out to Cheri that she was transgender in 2003. The only comfort she could think to offer Cheri in that moment was that she would never fully transition. She believed she was stronger than other transgender people and would never live life as a woman publicly, have hormone therapy or surgery. She was a climber. She was still a man.

Then in 2016, two of Nikki’s close friends died in a climbing accident in the Pakistani Himalaya and this was to be an event that triggered a deeper depression. Nikki quit her job of 16 years in the spring of 2017, still managing to convince herself the problem lay with her lifestyle not her identity issues. But as the year unfolded, the depression worsened, turning into suicidal thoughts. She planned to end her life.

“Everything people saw me as was a complete lie. What they knew was a character I had produced to hide behind”

She says, “The day before I was going to kill myself, I was wasting time on Facebook and saw a friend’s post that really spoke to me.” The quote from author Brené Brown read:

‘ Midlife is when the universe gently places her hands upon your shoulders, pulls you close, and whispers in your ear:

I’m not screwing around. All of this pretending and performing – these coping mechanisms that you’ve developed to protect yourself from feeling inadequate and getting hurt – has to go.

Your armor is preventing you from growing into your gifts. I understand that you needed these protections when you were small. I understand that you believed your armor could help you secure all of the things you needed to feel worthy and lovable, but you’re still searching and you’re more lost than ever.

Time is growing short. There are unexplored adventures ahead of you. You can’t live the rest of your life worried about what other people think.

You were born worthy of love and belonging. Courage and daring are coursing through your veins. You were made to live and love with your whole heart. It’s time to show up and be seen.’

Nikki continues “It felt like it had been written for me. It literally stopped me in my tracks like nothing else had before. Cheri was away in Europe on holiday at the time, so the following day I decided to drive to Vegas and go to a queer dance club where nobody knew me, somewhere I could be Nikki for the night. I was ignored, left to just exist and I spent the whole night dancing, something that I’d never experienced. For the first time ever, I fully let go.

Returning home after that night away, Nikki knew that she had to do something to explore the side of herself she’d been ignoring for so long. She started therapy shortly after her trip to Vegas, and although unable to tell the therapist at first, eventually Nikki was able to admit and say the words out loud. “I’m transgender.”

She says, “I was so scared about how coming out publicly would affect my life. What my wife would think and whether she would leave me. If my friends would all leave me too and I’d lose my business, everything that I’d built up over the years.”

Once her wife returned from Europe, they went to the Red Door, a favorite local drinking spot in downtown Salt Lake and Nikki told Cheri what she had been going through. A year later, just before attending the renowned Outdoor Retailer trade show in Denver, Colorado, Nikki came out as transgender to her 30,000-plus followers on social media. The post received hundreds of positive responses, including emails and direct messages, but Nikki was still unsure as to how people would respond to her face to face. The trade show would be the perfect test and it was there that Nikki got her first reaction, many people making the effort to come over saying ‘you look so great!’ or ‘I’m so happy for you, congratulations!’.

But there is no protocol on how to handle any of this and Nikki recounts one of her more memorable trips to Europe. Being somewhat diplomatic she says “I had this idea that Europe would be different because there are protection laws in place for trans people. I flew to the Outdoor Show in Munich and from there on to the Dolomites in Italy. Let’s just say it was one of my more frustrating travelling experiences.”

Putting it politely she recalls it as ‘not being pleasant’, from deliberately being called ‘Sir’ upon numerous hotel check-ins, to people on the street coming up to ask if she was a ‘man or a woman?’ Maybe no big deal to some, but to Nikki who deals with confrontation on a daily basis, it was hurtful and demeaning.

We talk about whether a large part of the acceptance problem is down to ignorance, ignorance of those who cast aspersions not really understanding what it means to be trans. After all, apparently 95% of people in the US alone, have never ‘knowingly’ met a trans person.

“I never had anyone to look to when I was younger, so I want to try and be that person for others going through the same journey”

Nikki says “It’s hard to understand or even care about the issues that affect someone personally if you don’t know them, yet people still have an opinion and judge, some to the point of verbal and physical abuse. Even people’s curiosity is still harmful and hurtful. When you are stared at every single day of your life, people whispering about you, not necessarily always being deliberately rude, sometimes just out of curiosity, it’s really difficult to live with because there’s no escape.”

Nikki and Cheri remain a couple, (25 years this March) and are closer now than ever. She says “She’s pretty straight and doesn’t identify as a lesbian so it’s been a long road for both of us, but we work through the ups and downs together. Without her I wouldn’t be here, it really is that simple. She’s amazing.”

Nikki believes she is now ready to be heard and is an advocate for the LGBTQ+ community in the outdoors, fighting for diversity and inclusion in the world of climbing and beyond. She says “I’m now very visible with all the articles, podcasts and speaking all over the country, but that still remains a challenge. I never had anyone to look to when I was younger, so I want to try and be that person for others going through the same journey.”

But Nikki also finds it hard to switch off, sometimes wanting to disappear from the trans conversations. She says, “There doesn’t seem to be a balance. Although I’m often brought in to talk as a photographer or a climber, all people really want to know about is me being trans. It’s an important part of my identity that I want to be heard, but at the same time, personally, I think it’s the least interesting thing about me.”

At the beginning of our call Nikki and I talked about being creatives and the world of art and design. We talked about how cool the Red Door bar is in Salt Lake, (it’s coincidentally where Chris and I spent downtime whilst shooting for SoulKind issue #1), the beauty of the red canyon lands in Utah and Zion National Park and what it’s like to be the first to rappel into a freshly frozen turquoise waterfall, only to have to climb back out again.

That’s the Nikki I look forward to getting to know and that’s the story I look forward to telling in a future issue of SoulKind.

You can follow Nikki on instagram here >> or keep up to date with her commercial work at Pull Media here >>