Chiara Hanke is a German sport climber based in Betzenstein in the Frankenjura, and a trailblazer for women's climbing in Germany. She came to the sport at 13 as a rehabilitation exercise after a shoulder injury sustained wakeboarding, and never looked back. A former competition climber who represented Germany at World Cup level, she gradually shifted her focus to real rock, drawn in by the world-class limestone on her doorstep. In 2019 she became the first German woman to climb 9a, as well as the first woman to climb a 9a in Germany, with her ascent of Sever the Wicked Hand at the Hängender Stein in the Frankenjura. Alongside her climbing, Chiara is training to become a high school teacher of maths, economics and law, and works part-time as a route setter and lecturer in the federal teaching team of the German Alpine Club. Now increasingly drawn to multi-pitch and trad climbing, she brings the same technical precision and patient determination to longer objectives that she has always brought to single-pitch sport routes, guided by the simple belief that progress, however small, is always worth celebrating.