Outdoor Adventure Personally Outfitted Barbie Is Ready To Scale The Highest Peaks

Step aside, gentlemen. It’s a man’s world no longer. At least not for one small girl in Wisconsin.

The girl’s aunt, local mountain climber Kelsey Loughlin, is surprising Celia Gary of Fremont, Wis., with a strong feminine role model for her 5th birthday on Feb. 7.

Loughlin’s recipe for women’s liberation? Take one Barbie doll - buxom, pointy-toed, unrealistically proportioned - and do a full makeover. A la John Roskelley. Ahem … make that Kelsey Loughlin.

With her sewing machine and some equipment at her engineering office, Loughlin outfitted a new Barbie doll to scale the world’s highest peaks. Off with the form-fitting sequined cocktail gown and spiked heels, suitable only for sex-objects or executives daunted by glass ceilings. On with a hooded fleece jacket, pile pants, and Gore-Tex shell suit with neon elbow and knee patches, gaiters, climbing harness and little caribiner, three-mil climbing rope, a backpack with compression straps, plus a miniature ice ax.

A role model in her own right, Loughlin, 33, sometimes-instructor with the Spokane Mountaineers, has scaled such peaks as Ama Dablam in the Himalayas, Argentina’s Aconcagua, Popocatpetl in Mexico, and a number of technical routes on Mount Rainier.

“Celia and her brother talk about me as a climber all the time,” she said, adding her closeness with Celia “is one of the most special things that’s happened to me.”

Loughlin admits she’s become a little obsessive about Celia’s birthday gift. She’s purchased a doll who already has a camera and sunglasses, just like Aunt Kelsey. (The doll’s pointed toes, ironically, are suitable for rock climbing.) Loughlin’s friend Mary Weathers donated a sackful of colorful nylon remnants; Mountain Gear of Spokane furnished other supplies for Barbie’s fleece-lined sleeping bag and four-season tent.

A mechanical engineer and owner of Valhalla Engineering, Loughlin made the tiny ice ax from quarterinch aluminum tubing and .080-inch aluminum sheeting. She considered making crampons for Barbie’s aerobic shoes but gave it up over worries about easily swallowed sharp objects.

She estimates she’s spent 35 hours to outfit Barbie’s mountain expedition. Loughlin plans to photograph the doll scaling an actual rock. The small scale won’t be too far from the truth for her niece. The only mountain Celia ever sees in Fremont is the mound at the local landfill.

With this toy, though, one can hope Celia will scale whatever more formidable obstacles arise in her future, including the Cinderella Complex.

But she may need those crampons.

MEMO: Judy Laddon is a Spokane-based writer.