The 27-foot-high beige climbing wall — dotted with blue, red and gray holds — looms nearly 22 feet over her head, but Jennifer Kanz can hardly be intimidated by such a sight.

With 10 years of rock-climbing experience under her harness, Kanz, who teaches at Prairie Walls Climbing Gym in Rochester, said she is more confident in her climbing skills than ever before.

Kanz, a 23-year-old who also grooms horses and teaches Zumba in Rochester, began climbing when she joined the Prairie Walls Climbing Team in 2001. Although the team disbanded in 2005, Kanz persevered and has since climbed in three different states — both indoors and outdoors.

Her growth as a climber can partially be attributed to the support of the Rochester climbing community, she said. The community is accepting and helpful and has played a role in pushing her to be stronger, both physically and mentally.

“Everybody supports each other,” Kanz said. “That helps to know when you’re going into a sport. You’re not going to be left on your own.”

When Kanz began climbing at age 13, it was difficult to watch her guy friends build strength and speed more quickly than her. She said they were “exponentially” faster than she was, but that she learned not to compare herself to other athletes, especially male climbers.

“You have to realize your body is different,” Kanz said. “You can’t do anything about the teenage guys who weigh nothing and are tall and lengthy.”

On any given night at Prairie Walls, Kanz said there’s an even split of both genders.

The difference between male and female bodies becomes more apparent in such a physically demanding sport, but that only pushes Kanz to compete harder with men, who typically are stronger climbers than women. Kanz hopes to go on a climbing trip to the West Coast this year, and she’s working especially hard at building her strength so she can keep up with the men — and stronger women.

“I like climbing with people who are a lot stronger than me,” she said. “That motivates me to be able to climb a little bit stronger so I can keep up.”

Building strength comes easy while climbing, though, and Kanz said she’s built muscle mass without even realizing it.

“You’re never going to get bored, and you don’t realize, ‘OK, now I’m working my biceps,’” Kanz said. “That gets really repetitious and boring. With climbing, you’re doing a route and are inevitably going to get stronger.”

Kanz described climbing as a total body workout that can strengthen a person’s core, forearms, legs and hamstrings. It’s one of the few sports that trains all those muscles at once.

“All your muscles are working together for one common goal,” she said.

That goal is to get to the top, but despite all the strength training done by Kanz and other women, men are still perceived as having a physical advantage.

“When a lot of men come to a hard part, they drop their feet off and pull themselves up to the next hold,” Kanz said.

Because many women don’t have the upper body strength to do that, they rely on wits.

“We have to learn technique and be a lot smarter about how we climb,” Kanz said. “When you watch a woman climb, she’s generally more graceful about it. Women flow from move to move. We can’t resort to pure strength.”

Kanz, a 2010 graduate of St. Olaf College in Northfield, occasionally jokes with friends that women are much more graceful than men on the wall because their bodies are usually more petite.

“I joke with my friends how men sound like an elephant on the wall, banging their legs and making a lot of noise,” she said.

Luckily, there is a solid support foundation within the climbing community for women who work extra hard to be able to surge past the most agile climbers on the wall, according to Kanz.

Above everything, though, Kanz said climbing has helped her become a more confident woman, and part of that is due to the climbing community for accepting her as she is.

“Now I have more motivation to burst through that ‘I-can-never-be-strong-because-I’m-a-woman’ barrier,” Kanz said. “I’m stronger than I have ever been.”