Ali started climbing in June 1989 after an inset day in the Peak District at an outdoor centre. She begged, borrowed and bought gear and cajoled students to join her in this new found passion on local gritstone crags.

Ali soon mastered the easy grades, quickly taking to leading and soloing routes of a higher grade. Later in the year, Ali began climbing with a sport climber, who encoraged her to climb even harder routes and to enjoy foreign destinations; Spain, France, Luxembourg and North America. Climbing abroad always gave a fabulous variety of rock types and dimensions as well as endless new climbs. Ali particularly enjoyed the multi-pitch routes that took all day to complete. Red pointing in the Peak District became a way of life, adding 7b and 7b+ to her climbing repertoire, and she became incredibly strong, but missed the more adventurous side of climbing.

In 2004, she began climbing with an experienced trad climber who introduced her to a different side of climbing; hard core adventure climbing, scary stuff. Venues included Wintours Leap, Avon Gorge, North Wales and the Costa Blanca area of Spain, and more recently Sardinia, where the scope for climbing is wild. In August 2005 Ali went to the Italian side of the Mont Blanc range and began a period of new routing, where she has now completed 11 Alpine new routes.

Ali is an enthusiastic climbing instructor who has great empathy for her clients and has been practising for 16 years.