Beck is from Ellsworth, Maine and a graduate of the University of Vermont. She was inspired to take up climbing at the age of 12 after a counsellor said she did not have to do it on a camp course. Because there was no support for one-handed climbing, she devised a way of doing it herself. She accompanied Jim Ewing in a climb of the Lotus Flower Tower in the Cirque of the Unclimbables.
