For the seven years after she graduated from college, Davis lived out of her car, which at first was her grandmother's
Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera; she even built a bed in the backseat. Her aim was to free climb the route. In order to be able to achieve this in one climb, she had to know the route through and through, so she practiced it extensively. Two to three times a week, she would hike 10 miles to the summit,
rope solo to the lower parts of the route and climb up alone. This climb was Davis' "dream come true" and afterwards she said, "I don't have to prove anything to myself anymore, or to anyone else." The 2006 and 2007 were pivotal years for Davis in terms of her relationships and her climbing. In 2006, Davis' marriage to Potter ended after he climbed
Delicate Arch that year. The controversial climb resulted in a public outcry, and there was a lot of criticism directed at him for climbing "such a revered landmark". The couple lost much of their financial stability because they lost a lot of sponsorships. This financial stress added to their already tension-filled relationships and led to their divorce. In free solo climbing, climbers rely only on themselves to ascend the rock and use no protective gear; they use no ropes, harnesses or anything else. She began her free solo experience of the area by soloing ''Kiener's Route
(5.3) July 7, 2007, working up to harder routes. Next, on July 14, she free soloed Casual Route'' (
5.10) and returned again on August 27, after soloing a route on another mountain, to see if she would feel more at ease. She repeated the feat on September 13 with
Peter Mortimer filming. It is a famous formation in
Castle Valley, Utah. After Davis climbed it, she BASE jumped from the top. In describing this climb, she referred to her climb and jump as "the cleanest possible style". Davis has made first ascents around Moab, including the Tombstone. In 2008, she climbed
Concepcion (
5.13), one of the hardest pure crack climbs in the world, making the third overall ascent and first female ascent of the route. She described it as her most technically demanding climb ever.
Expedition climbing Davis has been on successful international expeditions to climb new routes in
alpine, big wall, and
solo styles, including in
Pakistan,
Kyrgyzstan,
Baffin Island,
Argentina,
Italy, and
Patagonia. Davis was the first American woman to summit
Fitzroy in Patagonia and to summit all seven major peaks of the Fitzroy Range. Davis was inspired to go to the
Karakoram by photographs she saw of the
Trango Towers and Shipton Spire. Davis began her mountain climbing career in 1998 by climbing
Inshallah (VI 5.12 A1) with Kennan Harvey and Seth Shaw, which is on the southeast face of Shipton Spire in the Karakoram. As one article describes it, "the ascent is one of the few big-wall expeditions to have pushed the limits of free climbing in a hostile, high-altitude environment". Davis returned to the Karakoram in 2000, this time to the
Kondus Valley, making a first ascent of Tahir Tower via
All Quiet on the Eastern Front (VI 5.11 A3) with Jimmy Chin, Brady Robinson, and Dave Anderson. The tower was previously unknown. In her article about women in the Karakoram, climber Lizzy Scully points out that the 1990s saw an increase in the number of women not only climbing in the Karakoram but also writing about it, including Davis, putting her in the tradition of the first professional female mountaineer,
Fanny Bullock Workman. Davis has written in the past about the hurdles she faced being a woman in a male-dominated sport, but in 2009 she commented to an interviewer that she felt much of that discrimination had disappeared. ==Skydiving and base jumping career==