10 Questions

Sabrina Chapman and Danielle Williams on Diversity Project

Ontario climber Sabrina Chapman didn’t start climbing until she was 26, but quickly rose through the grades to tick a number of the hardest routes on the Niagara Escarpment. With sends of southern Ontario routes like The Man in Me 5.13d, Broken In 5.13c, Grey Matter 5.13c and Maxi Pista

5.13c, it was only a matter of time before she turned her attention to a classic 5.14a.

Chapman’s most recent project is Titan

5.14a at Lion’s Head.

Titan was first climbed by Sonnie Trotter in August 2000 as the first of its grade in eastern Canada. It’s become the test-piece 5.14a in Ontario and has seen a handful of ascents over the past 20

years. Chapman’s project caught the attention of some American filmmakers who started a Kickstarter campaign to create a film. One of the filmmakers is Danielle Williams, founder of Melanin Basecamp and Diversify Outdoors. We touched base with Chapman and Williams after a rainy Ontario summer.

1

How was your summer?

Send any projects?

SC: My summer was pretty much hijacked by a finger injury I did in mid-april, so my time was spent rehabbing and trying to find routes that wouldn’t aggravate it. I did some 5.12s and a 5.13b.

2

What’s the Titan project?

SC: The Titan project is a Kickstarter campaign. The goal is to raise enough funds to produce a film about my journey to send a 5.14a. [Some of the campaign pitch reads: “The Titan film project is a means of telling Chapman’s story through her eyes. Her story matters, especially when the stories of so many other black, indigenous, and people of colour are not viewed as relevant or marketable.”]

3

What are you hoping the film will accomplish?

SC: I hope the film will help to bring more stories of women of colour in the outdoors to the big screen.

4

What specific training are you doing for Titan?

SC: Assisted one-arm negatives and onearm hangs for shoulder stability, weighted pullups, reverse grip pullups, squats, lunges and yoga. The good thing is all of this training benefits my climbing beyond Titan.

5

What are some of the biggest barriers you face when projecting? SC: As any weekend warrior knows, balancing work and family commitments with training is a constant juggling act. I split up most of my training, so the bulk of it is done before work, cardio is done on my lunch break and climbing-specific stuff is done after work.

Relying on the weather to co-operate on the couple of times a week you can get out can get really frustrating too.

There’s a lot of benefit to bouncing beta off other climbers with a similar build (as any shorter climber would know), but with Titan, sorting out my own beta has been a long process, because it doesn’t relate to the other people who’ve been working it.

6

Are you seeing a shift in climbing media towards inclusivity?

SC: I don’t see a real shift toward inclusivity in mainstream climbing media; it’s easy to highlight the same sorts of stories over and over. I think compelling stories can be found by looking a little deeper into the evolving demographic of the climbing community.

7

What’s the next project after Titan? SC: Well, I’m done with Titan, for now. I wasn’t able to give it really good attempts this season, unfortunately. I’m looking to sample some other 5.14s, because Titan is the only one I’ve ever tried. Then, a winter of training and hopefully staying injury free.

8

What does this film mean to you? DW: Titan means so many things. We honestly wouldn’t be here doing this film without the delightfully controversial and super thought-provoking article “Stop Making Movies About White Guys Doing Cool Shit” on melaninbasecamp.com by Anaheed Saatchi. We’re trying to answer her challenge by making a film about a brown woman doing a highly technical thing – yes, but also being vulnerable on camera and talking about hard things like what it’s like to learn a new sport at 26 years of age when you’re the only one who looks like you.

9

What’s your goal with the film?

DW: Our goal is to make a film that is accessible, that our brown parents and cousins and children can watch and relate to and see themselves represented in – even if they haven’t been exposed to climbing – and by doing so broaden the spectrum of what a climbing film can be. That’s the goal.

10

Who’s in the production crew? DW: The crew includes myself, Aman Anderson and Shane Smith. We recently added two new climbers to our production team: Will Tam from Toronto and Elizabeth “Biz” Young from Cincinnati, Ohio. They’ll be stepping in as fixed line videographers.—gripped