Sabrina Marie Appiah

I’ve spent all winter training to come out strong for Titan, this year. I got close last year but I just couldn’t pull it off. I’m gunning for it this season – I’ve just had a hangboard PB and I’m psyched. I take a rest day then project a short and brutal 13d, pulling on crimps over and over again. All the moves have gone except one; this will be my training route until Lion’s Head season starts. I wake up the next day feeling like I didn't do enough so I go to the gym and at the end of my session my finger twangs and then blows up. FML. It’s April 2019. I start doing yoga. For the first couple of months I feel restless and impatient as I try to follow 10 minute YouTube videos. I know I’m getting older and I know this’ll be good for me and by extension, my climbing.  My husband laughs and makes fun of the names of poses while he plays video games, headphones cocked to one side of his head, never taking his eyes off the screen.  There’s no place for me to practice other than ...

  It’s mid week at the Rock Oasis, and the gym is busy with the after work crowd. The walls are covered with climbers and ropes are everywhere. It’s loud, chalky and buzzing with energy. There’s a bouldering area in the back – spray walls with taped problems – campus rungs, hangboards, rope ladder - but I only care about the routes. The vert, techy, powerful routes. Ahhh! I check in and head upstairs to change, passing posters of Lisa Rands trying hard with her green nail polish, a baby faced Chris Sharma sporting Prana shorts with the Sierra mountains behind him, Lynn Hill being fucking Lynn Hill. Halfway down the stairs to the main area, I look up and to my right at the steep overhang that dominates this part of the gym. Usually there’s two routes set here, one easy and one hard. The thought of being upside down like that scares the shit out of me, I want no part of it. I tell myself it’s just not my style and there’s no technique involved in it anyway, though deep down I don’t b...

Tues Dec 12/23 Gym yesterday after doing cardio/yoga in the morning. Pretty empty inside but I wasn’t in the best state to be there. The protest from Sunday…families, friends, couples, people alone…fists raised in the air all around me. The same faces up on the truck’s platform, week in and week out, posting online, yelling into a megaphone, eating dinner, going to work, taking care of family. Hope is discipline.   We move from Dundas Square and head west on Dundas. Chanting and yelling, flags waving in the air. There’s a man in front of me pulling a wagon behind him; I see stacks of paper cups and large carafes. He turns toward me and asks if I'd like some coffee. I decline the offer with a smile and a thank you. He returns my smile and asks someone else. The sky is overcast and the wind is biting. He thought of that this morning as he made some warmth for the rest of us. This touches me. I want him at home on this Sunday in early December. I start to sway inside and remind my...

My phone rings early on a weekday in 2018 and I glance at the number – it’s my parents. Ugh. I have to get ready for work and even if I didn’t I still wouldn’t answer it. I let it go to voice mail and finish my makeup. It rings again. For fuck’s sake. “Hello?” “Hi Sabby, it’s mom.” “Hi mom.” My voice falls into a special cadence reserved for her - guarded, irritated, polite. It’s a difficult dance trying to manage these all at once which explains why I always feel drained after I talk to her, no matter how brief our “conversations”. “Sabby…” she says and starts crying. Right away, I know. Dad is 80, blind from glaucoma, high blood pressure, diabetes and I’m not sure what all else. I stay calm and ask her what happened. He collapsed in the middle of the night and is in a coma in the hospital. I talk some more with her, getting the details of what happened and what needs to be done. We hang up and I sit on the side of the bed, staring out the window. I pick up the phone again and call ...

I’m on my way to the Red for Easter, my second trip since my separation, first trip divorced. Last year’s trip was so hard. So hard. Everywhere I turned I saw us and felt our absence. The past few years have taught me that I need to let myself feel everything that comes up, that denying it and pushing it away only makes it worse, though doing this in the middle of a route is it's own special kind of challenge. I’m 80 feet up on a beautiful sandstone route, climbing with people who don’t know me that well. I'm the only woman in the group and I’ve spent most of my climbing life wanting to be/acting like I’m “tough” (whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean). That identity has faded but there’s a faint silhouette of her in the background.  Anyway. There I am in 2022, sitting on the rope up high, a beautiful day and I’m dry heaving from trying to swallow my tears, thankful that at least up here no one can see what’s happening. I lower and we eventually call it for that crag. We st...

My husband and I eat, sleep and breathe climbing. Sometimes if the forecast looks good, we’ll pack the car on a Thursday night after work and drive down to the Red after calling in sick for Friday. We stop in Cincinnati and sleep in a rest stop when he gets tired, then continue in the morning straight to the crag.  This trip he’s working Table of Colors, I’m working Infectious. Infectious is hard, for me. I’m used to vertical routes - crimps with bad feet; although Infectious is far from overhanging by the Red’s standards, if feels bouldery and steep to me. I dig my fingers into the pockets so hard I wear away at the skin around my knuckles – I’m bleeding through the tape but I don’t care. I want to send. I started trying this in the Fall and came close…the more I get denied the more I want it. The more the route tells me no you can’t, the more my back gets up and my defiance builds. I’m gonna try again. And again after that if I have to. I just want to fucking send.   Final...