It’s rare to find a climbing film that is at once moving and not at all tragic. But Sender Films pulls it off in this unusual short film about a nine-year-old bouldering prodigy and her animated coach. Throughout its screening, Ashima Shiraishi, a two-time ABS junior national champion from New York City, drew more enthusiastic audience encouragement in her climbing scenes than any others we saw at Banff. The scene where Shiraishi traverses a V11 in Hueco Tanks, Texas had people up out of their seats. As her coach, Obe Carrion, puts it, “She absolutely, 100 percent has it. A nine-year-old shouldn’t have it. It’s weird.”
READ MORE: The Science of Young Crushers July 2011, Adam Roy
Comments