Titanas: a safe space for women and dissidents who love the outdoors

Titanium . Feminine noun. Person of exceptional strength, who stands out in certain aspects. In the outdoor world, it’s also an encouragement. “Dale titana,” many shout as women and dissidents hike or climb a rock. “Come on, Titan. You can!”.

Francisca Vargas (27 years old) started hearing this expression at the end of 2019. That year she started climbing, after going through a difficult period in her personal life. “It has become a therapeutic tool for me. To a certain extent, it is a super conscious meditation and it requires, in order to progress, to know how to take good care of oneself, to speak to oneself with kindness. It was a very nice exercise for me at that time and I think that’s what keeps me connected to the sport until today,” she says from Puerto Varas.

Until then, Francisca played sports, but never outdoors. He considered those in this category unattainable and inaccessible. That’s why he was so surprised to see how much he liked it and at the same time he ventured to do a backpacking trip for a month and a half on the Carretera Austral.

“I arrived in Puerto Natales and on the plane I met a writer who was going to visit a mountaineering friend, who was 65 at the time. I found it fascinating to know his story. At the same time, I started writing the stories of other women I met on this trip who practiced outdoor sports, from different places in the country and the world,” Francisca recalls. Each time, I met more and more female travelers who liked to practice outdoor sports: trekking, rafting and kayaking… There were many of them. Why then were there no female exhibitors at a climbing festival?

“I met a lot of super powerful women and I was very struck by the fact that there were no female representatives on the panels; It also drew my attention to the fact that We will always talk about the impacts of outdoor sports on the body, but not the social and environmental impacts that we generate by practicing these sports. how to interact with the environment, with other communities and with nature,” he explains.

feminine presence. Social impacts. Environmental impacts. Visibility. All these ideas were running through his head. I wanted to save them. “I felt it was important to create a space where everyone could feel like they were a part of it and that we were important,” she says. His thesis was that you didn’t have to be a great athlete to share something that, perhaps, would nourish another person and make an impact. Ensure that everyone can be an agent of change.

But then he realized that isolated elements were not enough. That we had to do something that would last and extend elsewhere, with a repository of stories. There he created the Instagram account Titanas , March 12, 2020. He began by sharing the stories of the people he had close to his community at that time (Quinta Costa). He later expanded the network.

Today, the platform – which focuses on women, children and dissidents – brings together nearly 11,000 people. Here you will find experiences and testimonials from teenage girls who are just starting out in outdoor sports, to older women who are actively involved in, for example, rock climbing.

“It was community building,” explains Francisca. A community of titans.

Titanas wants to make visible the feminine and dissident presence in the outdoor world and seeks to co-create initiatives that increase territorial and local participation. All this, in order to reduce the gender gap that occurs in outdoor sports.

The community has carried out many recreational activities and organized its first climbing course at the end of 2023.

“Little by little, we organized events and meetings that allowed us to build a social fabric,” explains Francisca. The most significant for the Titanas was an action co-created with local organizations in different places in Chile on March 8, 2023. For this date, they made a canvas saying “we will be a seed for those to come”. With this canvas, more than 100 women gathered in Viña del Mar to swim in open waters. In Pucón, the Titanas managed to gather rafts for the women to go down the Trancura River for the first time and to Puerto Natales. They also created a new community of friends called Rayadas por el Cerro, which still exists today.

–I imagine this year they will aim to do the same on Women’s Day.

-That’s the idea! We will also look to continue to support the development of outdoor sport. And change the narrative to motivate more women and dissidents to share their stories.

Stories that can generate an impact on the entire community. Titan stories.