These lunatics are laughing their way up a 3,000-foot wall of death.
Yosemite National Park, in California, is one of the most fascinating in the United States. In the eastern part of the park, isolated granite peaks rise 3,900 meters above the valley floor: El Capitan, Half Dome, and Sentinel. El Capitan is the largest unbroken mass of granite in the world and a legendary site for mountaineering and free climbing. Every year, the world's best climbers challenge its impressive face. The film, enhanced with interviews and spectacular footage, follows the preparations for and ascent of El Capitan by a group of elite climbers: Scott Burk, Leo Houlding, Jim Bridwell, Jean-Marc Troussier, and Valerio Fulco, with whom humor is one of the essential ingredients of this adventure.
Cinematography
Drone shots that'll ruin your palms with sympathetic sweat.
Practical Effects
No green screen, no safety net, just human spider-madness.
Editing
Pacing that respects the climb: tense, patient, then terrifying.
Director
Robert Nicod
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Director Robert Nicod was himself an accomplished alpinist, which explains why he captures the climbers' gallows humor instead of generic hero worship.
This 2003 doc predates the modern climbing boom by a decade; these guys were doing 5.13 big walls before Instagram made suffering glamorous.
FR
