Welcome to the thirteenth annual Reel Rock Film Tour.
Reel Rock is presented by:
The North Face.
Since 1966, we’ve seen walls not as obstacles but as opportunities.
A chance to explore what we believe to be possible.
A vertical proving ground for grit, perseverance, and determination.
Walls can be mirrors that reflect the best versions of ourselves.
Walls don’t divide us, they bring us together.
Walls are meant for climbing.
I'm starting to get sort of,
Stoked?
sort of inspired.
This year, Reel Rock brings you 4 new films from around the globe
featuring:
An expedition to the remote, frozen towers of Antarctica.
These are huge mountains.
This is insane!
Rock!
A hot lap through the world of speed climbing,
our next Olympic sport.
You're just racing to see who can get to the top the fastest.
A pilgrimage to the desert of Jordan, a Middle Eastern, big-wall climbing Mecca.
Eli kept talking about this place called Wadi Rum and this rock climb he'd been working on.
Rock!
And a wild ride to the limits of climbing
with Adam Ondra.
My goal is to flash 5.15, first try or nothing.
Reel Rock 13 is sponsored by:
Black Diamond --
making the best mountain equipment for over fifty years
to help Adam Ondra push standards
and Claire Buhrfeind chase an Olympic dream.
Live. Climb. Repeat.
Black Diamond.
Yeti --
making coolers and accessories that are rugged,
dependable,
and expedition tested.
Yeti. Built for the wild.
Reel Rock 13 is also supported by:
Climbing Magazine -- now offering instruction through online classes.
The Access Fund -- protecting America’s climbing.
And the American Alpine Club -- together we’re stronger.
Now that we’re warmed up,
tie in
for Reel Rock 13.
Adam Ondra is the best climber in the world, by far.
He's a lot better than everybody else.
In pretty much all realms of climbing.
Sport climbing,
bouldering,
big wall climbing,
competition climbing.
Adam Ondra,
they're chanting his name.
I mean, he set out to be the best climber in every aspect
and he’s done it.
He's the greatest climber of all time.
There's a mystery around Adam.
Who is this guy? What makes him tick?
We're all kind of wondering why is Adam so good?
We know very little about his process.
Does he have a vision?
How can he take the sport to the next level?
I think I was born with this desire
to set my own goals and going for them.
Since the age of seven I became really obsessed with climbing
and I was ambitious.
Somehow I knew that in the end I would be a professional climber
and just be good at it.
When I went to the competitions as a small kid
I just wanted to climb every single route there was.
Even if I won, but didn’t climb to the top of the route,
I would get really frustrated.
Climbing to the top of the route was even more important
than the victory itself.
It is just so hard to control the emotion.
When I got frustrated, I cried,
and my parents told me "Well, it might not look that good if you're crying,
might look a little better if you swear."
I think it was good advice.
But I must say that I might have been using
even those really bad words.
Adam definitely does seem like he could've been
bred for this purpose in some kind of lab.
He seems like a specimen who's been created to send.
I wouldn't be shocked if he had come out of some kind of
Eastern European, post-Soviet, apocalyptic, dungeon training cellar thing.
Ready go! Up!
He's been freaking climbing at an elite level since he was like six years old.
I was interested in Adam Ondra since he was a kid.
You'd always hear about this kid from the Czech Republic
doing something that's really hard
in places I've never heard of.
There were articles coming out about this wonder-kid
doing really hard routes first try.
I was right around the same age as him
and I was like "Wow, what, what's going on in Europe?"
When I was a little kid I really got interested in the history of climbing.
I would know all the famous climbers
and hardest routes such as Action Directe,
the first 9a in the world.
I went to see Action Directe when I was seven years old
and I thought like "Wow, I want to climb that one day."
I actually ended up sending it seven years later.
He really got a lot of attention on the global climbing scene
when became the youngest person to climb a 5.14d.
Thirteen years old, scrawny, scraggly kid with long hair.
He had like a nerdy Harry Potter vibe going.
Twiggy and gangly and all neck like a giraffe.
I shouldn't make fun because every kid a little awkward
but Adam Ondra was particularly awkward as a kid.
I'm Adam Ondra and I am 15 years ago.
He doesn't look like a professional athlete.
But he just has such an intensity for climbing.
The burning passion, and the drive, and the fire.
Where you're just like, "Respect."
He did La Rambla in like five tries.
That was the hardest grade at the time.
Do you want to be the best in the world?
But after that?
You see the headlines, Adam's breaking records,
climbing harder and harder routes.
He's done the most 5.14s, he's done the most 5.15s.
He's climbed basically all the hardest boulder problems in the world.
Including these horrendously disgusting looking traverses
at his home crags in the Czech Republic.
I can't believe he's climbing V16 in some rotten hole.
He's doing it because he just needs a challenge.
For sure it's not the sickest line you can find,
but every single climb teaches you something.
He's a student of movement.
He's taking a very dedicated, methodical approach
to learn from the best climbers in the world.
Everything about how the human body works on rock.
One of the major moments in Ondra's career was
competing with Chris Sharma
for the first ascent of La Dura Dura,
which would be the hardest route in the world.
They both put in a really good fight
and ultimately Ondra, Ondra won.
The torch really passed from Chris Sharma is the best climber in the world
to now it's Adam Ondra.
The next thing he did was spend an entire year training.
He took a step back from real rock
and just disappeared into this dingy little bouldering gym.
I think a lot of people were disappointed that
he didn't go find the next sick route to inspire all of us.
But it was part of this premeditated plan that he has to
improve himself and dominate all aspects of the sport.
We started to see videos of how hard Adam was training
and it seemed like he loved the training just as much as he did the climbing.
And it paid off in the world championships.
Ondra.
No athlete in the history of climbing
has won a bouldering and lead world championship
in the same year.
Go on Ondra, and what an awesome performance.
Ondra, one more move away!
One hand on it and he knows he's there!
Ondra is the world lead champion
and the world bouldering champion.
Something I don't think will ever be done again.
I mean, he just does everything at the highest level in the world.
He doesn't compete very often, but when he does he basically wins.
He doesn't big-wall very often, but when he does
he does the Dawn Wall.
A year after Tommy and Kevin climb the Dawn Wall,
Adam showed up first time ever in Yosemite
having never really jumared or even placed gear.
Nobody knew how that was going to play out.
People were like "Oh, I don't think he'll climb the Dawn Wall,"
it's like, "Of course he's going to fucking climb the Dawn Wall, it's only 14d."
It's not even that hard for him.
A 14d sport climb is usually easy for me
but up on the Dawn Wall I was humbled.
Pretty tough day.
It was more exciting than I expected.
He managed to basically crush it.
It's half past twelve and only four pitches left.
The thing is it is really impressive that he came and climbed the Dawn Wall
but I think he has set such a high bar for himself
that it's really hard to impress people now.
You know, I mean poor Adam.
After the Dawn Wall I chose this project in Flatanger in Norway.
It's a huge cave, perfect rock,
with just enough features to make it climbable.
It's 60 degrees overhanging and the route is maybe 45 meters long.
I was sure that this could be the new level of difficulty.
The climbing is very complex.
It's like multiple boulder problems stacked on top of each other
and you really have to be creative to find the easiest way.
I'd been working on a story about Adam
and he had this project in Norway that was going to be a 5.15d
and I had to go see that.
I walked up to the crag and was like "That's it?"
It's not a king line.
You can't even really tell where it goes.
It just kind of ends in the middle of the wall.
You're like "This is what's so inspiring to you?"
But his answer to that question was so perfect.
For Adam, it's not about the line it's about the beauty of the moves.
It might not be that beautiful to look at
but it is just really interesting
because of how weird and severe the climbing is --
especially the crux.
You look at this crack and it's the shallowest,
slipperiest, most awful thing you've ever seen.
So horrible that his hands don't work on it.
I was trying desperately to find the beta.
After a few weeks I realized the easiest way is feet first.
I found that I could turn around and thrust my foot and jam it inside a crack.
It's bizarre climbing.
Kicking his legs up above his head,
doing these incredible ab sit-ups
to contort his body
and get his hands above his feet.
When I was there Ondra got really sick.
He didn't want to climb on the route
but he was still approaching the mental preparation with the same level of
intensity that you see when he's climbing.
It was a very surreal scene.
Very good, very good. Foot up, foot up. Come on.
Watching the world's best climber lie on a shag carpet pantomiming beta
with his physiotherapist mimicking the shape of holds with his hand.
Come on, come in, come in.
Drop-knee.
I mean, it just looks nuts.
Yes! Come on Adam, go, go!
I had never seen anything like that.
So I posted an Instagram story.
Come on Adam, go, go!
And professional climbers around the world were like
"What is he doing? What is the secret to this?"
I was like "What? This is not like any climbing I have ever done."
What a weirdo.
So I'm the right pocket. I'm a bit slopey.
Turn around, turn around, turn around, turn around.
Up, up, up, up, up.
And then down.
Adam takes this very cerebral approach
to everything from the physical to the mental.
In this position I have the toe-hook.
He brought his physiotherapist, Klaus, to analyze his biomechanics
and help with his training.
There was an old barn there
and if he wasn't on his project
he was always, always training.
His friend bought a bunch of wood in the Czech Republic,
drove it up to Norway, and constructed this amazing wall.
Now he has a place for his warm up.
He was doing everything possible
to take climbing to the next level.
Climbing through the bottom,
I don't really remember much.
I was just in such a perfect flow.
In the end of the route I was pretty nervous
because I knew I could do it.
There was so much pressure from deep in myself.
I definitely didn't want to let it go.
Adam did the route
and he named it Silence
Which is pretty freaking ironic.
Reaching the anchor, it was just super intense.
It was too intense to even scream out of joy.
I just sat still
and enjoyed the moment.
It happened!
I can't believe it.
I've never had such a reaction after sending the route, I wanted to cry.
Oh, man!
He does Silence -- the world's first 15d.
It's crazy just saying that, 15d.
After climbing Silence, I went back home and took some time to train
and figure out what my next goal would be.
I think the challenge for Adam is that
he's done everything.
He's already established two new grades.
He's won world championships, he's climbed the Dawn Wall,
we all kind of wonder, "What do you do next?"
People keep telling me that after Silence
there will be nothing else for me to climb
and that's bullshit.
I can always be a little bit stronger, a little bit better climber.
Over the last years I have been working on the raw power.
I've definitely gotten much stronger
but I think the stronger you are
your technique can actually go down.
Because then if you just feel the power you use it
and you forget the perfect movement.
That's why I've always focused on climbing better technically.
I have to be aligned and then I can move the leg.
If I'm like this then it will be different.
I met Dr. Čumpelík last year.
He made me realize that I can actually climb more efficiently.
I just have to learn the perfect movement patterns.
If the cat
is going to catch some animal
he has to go very slowly.
Dr. Čumpelík came with this
theory that human beings are still four legged
even though at a certain point during the evolution
we stood up on two legs.
But if we really want that our movements are efficient
we have to consider that the hands and legs are still connected.
Perfect.
Why should we focus more on the pinkies?
If you press it here, where is this going?
Shoulder is going frontwards,
with the pinky it's in the perfect position
and it's going upwards.
Dr. Čumpelík showed me there's more things
I can still learn and that's exciting.
It gives me so much satisfaction
to work on the perfection of my climbing.
After you climbed Silence,
did you set new goals right after that?
Were you already thinking about 5.16,
a 9c+? Is that even possible?
I mean,
I know that 9c+ might maybe be possible one day
but right now for the moment it's too far.
Pushing even one grade higher, this could take years.
There's just so many different ways that I could still make progress.
One discipline that I really enjoy is called flash.
It means climbing a route first try or nothing, that's it.
After Silence I set a goal of making the first 9a+ flash.
That would be just perfect.
The idea of climbing 5.15 first try is just crazy.
I was like "No way you can flash 5.15," and then you're like,
"Well, it is Adam Ondra."
I was always obsessed by climbing a route first-go.
As a small kid I just wanted to flash every single route.
If I fell on my first try I just didn't bother
even giving a second try.
There's no one even close to Adam in terms of doing hard routes first go.
Hardest flash in the world.
I knew growing up that Adam was a master of this skill.
He's pushed that realm more than anyone else, by far.
I had a dream of flashing 9a+ since I was 18.
I tried for the first time in 2012
on this super famous route Biographie by Chris Sharma.
When I climbed Biographie
that was the hardest thing in the world and it
took me, like, four years to do it.
So it was amazing that someone could even consider flashing something like that.
I watched the footage of Chris making the first ascent.
Just trying to memorize the moves for a flash-go.
Typically in sport climbing you spend days, months, even years
practicing the moves over and over
until it becomes this choreographed dance.
But on a flash there's no rehearsal.
You're just going up there trying to figure it out on the fly.
It's a totally fresh experience, you have to trust your instincts.
You have one chance to do it perfectly.
It's the pinnacle of what it means to climb well.
For me trying a route flash
is probably the most intense,
the most mentally demanding way of climbing.
All the decisions are made by intuition.
Every time you’re off a millimeter
you’re losing a little bit of energy
and all that adds up.
Biographie has a very hard crux on the top.
I just arrived there just being too pumped.
At that moment, I was not ready yet.
A few years later I tried to flash another 9a+
and I got agonizingly close.
There was a tiny mistake.
I placed my foot a little bit lower than I should have.
So I tried it twice and I failed both times.
But I feel like now I'm finally ready for a 9a+ flash.
Oliana is one of the hardest crags in the world.
It's a massive, overhanging limestone wall.
It's kind of the North Shore of hard sport climbing.
You walk up to the cliff and there's at least five or six pro climbers trying 5.15.
We're all there working our projects.
Come on, Matty.
And word got out that Adam was going to show up.
He was preparing to flash this route called Joe Mama.
There was definitely kind of a buzz going around and
people were totally excited to watch the show.
And this flag you're doing as well?
Yeah.
Climbing a route first try,
it’s a game with very obvious rules.
You can get as much information as possible from videos,
from people that know the route very well,
but you can't touch the holds.
And it's four fingers or three?
And I'll be like "Okay, you’re going to get the undercling,"
and he's like "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,
what do you mean get the undercling, is it like this?"
"Where's my pinky? I love my pinky."
The under cling is like pinky, or?
It's like pinch, it's kind of like this.
Yeah.
"Can I get my pinky in there? Can I put it on top of my ring finger?"
"I really like my pinky."
That was better but as soon as I put my pinky in there
I love pinkies.
Yeah. Definitely put your pinky in there.
You know he's building the perfect sequence in his head.
Get it.
Press it.
Resistance, come on. Come on.
He has Klaus, his trainer, to help him be prepared for everything.
The closer you are here, the more you can rotate here,
the less power you need.
It's so much harder to do the route first try
but the route is still the same,
and the only difference is that you don't have the information.
You don't have the muscle memory.
But you can somehow, like, cheat it.
You can visualize beforehand.
Okay.
Smaller. Smaller, smaller.
The idea is that if you do a lot of visualization
and you climb it in your mind many times,
then, if you actually try it,
it feels that you had already done it many times before.
I even visualize the emotions that I'll be having while climbing the route.
Because in order to try hard, there must be those emotions
and you want to feel as similar to the real climbing as possible.
You know, I had heard about this visualization that Adam was doing
but when I saw it for the first time it's pretty intense.
Come on. Yes. Come on, get it.
Come on.
Come on, Adam. Come on, get it, get it!
Keep going, keep going, keep going.
Go!
Yes.
Nice work, come on stay there. Stay there.
Got you.
Got you, got you. Come on, fight.
Come on.
Come.
Stay up there. Come on.
Keep going, keep going, keep going. Come on.
Got you, got you, got you, got you.
Watching him put so much passion into the visualization,
it was kind of awkward.
I felt like I should have stepped out of the room.
Come on.
But he doesn't care about how it looks.
He doesn't care about what people might think.
He's transported himself onto the route.
But the top out is good?
Yes.
It's nice today.
Think so.
Yeah.
Yeah, hello.
Hello.
Do you know what he's trying?
He's going to try to flash the 9a+ Joe Mama.
It's going to be pretty sweet.
This is like watching the superbowl or something.
It's like if somebody was going to go up to a golf course they've never been at
and try to shoot a hole in one.
On every hole.
And everybody was watching.
Yeah.
In Oliana, once the sun goes behind the cliff and it gets shaded,
most days a breeze comes up.
It keeps your skin dry and allows you to grip the rock.
At that level, 5.15, that could make or break the send.
Adam was waiting for that breeze.
At a certain point, I could see that he was hesitating.
He started doubting the conditions.
It looks like your chance right now.
Yeah?
It's a hard decision.
I'm kind of really excited to try but it's probably not worth it.
I mean, flash is just one try a life and I don't think this is the day.
The wind didn't come, it was a little too humid,
and he just decided not to try it.
We had been struggling with bad weather.
And it was clear that this season's over.
He just said "It's not going to happen,"
and goes home.
I went all the way to Spain to flash Joe Mama.
In the end I didn't even try.
Of course I was frustrated.
But it is better to stay patient and wait for another time.
At the moment, there's maybe only two or three 9a+'s
in the world which are good candidates to be flashed,
and that increases the pressure tremendously.
If I fail on one,
the chances are even lower.
Morning.
Think it's dry today?
I bet only the jug pocket is wet.
I think it will be okay.
How are you today?
Okay, good.
The Colosseum is a new crag in Canmore.
Just last year, actually, a local climber established the hardest line up there
and proposed a grade of 5.15.
Adam's travelled all this way
for the big flash attempt.
He was just watching me and filming me on his phone
trying to get all the beta down.
Adam, he studies it.
You see the gears turning. The way he watches.
The way he absorbs it.
Just try to memorize every single handhold and foothold.
You do this.
Yeah.
You do this.
Yeah.
And then you?
Then I put it up, yeah.
There's a lot going on inside his brain.
Come on.
Come on, Miles.
Nice, come on.
I think I've already memorized it,
I've got two days to let it kind of
sink in my head
and I think I'll be all ready.
It's a unique art, I think, to climb a route first try.
It takes a phenomenal amount of guts.
There's very few people in the world who have that mentality.
I've never met such a person before, like Adam.
It's somewhere in his mind that whatever he does
he wants to do it one hundred percent.
I always wish him to succeed because I know how it's important for him
and I know that he's prepared for everything.
A couple days later it was go-time.
Yeah, I'm not going to lie, there was a bit of like,
anxiety around it, you know?
It's a stressful game.
Watching Adam go through those motions,
I mean, you can tell he wants it bad.
Adam gets his shoes on and everyone just like,
it's like "He's going!"
and everyone one is like "Shh."
No!
What happened, Adam?
Just slipped.
Didn't work out.
Adam, he puts pressure on himself, a lot.
Like with this flash,
maybe it's even too much sometimes.
So frustrating.
My hands felt like glass.
I didn't stick.
He struggles and we have discussions if he
should have done something differently.
Just wondering if I even have more motivation
to just keep trying.
But he did everything what he could for that.
And I know that he will try again in the future.
Go, go, go, go!
This hold is with the pinky and it locks?
How was the pinky?
Not pretty.
Okay.
One finger pocket like this, like this, and you put pinky finger like this.
Okay, I like that.
After experiencing the failures so many times.
I kind of felt this time I had to do it.
But do you think you can put the thumb, like from the side?
I was quite nervous but I just tried to focus on my own process.
I visualized it so many times.
I was patient,
waiting for the perfect moment when I turn all this fear
and pressure into complete flow of my mind.
It was like 95 percent just as I visualized it.
The holds felt just the same.
That's a great feeling.
Being up there for the first time, ever,
while having the feeling you have already climbed it many times before.
It felt like nothing could really stop me.
I just kept going.
And the dream was done.
When I started climbing, my mental mode was not so good.
I thought it was all of a sudden so humid.
But I don't know, I started climbing
and I clipped the first bolt and then the hard
the hard part should start
but it still felt so easy.
And I kept climbing and
it still felt so easy.
I was feeling like an alien power!
It was so good.
Everything was just as I visualized, it was perfect.
When I left Israel, we didn’t even know it existed.
We know Wadi Rum, as legends and myth.
My name is Eliav Nissan. I grew up in Israel.
I live in the United States.
When I grew up, we heard stories about a vast desert with canyons
that you could get lost in for days.
But we understood that we could not cross the border
because Israel and Jordan were in a state of war.
I came to the United States in my early twenties
to pursue rock climbing, mountain climbing.
Later I reconnected with Israeli climbers.
And they were saying, "Oh, you know we can go to Jordan now,
there's a peace agreement, there's a great climbing area."
My friend told me, "Go find Mohammad Hussein,
he's the number one Bedouin guide in Wadi Rum."
I came to the village and I asked
and there's probably twenty Mohammad Husseins
in the village.
The first time I met The Mohammad Hussein,
Woo!
I was surprised how young he was,
by how charismatic.
I thought wow, here's James Dean of Wadi Rum.
Hello.
You hear me?
Or you need me to shout?
Hello.
Mohammad Hussein knows every canyon,
every curve.
The first time I saw Wadi Rum,
yeah I was stunned.
I was like, “There is a lot of rock here.”
Wow. This is big.
I fell in love with Wadi Rum.
Came back, year after year
climbing the established routes,
and my friendship with Mohammad has
grown for many years now.
I always wondered
so much rock, so accessible,
but, there's so few climbers.
Why aren't they coming?
I talked to a lot of people,
I asked him, “How come you don't come to Jordan?”
And they say, "Um, there's not enough modern routes,
if the locals put routes, we will come.”
And that kind of...
started the dream.
Okay.
I talked to my friend Elad,
he climbs there, guides there.
We wanted a route,
that will match the highest standards of climbing.
So we looked at the east face of Jebel Rum,
the biggest rock formation in Wadi Rum.
It looks so proud, so obvious.
When we talked to Mohammad about our plan,
he was very excited.
And we went to work.
Yeah it takes a little more
strategy because the rock is not perfect.
To say the least.
ROCK!
Okay.
Eliav is a machine.
Eliav is a suffer machine.
He would never be discouraged.
One day on the headwall we ran out of bolts,
and I thought “That's fine we'll just leave it for maybe
next season.”
Then all of a sudden,
Eli just rappelled down, didn't say anything,
took a taxi, crossed the border back to Israel,
drove all the way to Jerusalem,
went to this hardware store.
Same night, he took a bus back to the border,
took a taxi back to Wadi Rum,
walked back to the wall,
jumared up and put these bolts.
I was like, “Eli, what happened?”
And he said, "We needed bolts, so I went back to Israel to get bolts,
it's all good now, we can go and climb.”
“Let's go and climb.”
So we did.
Putting up this line in a remote desert,
yeah, that was to say the least, it was a learning experience.
The new route is 1,800 feet,
15 pitches.
It turned out the third and fourth pitches down below,
are going to be the hardest.
The route name, it's called Sultan Ul Mujahidin
Try to say, Sulatan Ul Mujahidin.
Sultan Ul Mujahidin.
Which means "The Sultan of all freedom warriors".
To me, it means trying to free this line and if we could do it
it would be The Sultan of all the free routes in Wadi Rum.
Thanks.
Bedouin tea:
the sweetest tea in the world.
Right. Yeah.
So by the end of the first season,
we didn't even make the headwall.
And we came back year after year, making slow progress.
I don't know if we were getting tired,
but we fell into this pattern,
self doubt, is it really that good,
and we needed something to happen
to reignite, to reinvent The Sultan.
Just waking up here in Wadi Rum,
Slept like the dead.
Holy shit.
Why can't we start our day like that everyday?
Oh, we can!
Madaleine is a very accomplished, very experienced climber.
Her technique, her ability to climb hard pitch after hard pitch,
far, far off the ground is amazing.
Eli kept talking about this place called Wadi Rum
and the rock climb that he'd been working on already for two years.
So Madaleine came to Wadi Rum.
She did the first couple pitches with ease.
We knew that the first major obstacle would be the third pitch.
Elad and I, we've been trying that pitch for years.
It really was in a sheer corner.
I tried it several times, I tried to go right,
we were trying laybacking,
micro crimps,
nothing worked.
And Madaleine came up with the idea to stem the pitch.
Sweet.
Good job!
Thanks.
Pure, pure technique. Incredible flexibility.
It's nothing to do with pulling hard on holds.
Sweet.
Madaleine sent it.
Make me look like a beginner climber.
Yeah, she's going to show us.
Then we felt like, “Yeah, we got something,
this is worth all the effort.”
It was really just the fourth pitch left.
It's clearly the hardest pitch.
It was clear that pitch is not going to come so easily.
It all looked really hard,
one section in particular,
but I am going to stay optimistic about it.
Every person has a unique vision
of the world surrounding them.
As a kid, growing up in Israel,
there was a vision of the people on the other side of the border,
and I think climbing and adventure
is a great way for people to meet
and share something that is greater:
nature, challenge, risk, unknown.
You really have to connect in order to do what we were doing there.
That hospitality, that goes way back to Bible story,
Old Testament stories,
of Sarah accepting the messengers to her tent,
not knowing who they were,
it's rooted in the culture.
After a few weeks, we'd established the route in its entirety,
and we became quite hyper focused on pitch four,
because that was the obvious crux.
I'm going to try to rest for a second, and try to do that sequence
from the start of the crux.
On that fourth pitch it's really going to be
that one long pull move,
and then two significant high steps with my right foot.
You're on the arete,
get my right foot up
sort of smear thing.
The crux is to that little ledge
and take the traverse left again.
Yeah!
I stand up on a small right foot,
reach up to pointer-finger kind of lock with my left hand
to reach to this down pulling other right pointer-finger hole.
I stand way up to a left-hand pin scar.
My pointer fingers are so strong from this climb.
And then smear, push that gets me left.
And if I get to the hole, I'm
freaking sending the pitch.
The whole village, basically, they were so into it.
I was at the grocery store, and he asked me, “Did she do it?”
Our time was pretty much over.
I had one more day to try to send this route.
I really wanted to send that pitch.
Okay, Eli.
Alright.
Yes.
Yes!
You got this. Nice.
Oh nice.
Everything!
Strong!
Come on! You got this!
You got it.
Fuck.
Yes. Yes.
No!
What?
A battle.
Well, I'm going down.
Couldn't send it today.
So close, just couldn't make my right foot stick.
Yeah, beautiful climbing, including this pitch,
awaits you
if you come to Wadi Rum.
Yeah, someone better send it in the next year
or I'm coming back.
Although none of us got the first ascent,
I could speak for myself
I would do it all over again.
The route is clean, bolted,
the anchors are in place,
and it's open and ready for whoever wants to take the challenge
and climb The Sultan.
Mohammad told me that when he was a kid
His mom said “Mohammad,
every country you have a true friend
you have a home.”
So now, I have feel I have a home in Jordan,
in Wadi Rum.
And Mohammad has a home in the United States.
Oh it’s one of those wherever I’m going to move?
Well I'll try to turn it your way, Mohammad.
Who is in favor of this proposal?
Congratulations Tokyo 2020.
Holy shit! Climbing is in the Olympics.
The fringey adventure sport we all obsess over
is headed for the biggest athletic stage on Earth:
Tokyo 2020.
The world's best climbers will compete in a combined event:
lead climbing,
bouldering,
and speed climbing.
Wait, what in the hell is speed climbing?
Speed climbing is a race.
A fifteen meter dash, but this is vertical.
To see who can get to the top the fastest.
Among top competition climbers
speed climbing tends to provoke strong reactions.
People rag on it.
A lot of people don't think it's real climbing.
I'm not the biggest fan of speed climbing.
I don't like it.
You're doing the same climb, over and over again?
I just don't really see it as the real climbing.
Just climbing a route and it’s the same all day
just sounds really fucking boring to me.
But like it or not,
for one combined Olympic event,
the world's top climbers now have to learn how to speed climb.
The best climbers out there,
they really aren't the best speed climbers.
I definitely could've gone most of my life without speed climbing.
Ah, it's a nightmare for me.
So what is this obscure sub-discipline?
Where did it come from?
How do you get good at it?
And how's it going to look to a worldwide Olympic audience
in 2020?
Look at the time!
It's time
to get Up to Speed.
Hi, I'm Zac.
Reel Rock producer and inveterate trad dad.
Over the hill and out of shape,
my glory days decades in the rearview.
I pine for how climbing used to be
and confront all new developments in the sport with skepticism.
Instagram is gross.
So when Reel Rock sent me on assignment
to find out what speed climbing is all about,
I had to suppress my inner curmudgeon
and keep and open mind.
My first stop is Ascent Studio
where I meet up with John Brosler,
one of the best speed climbers in America.
Let's take a step back and just kind of
give me an overview.
So this is the speed route.
This wall is ten meters
and there's a fifteen meter version, too.
It's standardized all around the world.
You compete, train, all on the same set of holds.
Been doing it for a long time.
Yeah, how long?
Like six years I've been competing on this route.
For six years you've been climbing
the same route?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I have.
John tells me that the best way to learn about speed climbing
is just to try it for yourself.
On the third beep, that's when you go.
And, I'm off!
Like a forty-four year old getting out of bed to change a diaper.
Nice.
The grade, it's no gimme,
around 5.10 plus.
There you go.
But a few holds up
something starts to happen.
I find a groove.
I've got some flow.
In my head, I am flying up this thing!
This is, without a doubt,
the fastest I have climbed anything
ever.
Nice.
Nice work.
I was looking at my time:
33.93.
Not bad, first try.
Climbing ten meters in under thirty four seconds
seems pretty fast to me.
I'd love to see you try it.
Okay.
We look like different species.
As the session wears on
and John delights in lapping me
I realize just how difficult speed climbing is.
Clearly not something you can hope to master overnight.
Next, I'm off to the U.S. Nationals Competition
to watch America's speed climbers go head to head.
The comp’s main event is lead climbing
where the stars of our sport dominate.
Even as an old tradster, I can appreciate competition lead climbing.
It demands route finding,
endurance, and a wide range of techniques.
Basically, climbing as we know it.
Alright we are just getting this
fifteen meter speed wall up and running here.
That's right Brian, this wall that you're seeing right now
is exactly the wall in the 2020 Olympic Games.
The crowd is curious.
It seems I'm not the only one
who heard the Olympic announcement
and is wondering what this sport is all about.
The dedicated speed climbers enter the hall
and embark on a warm-up routine that is, well,
different.
Here we go,
silence!
I do appreciate about the speed climbing, Brian
that it is cut and dry.
Clear as any running race.
Wow. Blistering.
They're just, flying up this wall.
Very exciting!
To say the least.
In speed climbing, it's all about how fast you can do 17 moves.
The climbing itself is very powerful.
A lot of hand foot matches,
not looking down at all.
And if you really think too hard about the climb
you're going to slip and fall.
You've done the route so many times, you have to trust your muscle memory.
I'm hitting my marks, I'm being accurate.
The more their hips are in a perfectly straight line
the faster you're going to go.
There's something euphoric about running up a wall,
you hit that buzzer,
and the crowd goes wild.
I’m like, “I just ran up that wall!”
And it just feels good!
This is Max Hammer.
He's got the best speed climber name you can imagine,
To the Max, Drop the Hammer.
Hammer Time!
I'll embrace it.
Hammer Time's cool.
It turns out, Max is only one of four speed climbers in the Hammer Clan.
So my whole family is addicted to speed and I am so proud.
The sport’s really growing and now that it's going to be in the Olympics
I love that everyone's getting in on speed.
Also competing here in Reno are some of America's top Olympic hopefuls
who are looking to get some speed experience under their belts.
The best climbers, they're realizing, yeah this is a difficult sport to get into.
There's always false starts.
Speed climbing’s pretty brutal.
I'm like “Where are my feet?”
I know that my beta’s wrong.
I'm not very good at speed.
You can't look down at your feet,
but then you fall.
In speed climbing, I'm not the pro.
I'm just learning.
I'm sure people are like, “Oh my gosh what's she doing?”
At this competition, most of the big names finish at the bottom of the results
with one notable exception.
Claire Burhfeind, a young crusher from Texas,
wins both the lead and speed comps.
National Champion Claire Burhfeind!
Take note, she’s one to watch.
Meanwhile, my man, John Brosler,
sets a new American speed record on the fifteen meter wall.
He was going so fast his belayers fell over just trying to keep up!
I'm psyched. And I'm looking forward to the world championships in Austria as well.
And then Olympics, maybe? 2020? If I can get that far.
So, so yeah.
Now that I've had a look at the sub-culture of speed
I want to explore deeper into its roots.
Back in my day, speed climbing was synonymous with one guy,
Hollywood Hans Florine.
He's best known for breaking the speed record on The Nose of El Cap
in Yosemite.
But Hans has also long embraced indoor speed comps
as an antidote to the drowsy pace of lead climbing.
You watch the quote "normal climbing".
Somebody like this up on the wall, not moving.
Went to the next hold. He's got to look solid, he could do it.
Oh, wow, he just reached up with his left hand.
Great.
It's pretty boring stuff!
Back in the 1990s,
the X Games experimented with a TV friendly speed format.
ESPN realized that they need amazingly fast dynamic movement that's wild.
This is huge!
We're actually going up there and taking ten meter whippers.
Boom! That’s entertainment.
At the heart of speed climbing is the route itself,
which was designed twenty years ago
by the famous French route setter Jacky Godoffe.
Jacky is a true artiste of the craft
whose meticulous process, strives to create poetry in motion.
But the speed climb Jacky created
was anything but a masterpiece.
In the early 2000's,
comp organizers were bugging Jacky to create
a faster route for their event.
So he slapped one together in a single afternoon.
And all these holds were in a box in Arco,
and then I opened the box and I started to play.
Jacky's route was used in one comp,
and then another,
and yet another.
And as it became the go to speed route
nobody bothered to update it.
To this day the route contains several enduring quirks
that climbers have just come to accept.
Near the top, there's a tiny foothold that everyone uses with their hand.
And there's this big hold out to the left that nobody uses
and yet it remains, lonely and unheld.
Despite its imperfections,
demand for Jacky's speed route has surged ahead of the Olympics.
In this one facility in Grenoble, France,
every single speed hold is fabricated and tested.
Technicians confirm the holds' consistency, tag it with a unique code,
and track its location for a lifetime.
At the Perfect Descent headquarters in Denver,
speed autobelays are specially manufactured
to hold ten thousand pounds,
recoil extra fast,
and shipped to comps and training centers around the world.
Every single feature of every speed wall,
down to the distance between t-nut holes,
is standardized
so that everyone competes on the same playing field, no matter where they are.
To check out the leading edge of this sport,
I head to its epicenter, the Russian Federation,
where the fastest climbers on the planet have come
to torch records at the World Cup of Speed.
I've come to Moscow to watch the best speed climbers in the world.
Just seeing what climbing in the Olympics is going to look like.
Russia is the birthplace of competition speed climbing.
It all began in the Soviet era
when the State built athletes into fine-tuned, winning machines
in a wide array of sports.
As early as 1947,
Russian climbers began holding outdoor speed climbing competitions.
And today, speed is an even bigger part of Russian climbing.
Our country
loves it.
In the Russian system, kids are recruited from an early age.
My parents, they just took my hand and said something like
"Okay, here you are, that's your sport."
In Russia, the child they start with speed.
And if you are good in speed, you climb only speed.
And training comes with a heavy dose
of Spartan dedication.
Yes, we do a lot of training, a lot of practice.
If you're a speed climber, all your life you have to be
dedicated to the sport.
We climb outside during the winter.
In Siberia, -30 or -40.
This is our atmosphere and our culture.
We don't climb speed for fun.
It's like "Okay, bro!"
"Okay, peace!" In speed, no.
There is no joke. This is a serious thing.
At the Moscow World Cup, I discover several other national teams
that occupy this upper echelon in speed climbing
and take this sport very seriously.
The French are here, of course, featuring top-ranked Anouck Jaubert.
We need strong legs
and also strong arms,
everything to lead you to the top.
There's a big team here from Indonesia.
Aries Susanti Rahayu is a famous athlete in her home country
And one team that will not go unnoticed is the Iranians.
Zac, are you going to flex, too?
I don't think so.
Team Iran is led by the five foot five,
one hundred sixty eight pound, Reza Alipour.
Aka: the Persian Cheetah.
Reza is renowned for a training regimen
that puts Rocky Balboa to shame.
Reza is amazing, he's a physical freak.
It's a level of explosive power beyond anything I've ever seen.
Absolutely incredible!
He is the Usain Bolt of speed climbing!
Nothing can make Reza stop.
Yes, nothing.
In 2017, Reza set out to break the sport's longstanding record time.
Reza switched up his beta skipping the fourth hand hold
that up until then had always been used.
The innovation was widely adopted,
and now has a name: The Reza.
He's going with him, he's got half a lead, lightning fast!
He's going to come out champion, he's going to come out champion!
Look at the time! Look at the time! The world record!
Good afternoon, welcome to Moscow at speed world cup number one of 2018.
This world cup boasts the fastest field of climbers ever assembled.
The pure athleticism is amazing to watch,
and the excitement is contagious.
In the men's division, Reza consistently clocks times
under six seconds.
Reza absolutely flying through the middle
to take it in 5.7.
And he cruises to victory
much to the delight of his compatriots.
Meanwhile, Aries Susanti Rahayu posts one of the fastest times by a woman.
But Anouck Jaubert climbs even faster, matching the world record.
Jaubert, may crush the world record! Wow.
Watching these climbers from all corners of the globe
proudly represent their countries,
support each other,
and pursue their passion with an open throttle,
I can't believe it, amazing!
I'm really starting to get those warm and fuzzy Olympic feels.
And I'm not the only one.
As 2020 approaches, even the most skeptical pro climbers
have started warming to the speed event.
Adam Ondra, who described speed climbing as a nightmare,
is spending his days at this state of the art facility
trying to bring down his time.
This is the first time I'm going to train something
against my will.
But the attraction for the Olympics is there.
Getting good at speed is the biggest challenge of my climbing career so far.
So I might find a little bit of fun in that.
Also here is Claire Buhrfeind.
Remember? She won both the lead and speed comps in Reno.
Claire is a new breed of athlete who's competed in all three Olympic disciplines
since she was just a kid.
I've always loved competing
and speed climbing is like a very pure form of competition.
Climbing in the Olympics is an amazing opportunity,
and climbers from all over the world they're
trying to figure out what it means to train all three disciplines.
I think everybody should just embrace it and go for it.
As for me, I can see the inevitable direction this sport is going.
And while speed may be a far cry from the climbing I grew up with,
that's okay.
Instead of being a stick in the mud,
I'm determined to keep up with the times.
Admiral Byrd you've been to both the North Pole and the South Pole.
Is there any unexplored land left on this Earth?
Yes, there is.
Strangely enough there's left in the world, today,
an area as big as the United States, now by far the coldest spot in the world
that's never been seen by human beings.
It's quite astonishing that there should be an area as big as that unexplored.
So there's a lot of adventure left down at the bottom of the world.
Going to the ice! Yeah!
Why this interest in the bottom of the world?
I'll tell you one reason they're interested:
it's by far the most valuable place left in the world for expeditions.
I've been wondering how cold Antarctica's going to be for a long time.
It's properly cold.
But I don't think this is very cold for Antarctica.
Not just a little bit windy but, like, really, really, really windy.
My worst fear is that we spend two weeks here at the Russian base
and we aren't able to fly to our objective. That'd be really sad.
We'll see,
It's cold. My snot is freezing.
This is totally insane!
So we're here in Antarctica with Conrad Anker,
Jimmy Chin,
Cedar Wright,
Anna Pfaff,
Savannah Cummins,
and last and least Alex Honnold.
I mean, when I heard that this trip to Antarctica was happening
I was like "That sounds terrible."
I hate the cold and I hate the snow,
and Antarctica has a lot of both.
I don't know, I think pretty much right up until we landed on the glacier
I was still sort of 50/50 on whether or not I wanted to come to Antarctica.
Coming to the Novo Air Base felt a little bit like
an episode of Star Wars.
You have your base,
and you have your life pod, you go into your shipping container and you survive.
You have to have your space suit, you have to put on all this stuff just to survive.
Well, it's blowing pretty good.
It's like dead silent, there's no wind, it's actually kind of warm,
but there's the craziest ice crystals I have ever seen.
This place hasn't been photographed all that much
which is really cool for me to come here with open eyes.
Ice caving is fun, but we're going mountain climbing and we're not there.
The weather is still not flyable so here we are.
I really started to think that we were going to spend our entire trip in Novo
and I was going to fucking have you pull the snowmobile over my face or something.
Just back it over me repeatedly until I died.
Yeah, and then Conrad turned 55
in Antarctica
so we had a really nice surprise birthday party for him.
Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you!
I feel old, I'm 55.
I mean I look at Sav, she's 25, she was 4 years old when we were here.
I don't think she knew what a carabiner was.
I think it's fair to say that Conrad is a legend.
I mean I've always thought Conrad is the man,
and the fact that he is so totally passionate about climbing
and excited to push himself.
I mean, he had a frickin heart attack on a 6,000 meter peak last year.
It was November, 16, 2016, and I suffered a heart attack in Nepal.
The Grim Reaper sat down next to me,
was like, "Hey, how's it going? Let's have a conversation today."
I'm like, "Well fuck you, get out of here, I'm not ready yet. I'm not giving up."
Not a lot of people would've survive that.
I mean the guy is a beast, he's a survivor.
And now here he is in Antarctica a year later and you're like
"That's pretty impressive."
I try not to see myself as a 55-year-old guy.
I'm just in there in the mix with the other 30-year-olds.
Okay, alright let's go!
Oh my God it's happening! I can't believe it!
I didn't realize how many mountains there are in Antarctica,
there's peaks poking up everywhere.
It's insane dude, I mean it's like the most ridiculous landscape ever.
Base camp!
Here we are.
It was just dead silent, looking around being like "Woah!"
"We're the only ones out here right now."
There's just infinite whiteness as far as you can see
and I guess that goes for over 1,000 miles to the South Pole.
Bye!
Wait, I forgot my iPhone!
Oddly enough, I really enjoy the simplicity of being dropped off in a remote place
and having to be self-sufficient for two weeks.
Hey Alex, can you dig it?
I dig it.
I'm digging the latrine.
That's pretty exciting.
Queen Maud Land is one of the most spectacular mountain ranges on Earth.
Outrageous granite spires leaping up out of the ice.
For the next three weeks we're going to attack this range.
Yeah!
Sav and Anna are the young guns on this trip.
They're basically starting their partnership doing first ascents in Antarctica,
which is kind of insane.
This is my first year ever going on an expedition.
I'm totally out of my element.
What crampons are you bringing?
It's cool being out of your element.
I've been expedition climbing for about ten years,
I hope I can be somewhat of a mentor for her.
We're psyched on this ridge here.
Conrad and Jimmy are the old dads.
They are going to be going big wall style, toiling away on one gnarly objective.
Conrad showed up in base camp and within an hour
had sighted the route.
A new route on the north-west buttress of Ulvetanna.
It's definitely the biggest.
He was like "Alright, that's the one!"
and I took a look at it and I was like "yeah..."
Going big wall climbing!
I guess...
Honnold and I are team suffer-fest.
Yeah, we're going to sketch-up as many of these towers as we can.
Alex made the rack but I don't really like it.
I'm maybe going to sneak a couple pieces on.
Alright guys, love you, we'll see you.
I mean, Jesus, these are huge mountains!
God, what a surreal place.
It's is insane!
I'm starting to get sort of,
Stoked?
sort of inspired.
More than any other place I've ever been, I feel like we are not meant to be here.
If something were to go wrong, it would be pretty bad.
I'm a nurse but I can't do anything, you know,
if a Band-aid can't fix it you're kind of fucked out here.
Wait, am I allowed to say "fuck"? Okay.
This is going to be do I sink or do I swim?
And i'm really hoping that I swim.
It's so crumbly!
It's mentally challenging, because everything is so fragile and rotten and wind-blown.
This is sick!
It's just really hard to grasp the scale here.
How big do you think it is?
I'm going to bet that that's maybe 1,500 feet.
Looks like it could be really scary.
Honnold's down there, so far three pieces of protection
Yeah, so try not to fall suddenly but I got you.
The wind starts to go, then you get cold,
or if you go into the shade then you get really cold,
and the problem is there's basically this ticking clock
that your hands are going to turn into icy bricks,
and if you don't either get to the top and start rappelling
or just start rappelling you're going to freeze.
God, my hands are so cold!
Dream realized, first ascent of an incredible route.
Oh yeah! Dude we did it.
Okay. We're basically embarking on a Yosemite style wall.
Big wall climbing. It's actually kind of complex.
We were nervous going up but we like it, and we like to challenge ourselves.
Alright, Conrad. You racked?
Okay, ready to haul, Conrad!
Jimmy's coming up.
It's a big kind of complex mountain and a lot of the aid climbing feels like bomb diffusion
because at any moment, your cams could just explode out of the cracks.
Jimmy and I made it up the first two pitches, and for now we are fixing ropes
and returning to camp each day.
There's still a lot of mountain left.
Yeah, a lot.
Conrad!
There's a little close-knit community we're developing here over this expedition
that I always seek out.
Yeah, cheese-mac.
Oh, so good!
I think that all of us saw at least a little bit of God.
Coming on trips like this distills things down
to the essence and it recenters you in a certain way.
Just really awesome to be surrounded by these really motivated
and strong people.
Life is tea and coffee in the morning and a little bit of oatmeal and you go climbing.
That's a big cam there.
For a big crack!
This route had a lot of wide climbing
Nice job, Conrad!
Nothing but wide cracks and it's just miserable.
Off-width to chimney to off-width to chimney to off-width
and it's just brutal.
Oh, exciting moment: almost getting stuck in this chimney up there.
I got in there and im like, for a moment there in my mind I'm like,
"I'm going to be stuck in a chimney in Antarctica and I'm just going to freeze here."
Everyday Conrad and Jimmy would go out, jug up, do like a pitch or two,
come back to camp totally worked and thrashed,
I think Honnold and I were like "What are you guys doing up there?"
This is what Ulvetanna has done to me.
Oh, how about this one? Did that happen today?
Nurse, the cuff isn't warmed up.
Conrad had a heart attack last year.
I've been monitoring his blood pressure and his vital signs so I can just keep track of things.
He's a pillar of health.
For an old guy.
He's been on the road to recovery, I was concerned about it.
But I also trust Conrad's decisions.
Conrad's been doing first ascents for over 30 years. There's a reason he is still alive.
He knows how to push the risk right to the edge without going over the edge.
We're loving life here on Ulvetanna!
Rock!
This has got to be somebody's worst nightmare though.
I guess for Jimmy and I it's a good time to hang out together
and an anecdote to getting stuck in traffic.
Cedar and I climb in a very different way than Jimmy and Conrad.
I think that they're willing to push a little further and push closer to the edge
than Conrad and I are.
We just grew up climbing with a more modern speed style
with tactics that are normal to us.
But I think to Jimmy and Conrad those represent extreme climbing.
That pile is all going.
Hand it to me real quick.
Well no, you can just pack while I lead. That's kind of the point.
Fricken hate climbing in sunglasses, I can't see anything.
Yeah he's possibly the world's most impatient human.
I'm going to try my very best to take you to the top in one pitch.
That sounds awful.
Well if you ever started climbing it would only take half an hour!
Alright, climbing.
I think my favorite thing in climbing now
is going 1,000 feet at a time without having to stop and belay.
Yeah, Cedar!
Just climbed 600 feet in thirty minutes.
By the thousandth foot, with Honnold just blasting and placing like a piece every 75 feet,
you're starting to get a little winded.
But there's no stopping, Honnold is just going, and going, and going.
How was that?
That was so fun!
We smoked that thing!
Yeah!
Yeah brother!
Top of the camel!
Yeah, it was like cardio.
I told you I was taking us to the top.
To do a single-pitch, 2,000 foot route?
Yeah that's next gen, that's next level.
Alex and I are not skiers.
I'm a good skier, dude.
You're fucking not a good skier!
Jimmy is Alex a good skier?
He fricken rips!
For about thirty seconds until he starts to starfish down
and all his fucking clothes start going like "Phew!"
I'm so glad I didn't break my rib.
I fricken hit so hard, I was like "Ohhh."
Cedar and Alex have a hilarious relationship.
It's like the Odd Couple.
I'm pretty sure he is using that axe strictly for ornamentation. Just because it looks cool.
I'm using it for fear of dying!
They're both odd, and thus they both get each other.
How's it going up there, Cedar?
Oh, you know, living the dream!
You're looking like a real adventurer.
It's kind of fucked up.
I think you're looking great though.
Selfie video, this is what I do while I belay Cedar.
Admire the peaks, oh yeah, there's, um...
It's snowy, I don't like the snow. [Cedar]
I don't know how you say the name, it's Norwegian...
Oh! Oh God. [Cedar]
There's the infinite white abyss...
That was scary. [Cedar]
And there you go; selfie video tour complete.
Alright, watch me here! [Cedar]
And I can make sure i'm not too sunburnt,
My lips aren't too chapped.
Life is good here in Antarctica.
Okay it looks all steep and scary from here.
Yeah brother! Woo!
Yeah nice work!
Woohoo! Stoked!
So Cedar and I have basically been blitzing out, doing something as quickly as possible,
it's all slightly scary, it's all kind of cold, then we'd run back to camp.
Nice Honnold!
Oh yeah!
So fun!
That was pretty awesome, huh?
Dude, I think we're like pro skiers now.
A couple of the missions we've done we've come back into camp completely shell-shocked
and just been like "Need water, need calories, need hugs!"
Can I put my toes in your armpits?
No.
Ah, alright. Just checking.
That's a no?
Yea, that's a hard no.
Cedar and Alex have been absolutely crushing out here. It's really, really cool to see.
We are going to go climb that finger thing over there, and I'm going to try and shoot photos.
Just a little bit, little cold.
To me, this is one of the most outrageous mountain ranges that I've ever been in.
We're almost there!
It's so cold!
Nice job!
My mouth is so numb.
Just from being cold, I feel like I'm talking really slow.
We had a lot of fun being up there, and that's what I like doing in climbing.
I like just going out and having fun. I don't like feeling I'm going to die all the time.
We are going to go climb that thing right there. Holtanna.
These conditions, climbing bad rock in really, really cold weather,
I don't know what could happen.
I don't know, it's fucking cold. Maybe I need to climb with down pants on.
Got pretty scared up there because the rock is super chossy,
and it's so remote and so desolate, you want to be extra careful.
Alright now we just need to not die on the ice going down.
Look out there, it's sick!
Will you do me a huge favor?
Yeah, what do you need?
Would you grab a spoonful of cold water?
Yeah,
Or like a...
Is it too hot?
Yeah.
Nine out of my ten toes are really good, but the tenth toe is really bad.
It's kind of black with a slight hint of blue.
I think everybody thought my toe was going to fall off,
I was going to be the one in Antarctica to get frostbite or maybe I had it, I don't know.
You know when it's blowing and it's snowing on your tent pretty heavily
that you get to stay in your sleeping bag.
Our scene is better than anybody else's.
It looks ten times as good! Yeah. See, that looks way better.
Sav is making my pictures look a lot better.
I was kind of surprised Jimmy was asking me for editing advice.
You just let me know what I can do to help you out.
Let's see before and after.
Holy shit balls!
Savannah, she has an incredible eye and the potential to go really far with her work.
It's cool being here with Jimmy.
I have looked up to him since I became a photographer for a while now
and I'm just going into it with open eyes of what can I learn.
It's Spa Day!
Wow, I was starting to feel like I was basically a piece of fungus, you know what I mean?
It's so gross!
So after a couple of weeks, pushing the first ascent as high as they could,
Conrad and Jimmy had run out of ropes to fix.
This is your food,
Our food, fuel.
It was time for them to cut the cord and commit to the wall.
And they're going to be up there for four or five days.
Yeah it'll be an incredible view from up there,
hopefully, fingers crossed, we stay warm.
Ah, fuck. That was big.
Made the ridge. This spot is insane! Look at where we are.
I just love pushing out into the unknown.
Ah, yeah!
It's good to be out here!
Woo!
It's a long day on half of an energy bar and four sips of water.
You know who I'm glad I'm not right now is Jimmy and Conrad
because they're up there and it is snowing and not that good.
Good job, proud, man!
This is insane!
I think the big thing about Jimmy and Conrad is that they're both really tough.
And we got to go up there.
Looking gnarly today.
There'd be days I got chilled and I'd be cold and I'd be like "Jimmy, you're up."
Oh, rock, rock, rock!
You okay?
And then he'd get tired and I'd pick up the slack.
And that's what partnership is all about. Sharing the workload and then sharing the joy.
Hopefully the weather is going to break and we'll get some sun one day.
I think Jimmy and Conrad are probably pretty chilly,
but either way you kind of only have one direction to go
so it doesn’t really matter if it's snowing or not
you just go up.
Look at that tower still up there.
Woo!
Wooo!
Yeah, Raddish, how was that?
That's what twelve summits does to you.
It makes your hands look like a 95-year-old man's.
Hey Cedar, how much are you going to be carrying gear-wise and stuff?
What's that?
I think we both feel like we've just been rolling the dice, rolling the dice,
and it's how much more of this can we take?
There's only one summit left for us to have sent every major formation in this valley.
And of course it's the most burley looking one.
A guiding principle with my climbing is just to do the hard thing.
Even if I don't want to, I'll just do the thing that I feel like I'm supposed to do.
So we're going for it. Stetind, the last summit in Antarctica.
Alright, go ahead, Honnold.
Hey, Cedar?
What's up?
Can you simul up to that first ledge?
Okay!
The rope drag is really bad.
What?
Yeah, it's really cold and hard to protect.
Honnold's on a vision quest up there,
going really slow. It's really scary face climbing.
And I am so cold.
It's hard to put into words how friggen cold I am.
How's it look up there?
I don't know!
It's really rotten.
Just, I'm really scared. Give me a minute.
My fingers and toes are totally numb, Cedar was totally numb, we're both shaking,
and we were like "Oh no, we need to find a way to the top as fast as possible
because it's all coming apart."
Climbing with Honnold, I've seen him nervous,
but this the first time I've seen him scared.
Yeah, I'm like 20 feet or 30 feet away.
I'm just gripped out of my dome and cold.
I could hear the fear in Honnold's voice,
he was looking at 150 foot fall.
Complete horror show.
Cedar, I think this is going to work.
Try to gain on me a bit.
Ah, sun! Sun, sun sun!
This is so next level. This is crazy!
I'm off belay!
Goddamn.
It's maybe the most messed up route, maybe of my life.
Definitely one of the scariest leads of my life.
Your hands are so bloody!
You look like a disaster.
Yeah, they don't look good.
Oh, I thought I was going to have to take an emergency dump on lead.
I was just in full panic, like "Oh, God!"
You freaking kidding me?
How would you rate this campsite?
Oh, 10 out of 10. Best in my whole life.
You want to listen to a Neil Young album?
When you're young you're climbing fast, you're taking risks, it's all about you.
I can clip the shovel.
Yeah we'll clip it.
I'll clip it.
I think for Jimmy and I, our motivations have changed.
We really just wanted to enjoy the climb, just try to be in the moment.
Totally surreal.
We're old but we sure are slow!
Thank God it doesn't get dark.
Climbing is... it's the craziest thing in the world.
I couldn't live without it, I wake up in the morning and I want to go climbing.
But it's been, also, the most fucked up thing.
I've lost friends and it's been the most despondent, despairing low points of my life.
Conrad's up there, battling.
Oh, yeah.
People ask me "When are you going to quit?"
But I have no plans to quit. Why quit?
Yeah, Jimmy!
That's the South Pole out there.
Climbing is my life and I will continue to do it as long as I have friends to share it with.
How cold is it, Conrad?
-3.
And as long as my body allows me to do it.
So I can see Conrad and Jimmy, they are way the heck up there,
looks to me like they are going to make the summit.
Almost there, Conrad!
Yeah, buddy, there it is!
Yeah, Jimmy! Love you, man.
This is amazing.
What would you say was the most valuable factor on an expedition?
Is it morale, or physical courage?
Or is it your equipment?
Well I've always thought that loyalty was by far the most important thing.
You lived, dude! Congratulations, man!
Thank you!
Was it epic?
It was, I mean, it felt annoying because of the cold.
Oh my God! Tortellini! Are you kidding me?
The most extreme moment in the entire Antarctica expedition,
Savannah Cummins...
dropping in!
And she's off, ladies and gentlemen.
Hey, careful with the baby!
He's just a little baby!
I feel so fortunate to come here and not just climb but climb a lot.
In fact as a team I think we climbed pretty much everything.