The latter performs some outrageous rope jumps and beautiful free solos, plus one in which he launches a totally reckless all-points-off dyno 400 feet up a wall. These early works featured the day’s top brass, including Ron Kauk, Boone Speed, John Bachar, and, perhaps most memorably, Dan Osman. But the first four, all released in the nineties, best represent the Masters of Stone brand of hardcore, heavy-metal-fueled extreme-sports action. Eric Perlman (and also, originally, Mike Hatchett) directed a total of six Masters of Stone films over roughly two decades, beginning in 1991. The Masters of Stone videos were the first serialized climbing films. Sharma slaps his way up dozens of first ascents of now iconic problems, demonstrating in the process why bouldering would be here to stay. Rampage is the story of the then 18-year-old Chris Sharma, now considered one of the best rock climbers in history, and his charismatic, strong friend Obe Carrion, taking a road trip to some classic blocks around the West. Go to any bouldering area in California today, where hordes of pad-carrying, tune-bumping young guns session five-star sickness, and it’s nearly impossible to imagine a time when most climbers didn’t take bouldering seriously, deriding it as “practice climbing.” Films like Rampage, though, helped usher in the bouldering revolution, opening up the sport to a wider and more youthful demographic. If you’re going to watch one thing about Everest, make it this. The resulting film is richly textured, centering on a group of people who too often have been left out of the spotlight on the world’s tallest mountain. That year, 16 Sherpas died in an avalanche while working to fix ropes and ladders across the dangerous Khumbu Icefall. Following the 2013 “Everest Brawl” that broke out after an unfortunate confrontation between a Sherpa rope-fixing team and three European hotshots, including the late Ueli Steck, Sherpa director Jennifer Peedom went to the peak in 2014 with the idea of doing a documentary on the Indigenous porters. But it is the other Everest film released that year, Sherpa, that delivers a better depiction of the tensions and dangers on the mountain today. Everest, featuring Jake Gyllenhaal, Josh Brolin, and Keira Knightley, is a dramatization of the infamous 1996 tragedy documented in Jon Krakauer’s iconic book Into Thin Air. Mount Everest was the stage for two major films released in 2015. Laura Tiefenthaler Solos the Eiger’s North Face in a Day The political subplots involving the Nazi regime’s ambitions around the first ascent of the Eiger’s “Murder Wall” slow the film down some, but hang in there-with all due respect to Herr Kurz-for some thrilling climbing drama. This subtitled German-language film veers from some of the historical facts but hews closely to the most haunting details from the tragedy, including a depiction of poor, doomed Kurz dangling for an eternity with thousands of feet of air beneath him, yet too far away from the mountainside to get himself back onto firm ground. North Face ( Nordwand, as it’s titled in German) dramatizes one of these horrific failures: the 1936 disaster in which Andreas Hinterstoisser, Toni Kurz, Willy Angerer, and Edi Rainer all perished. It gained its fearsome reputation after various attempts resulted in climbers dying in horrible and gruesome ways. The Best Climbing Movies Streaming Online Right NowĬlimbing the North Face of the Eiger in the Swiss Alps was one of the first “last great problems” of mountaineering. Watch them, quote them, be inspired by them, and, as Anderl Meier of The Eiger Sanction says, together “we shall continue with style.” Here are the 20 best climbing films ever. They are mandatory viewing for anyone who calls themselves a climber. Whether the below films are all “great” by today’s standards is beside the point-though great they all are in their own ways. The trajectory of the climbing-film canon tracks right alongside the progression of the sport itself-from the speed-metal-fueled flicks of the early nineties, to Hollywood’s extravagant mountaineering hyperboles of the 2000s, to the recent gripping vérité films showing the world’s best athletes laying their actual lives on the line. Sure enough, a bunch of climbers, who once were only recognized at dusty Camp 4 picnic tables in Yosemite Valley, strutted up onto that rarified stage. Not so long ago, the headline “Dirtbag Rock Climbers Walk Down the Red Carpet to Accept Their Academy Award” would have seemed like an oxymoron-a violation of the very laws of nature.īut in 2019 it happened: light stopped being the fastest thing in the universe, up became down, and a little rock-climbing film called Free Solo won the Best Documentary Oscar. This article first appeared on OutsideOnline. Heading out the door? Read this article on the new Outside+ app available now on iOS devices for members!
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