Change: A Review of the new film from Petr Pavlicek

For various reasons I have been uninterested in writing recently, in part at least because I have been spending every spare moment either bouldering or playing guitar. And besides that what is there to write about? Climbing is in deep stasis right now and shaving a few seconds off an El Cap speed record or creating a Kickstarter video for your latest media project is not going to change anything very much. We are all in self-promotion mode these days, everyone a brand ambassador for something or another, even if it's only ourselves.

The state of climbing media feels more closely brand-driven than ever as companies have embraced the need to "tell their story" to viewers who are busy telling their own stories via social media in the hopes that a brand will be interested in picking it up to make them a brand ambassador/athlete so they can tell their stories with a cool #hashtag attached. This has made for a remarkably homogenous series of productions featuring agreeable photogenic people getting to the top of things with the assistance of slider shots, focus pulls and plenty of time lapse. At some point I just began to swear off watching anything involving climbing, at least until I saw this:



I Heart Estes from scientia on Vimeo.

Then I got a FB message from the maker of 2012's sprawling and uneven Wizard's Apprentice and saw a glimpse of light on the horizon that promised to cut through the torpor. His long postponed film about Adam Ondra's 9b+ first ascent in Norway from 2012 was finally ready. Two hours in length and described on the author's website as unconventional, Change, named after the climb it chronicles, seemed like a film that I needed to see.

It opens up with a disclaimer of sorts, namely that the filmmaker was tired of making films, that he wanted to get away from the crowds and media frenzy that seems to constantly surround Adam Ondra in the competition scene and the currently hot crags in Spain. Only when Ondra himself enters the narration in earnest do we find Pavlicek willing once more to document his next big project, far from the scene of Llieda or Oliana. Instead it's found in the colossal cave known by climbers as Flatanger, north of Trondheim in Norway.

Indeed one of the most remarkable things about this film is the deep involvement of Adam in its making. He personally narrates roughly 2/3 or more of it and does a fantastic job with a sincere and straightforward style that stands in marked contrast to his trademark screams on the actual routes. While the film focuses almost entirely on him, there is not a trace of ego or boasting in his voice or delivery.

The narrative arc of the film follows Adam from his decision to bail on going to university in 2012 and instead find a personal challenge on a route of his own, having by this time climbed almost every other high-end sport climb in the rest of Europe. Petr wants to take him north to Norway to what is in a sense the last frontier in European climbing and so it begins. Over the next few months we visit a number of crags and boulders in Sweden and Norway, ultimately focusing on Flatanger and the struggle to link up the monster pitch that will be called Change. We know that Adam will succeed; what we find out is how he changes along the way.

Especially refreshing is the normality with which he climbs routes and boulders, most of them at a stratospheric level of difficulty. With just a few friends and a very small camera crew (i.e. Petr and his friend Barbara), Ondra appears to be simply going climbing, not as part of an entourage. The sense of solitude and remoteness is enhanced by the lack of crowds and a scene. A short sequence of a bouldering comp underscores the point of how contrived and even aggravating such events can be. It's with a real sense of relief that we get back to the sublime glaciated landscapes of northern Norway

For those viewers used to a more aggressively plotted and edited mode of film making, the leisurely pace of Change may prove an obstacle. Petr and Adam have more than just a story of a climb to tell. This film is about retreat and renewal in the heart of a remote environment that one hopes will never attract the media circus which plagues more accessible locales. As the days and attempts on the project mount up, the film shifts its focus subtly but inevitably towards this environment and its extraordinary personality and presence, shaped by primal forces of ice and fire. It's a powerful and brooding granite landscape where every climb and feature is geometrically sculpted to some degree and then shaped by water and time.

In the end, this sense of place is what won me over the most. Change is a film that inspires the viewer to find meaning in place, not merely to chase a big number but to realize one's potential deep in a natural world that is full of so many more possibilities than we can even imagine. It certainly spoke to my own interests as a climber, writer, and artist in a way that most media out there does not. Change is far and away the best climbing film I have seen in a very long time.

Movie website with lots of extras including photos and video
http://www.change-movie.com

Download link:
http://store.payloadz.com/details/2157440-crafting-cross-stitch-change-adam-ondra-movie-2.html

A look into the process of making the film


Adam Ondra - Change - Backstage movie from BERNARTWOOD on Vimeo.


Here are some stills I picked from the film.

Adam Ondra on an 8B+/8C in Metre

The massive cave at Flatanger

Adam on his 9a+ Thor's Hammer

Adam on the infamous low crux on Change 9b+

Mist over the mountains of Norway

One of dozens of remarkable scenic shots

The extraordinary glaciated coast of Norway

Mountains and water!

25 reasons I am a lousy climbing writer

I have been thinking about why my writing career is languishing and besides the usual reasons like actually having to earn a living or not having enough cash to head to the Trango Towers or even Alaska, I realized what the real problem is or more precisely what they are. Basically I do not have the right profile. So in the spirit of self-improvement and working on my weaknesses, here is a shortlist of reasons I am a lousy climbing writer. There are probably more but thanks to my daughter's pestering, I can't concentrate long enough to come up with more.

1. I have never been to Alaska.

2. I have never met Alex Honnold.

3. I have never lived in a van.

3. I scare easily.

4. I do not have any crazy hookup stories from the Valley or Hueco or anywhere else.

5. I never went soloing because of a bad breakup.

6. I can’t use “stoke” or “stoked” in a sentence with a straight face.

7. I have not climbed El Cap.

8. If I drink more than two beers I will pass out.

9. I have never flown in a helicopter or small plane.

10. I have never slept on a glacier.

11. I have never been to the Himalaya. I think I can find (some of) them on a map.

12. I have never broken a crampon 1000 feet up a north face of something.

13. I have never eaten anyone’s leftovers in Yosemite Valley.

14. I have basically forgotten how to climb cracks.

15. I cannot remember what a summit looks like.

16. I do not beard well.

17. I have never ridden on a “third-world” bus along with livestock and colorfully dressed natives.

18. I do not own glacier glasses, snow pickets or a Jetboil.

19. I cannot set up a portaledge.

20. I have never ferried loads of any kind.

21. I have never beheld a glorious dawn from a precarious ledge on the side of a remote mountain.

22. I have never been published in Outside magazine, Men’s Fitness, National Geographic or the New York Times.

23. My frequent flyer miles stand at approximately zero.

24. I have never ridden out an avalanche or been pinned down by a storm (longer than half an hour).

25. I have never met Yvon Chouinard.

Great Everest Articles

Grayson Schaffer at Outside Magazine has just published this very good piece on the 2014 Everest season which I highly recommend you all read.

http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/climbing/mountaineering/Sherpas-Death-business-Everest-Darkest-Year.html

Grayson Schaffer's awesome photo of lights heading up the Khumbu Icefall at dawn hopefully before the ice starts to move

For anyone looking for a survey of the many factors that went into the disastrous 2014 season, this is a great place to start. I also recommend "Everest Interrupted" by Tashi Sherpa in the latest Alpinist (#47) along with some wonderful portraits of Charlie Porter, one of the most important and least-heralded American climbers of the last century.

Speaking of high altitude siege tactics, I am mostly up to this kind of climbing. Here's a photo I took of Fort Collins local Blake Rutherford on Wildcat, on the other side of the boulder from Jade, which was just repeated by Sam Davis, the talented photographer.

 Alex Puccio's back-to-back ascents of Top Notch and Nuthin but Sunshine were the other big news of the past week. Can't wait to get back up there myself after a week of training on the flatlands. Hoping to one-hang Automator after figuring out the end of it last week. 

Maybe Blogs are Dying After All? This Isn't Just Clickbait! :)

There are times when I begin to wonder if Andrew Bisharat was right after all. OK so that link doesn't work. Here's my response to it if you are interested. And maybe I was too harsh on it and got blocked by him, like everywhere. Which I may well have deserved but whatever. Water under the bridge, as they say.

Anyway, maybe climbing blogs are getting old. Having just turned 50 myself, it's logical enough to see a connection between one's one encroaching mortality and a decreasing lack of enthusiasm for writing about the latest trend/event/marketing campaign in the world of climbing. And said lack of enthusiasm has been abundantly manifest in my not updating this blog in close to two months. And something important surely has happened in the world of climbing (besides Everest getting shut down). OK so nothing really important has happened but maybe I just forgot about it. Middle age has its blessings.

But seriously, what has happened in the last two years to climbing blogs is not inspiring much confidence in their future existence as a corrective to what is being published out there in the climbing MSM. I may be oblivious but I have not read a good polemic on the internetz in a long time (except maybe Stevie Haston's) and even Jamie Emerson is apparently off doing something a lot more interesting than updating B3Bouldering these days. In fact in an ironic twist that only Hegel could appreciate. Bisharat's blog is by far the most productive, excepting the ever-industrious Climbing Narc. (OK he's linked on my blog but I might as well be consistent.) AB even gets real comments which makes me extremely jealous as all mine are spambot generated ones like "very inform blog. much informing and links. OK."

For now I will be thinking about what to do next and spending as much time here while I do. That's all for now. And if you actually want to know what I am up to, please follow me on Instagram.

The Everest Show and the Post-Mountaineering Era

Anyone following the climbing scene (which is just about everyone these days including NPR and the New York Times) has been following the disastrous inauguration of the 2014 Everest season with the tragic deaths of 16 Sherpas in the Khumbu icefall. This catastrophe, which is one of the single highest death tolls ever in modern mountaineering history, finally has exposed the contradictions inherent in the Everest system in a way that nobody can now ignore. There are conflicting reports that the mountain is "closed" though the financial implications of that for the country as a whole, as well as the Sherpa community are significant. And there are the grieving families of the victims, for whom one's heart goes out to.

But it was all coming to this point, inevitably. The photos last year of the hundreds of climbers on the Western Cwm, the traffic jams on the Hillary Step, the incessant coverage of Everest the annual event and of course the occasional casualty, no more to be noted than a freeway car accident. In my view, there is no question that Everest is a spectacle now, feeding on its own image, becoming a bigger version of itself, if that is even possible. It is not just the tallest mountain on earth, it's the biggest show on earth, a Barnum and Bailey three-ring circus with ringmasters, roustabouts and tents galore.

Adventure as far as the eye can see. Photo from the Times of London

Isn't there some way to kill off the Everest mystique once and for all? The environmental degradation, the commercialized media events (the first wingsuit flight was to be televised this year), the frozen corpses, and of course the ceaseless tide of updates on weather, conditions, and ascents and behind it all money, money, money. At this point, I can think of no reason why anyone would want to climb Everest under the present set of conditions. It is devoid of all significance, the process being so methodical and choreographed that it resembles more closely the flotillas of gondolas one sees in that classic ersatz sea-level tourism locale, Venice.

It has been fascinating to see the debate about whether it's right to go on climbing this season, that somehow the deaths of sixteen young men crushed by falling ice has this time truly gone too far. But Everest has long been going too far, pushing it in exactly this fashion while watching the trash and bodies pile up. And for what exactly? Because it's there? The Sherpa deaths are forcing us to look harder and closer at that question. If we are climbing for money, why are we climbing at all? If people are dying en masse so that we can claim we climbed something, why even bother?

The question is pressing harder and harder in the world of climbing overall. What is the merit in climbing anything when the drift is constantly toward commercialization and professionalization? When the media clichés fall thicker and faster, it becomes clear that what is happening now is empty ritual, and more than ever, the closer the camera is, the farther away the truth becomes. The reality show of modern climbing has run into real reality and we are alarmed that this could ever have happened. The blogs, the news reports, the press conferences, the articles; all of them try to sidestep the question, "Why are we doing this?"


Sir Edmund Hillary, upon returning to Base Camp, uttered the classic quote, "Well George, we knocked the bastard off." His later line, "It's all bullshit on Everest these days" seems to close perfectly the arc of modern mountaineering from the nineteenth century to the present. All we are doing is shoveling it into ever more ornate piles. Let's stop.

(for an amusing and naive view from 2003, read "The message is this – stop calling Everest a circus, and stop calling it bullshit.")

Notes from A GenX Climber

I am not necessarily a fan of defining generational eras, not least because it always seems to boil down to what cool bands you listened to in your 20s. And whining about your fate in the clutches of a less-than-providential historical trajectory seems so, well, negative in the age of social media's Upworthy-esque positivity and uplift. Given the contemporary emphasis on personal brand-building and the "community," it's hard to imagine that there was once a time when many top climbers apparently had an attitude problem best summarized by the 1991 profile of American star Jim Karn titled " The Positive Aspects of Negative Thinking."

I think this stereotype of so-called Generation X has persisted into the present era with remarkable durability. The lycra tights, the wobblers, the dieting, the finicky obsession with technical mastery are all seen as hallmarks of a best forgotten age. Almost without exception the climbers from that era have disappeared from the common knowledge and history of the sport. I think this ought to be changed.

The period of 1985 to 1995 was plagued by dysfunction on a lot of levels but I think its bad reputation is wildly overstated. Among other things this period marked the last time that Americans male or female were serious contenders on the world competition stage. It was also one of the most creative periods in American climbing as the focus shifted from the well-known areas of the 60s and 70s such as Yosemite and Eldorado Canyon to radically different locales such as Smith Rock, American Fork, and Rifle. That era is almost 30 years old yet I don't sense a lot of enthusiasm for remembering it. No photocopied articles or extended reminiscences on Supertopo or coffee-table books  sold through Patagonia books. At least so far.

I think it is increasingly an article of belief that modern sport climbing and bouldering suddenly emerged fully formed in the person of Chris Sharma, a genial and phenomenally talented wunderkind who appeared to refute the intensity and obsessive approach of earlier leaders in the sport. Well maybe. But what is forgotten is the degree to which the leaders of new trends in climbing in the 80s were quite literally attacked by the old guard. Comments by the likes of John Bachar or Henry Barber that hard sport climbing was the equivalent of golf or that the likes of Fred Nicole were merely number-chasing Euros were matched by the destructive and hypocritical bolting wars (of which I was part of). In other words, there was next to no genuine support or positive recognition from the older guard that the world of climbing was changing. Karn lived in Europe in a cheap tent on terrible food while competing in the World Cup. Meaningful sponsorship was unheard of. Too many top-level climbers from the mid-80s to the mid-90s were considered the bastard stepchildren of the sport. We even had the famous "You Suck!" article by Dave Pegg in 1996. There was a reason we sucked and it wasn't just about anorexia and bad attitudes. Who really wanted us to get as good as the Europeans? Answer: not too many people, especially of the previous generation.

This changed with the arrival of the cute and youthful stars who emerged in the mid 1990s such as Sharma, Tommy Caldwell, Beth Rodden and Tori Allen. Often with substantial parental support or at least approval, they swiftly eclipsed their predecessors, breezing past the obstacles once posed by the old guard of the past. Climbing became a youth sport, not the pursuit of grumpy old men obsessed with ethical purity. Suddenly nobody cared about bolting on rappel. "Number-chasing" was seen as a media-savvy move for climber and manufacturer. Selling-out became a mark of authenticity and commitment to the sport, not a cause for ostracism.

For climbers who came of age in the GenX era, there is a certain satisfaction in seeing the old verities and personalities that dismissed their dreams now fading from view, or at least issued restraining orders, as in the case of Ken Nichols. Sport and gym climbing, and of course competitions are now the standard, not the exception. Bouldering is not just "for practice" anymore. Climbers from the US are still mostly irrelevant in the international scene, with only a few exceptions. And oddly, outside a very very elite crew, the standards set by the climbers of 20 years ago have proven quite hard to get past.

The standard take on Generation X is that they were the most neglected children in American history, overshadowed by the sheer numbers and cultural momentum of the Baby Boomer and superceded by the successive generations,Generation Y and the Millenials. I think this has been echoed in the climbing world to a large extent and those of us who emerged as young adults in the later 1980s are more or less resigned to it. Perhaps, however, a few more people will begin to look around and recognize the degree to which the shape of the sport of climbing is defined by the ideas and ultimately the attitudes of a now obscure group of climbers.