Anodyne
Friday, November 19, 2004
 

To the Ridge with SGB last night, to catch the winners of the Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival, and, in particular, Ivan Heck's and Angela Hughes' In The Shadow of the Chief, a documentary about Jim Baldwin's and Ed Cooper's 1961 seige of the Grand Wall. Lots of black and white CBC footage of the intrepid pair, clearly out of their social depth with cars piling up below them on the highway and the whole town of Squamish keeping tabs via telescopes and long-distance lenses. Some astonishing present-day footage, too; Hamish Fraser free-soloing the Split Pillar (a thousand feet of air below, the tops of the alders above the highest boulder field swaying in the wind, like warm green waves), or two climbers, youngish guides whose names I didn't catch, making a modern ascent of the present-day route. Video lets you get very close to your subject, in a way that film's bulky apparatus seldom seems to, with the surprising result that things that I remember from my own time climbing -- on admittedly much easier routes -- suddenly reappear blown up and magnified, on screen. The blood from the cuts on your hands which chalk helps staunch but never stops entirely. The sewing machine leg that starts trembling uncontrollably and won't quit. The hand that comes loose, and the dizzying sensation of starting to peel from the face, just in time to holler, "Falling..." Posted by Hello

- posted by cjb @ 9:17 AM


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