Friday glee has slaaaaaabs

[rydra_wong]

The Friday post of glee is where you get to tell us about your climbing-related happiness this week.

It can be a new achievement or adventure, or just that you climbed and had fun; it can be that your favourite climbing wall is expanding or that you bought new rock shoes or that you found a cool ice-climbing vid on YouTube. No glee is too small -- or too big. Members are encouraged to cheer each other on and share the squee.

N.B. Please feel free to post your glee on any day of the week; the Friday glee is just to get the ball rolling.

To enhance this week's glee: Caff goes to La Pedriza.

And since this is the first post of glee of the New Year: anyone got any goals for the year they'd like to share? Climbing-related resolutions?

Comments

[rydra_wong]

Yeah, it absolutely lives up to the hype. Amazing stuff, both in terms of the cinematography for all the climbing but also the verite stuff on Honnold and his relationships with the people around him (including the film crew, because co-director Jimmy Chin and most of the climbing camerapeople are all friends of his, and they're visibly wrestling with the ethics of filming soloing and how the stress is affecting them emotionallly).

I'd definitely recommend catching it in the cinema if you can!

[sara]

Dittoing this. I saw all of two movies last year and this was definitely the better one.

[rydra_wong]

Cool piece on the other co-director, E. Chai Vasarhelyi, and her thoughts on the making of the film:

https://rockandice.com/features/chai-vasarhelyi-on-the-making-of-free-solo-with-alex-honnold/

[sara]

Oh, I liked that, thanks! That was one of the parts of the film that I liked best, as a person who spends a lot of time taking various kinds of risks in the outdoors, was how it really focused in on that piece. It's sort of a climbing film but I think a lot more of a film about people who love being outside and what that does to your head, both healthy and unhealthy.

[rydra_wong]

Also I loved this, which was recorded a month or two after the solo, and has fascinating geeking out about the intricacies of the route and fascinating stuff about the filming process (and is generally delightful and hilarious):

https://enormocast.com/2017/07/episode-133-alex-honnold-kind-of-a-big-deal/

[rydra_wong]

I'm definitely going to watch Meru now -- mountaineering per se is not that interesting to me, but I was really impressed by the directing on Free Solo.