High on El Cap a few years ago, I found myself 30 feet runout with ledge-fall potential breathing up my neck. A small fissure too small for any micro cam yet too parallel for any stopper split open the granite in front of my face. Placements like this made me wish I’d brought a set of slider nuts, though the need I had for that specialized protection is a rare moment in my life as a climber.
I’d just completed the hardest climb of my life, one of the longest in the history of the range. Laid out at our feet, the spires and seracs emerged in stark shapes of light and dark. I sat down, and the view below disappeared. Glaciers, ridges, cracks and even summits– none of them were what I traveled to Patagonia to find. I came here to begin to lead my life intentionally, not to drift anymore, but to choose my own path. Now, I was starting to see the way. — Cheyne Lemp, Alpinist 39
When asked about the creation of this film Cheyne told Alpinist, “I wanted to do the video because I was getting sick of doing the whole, ‘Here’s some climbing I went to do in Patagonia, or whatever.’ This video is a breath of fresh air to me. It’s something different that I’ve never done before, and I didn’t have very much time so I edited the video on the fly and I was going with what I felt looked good. My first instinct of which clip should go where just flowed together and it just ended up working out.”
