King Lines is Awesome – Reel Rock Film Tour

Last night we attended the first showing of the Reel Rock Film Tour, and King Lines, the the new movie from Josh Lowell and Peter Mortimer. The Outdoor Retailer trade show is often used as short of a pre-screening for these films before their official premiers in the general public, and it’s always fun to get together with friends and watch the action on a big screen.

To start, there was a short intro segment from a new movie called Committed about climbing in England. I have to rant here a little, I just don’t understand the whole headpointing thing. It seems so selfishly pointless to risk so much on small routes at dinky cliffs that would receive little attention if they were anywhere else in the world. At one point this woman talks about how aesthetic this line is she is trying, and then they show it, 20 feet of broken cracks to a contrived traverse left and then up a cool looking arete for another 20 feet. Damn, they would love the choss in western colorado! They also showed this guy doing the hardest route in England, an E10, and yeah the gear sucks, but it’s not much more than a glorified boulder problem. The only thing I really took away from this segment is that climbers in Britain must be bored out of their minds and lack the funds to travel to places with better climbing.

On to King Lines. They showed a 50 minute segment from the main film, just like they did with last year’s tour, and this is the first time Josh Lowell and Peter Mortimer have hooked up on a project. I think they did a great job, the movie combines Josh’s top notch filming and editing skills with Peter’s ability to tell an interesting story. The premise behind the film is following Chris Sharma around the world as he seeks out the King Lines, the proudest routes up the most beautiful stretches of rock in the most incredible locations. There was inspiring footage of Chris pulling hard on some burly routes: a new line at Ceuse, the arch in Mallorca, his super project at Clark Mountain, Nevada, which looked so dumbfoundingly sick I can’t even comprehend it. But what I really liked was how you also got a sense of who Chris is as a person. Any asshole can climb hard, and many do (ever been to Rifle?); I want to know what a climber is like as a person, how they view the world, how are they giving back, etc. I thought you got a really good sense who Chris is in this film, the segment with him and his dad was very cool.

I’m looking forward to seeing the whole film which comes out on DVD in October. Until then, be sure to check out the Reel Rock Film Tour at a showing near you, it kicks off on September 5th.