The Alpinist climbing doc (Netflix)

Amazing footage and documentary..great insight of the type of individual that seeks this endeavor and I’ve been telling all my friends to watch it

Dude it's a little early in the thread for spoilers. Maybe save it for later?

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Maybe go suck your dad’s dick.

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Maybe go suck your dad’s dick.

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That escalated quickly......the anger.

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I watched both. Preferred Alpinist.

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Other than climbing, i felt like these were two totally different things.

My jaw was open the entire time with 14 peaks. To me, that was insane.

With the alpinist, i just kept thinking “this guy is an idiot, he’s going to fall”.

Both were impressive, but the Canadian wonder was taking so many risks, It had me wondering if there was something wrong with his biology.

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the Canadian wonder was taking so many risks, It had me wondering if there was something wrong with his biology.

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I have very little doubt that he was wired differently than 99% of other people, even people in his own climbing community. But I wouldn't say that there was "something wrong" with him. He knew the risks he was taking. He was very calculated in doing so. He could have taken 80% less risks and still died in an avalanche. Those guys could die in a freak accident every time they go out there.

He knew that, and he accepted that fact. It was a risk he was willing to take to do something he loved.

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14 Peaks

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Very underwhelming. Would not recommend it. Nothing like Alpinist and Free Solo.

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I had never heard or read anything about this guy, and I knew very little about the climbing community. He was amazing at what he did.

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While not nearly as much of the climbing community as I was 20 years ago I still keep up with it and I barely knew who he was. Hell, Alex Honnold couldn't even pronounce his last name correctly and Alex is an insider.

Leclerc was a modern-day dirtbag (not a pejorative in the climbing community). He climbed with an extraordinarily pure ethic. His ethics that dictated a solo is only a solo if he is truly alone on the mountain without even an electronic lifeline is as pure as it gets.

What he did and how he did it makes Honnold's free solo of Freerider on El Cap look like child's play and he did those types of climbs over and over and over.

I can't emphasize enough how god-level Leclerc's climbing was and how next level it was to Honnold. Honnold's free solo of Freerider was a "redpoint". He had worked out every single move of the entire climb and practiced them over and over. Leclerc's free solo's were often "onsight" meaning he had never climbed the route before and had basically no information (beta) about them. I also can't emphasize how precarious mixed climbing is even roped. Climbing the rock sections with crampons on is a major disadvantage. Ice has its own group of difficulties like the fact that it is filled with hidden structural anomalies that can cause it to shear off at any time.

I get how non-climbers can see Leclerc as nuts, hell I think he was nuts. Some people are only alive when they are cheating death but I am not sure they are initially wired differently than anyone else. The really bold climbers usually started at a young age and worked through the fear of heights and develop the skills to be able to calculate risk on a different level. Lots of people do this in their everyday jobs, ever watch roofers on a 12/12 pitch roof moving around like they are on flat ground?

At the end of the day, there are old climbers, bold climbers very few old bold climbers. Leclerc was an accomplished climber who was not an attention whore and died in the relative equivalent to the average person crossing the street downtown.

I thought the movie was good and better than I expected given Leclerc's reputation of doing things quietly under the radar. There was lots of heart-palpitating footage. The parts that gripped me most were when he would hang one of his ice axes on his shoulder. Yeah, it ain't going anywhere but one of my biggest fears climbing is the loss of a critical piece of equipment.

Great post
How does one manage fear of death the way this guy did? And to get taken out by bad luck more than anything else, not by a mistake or pushing too hard….. I get that more time in such an environment lends to increased risk of avalanche but dying on a descent of a roped partnered climb after the way that dude pushed it is cruel irony

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Really sucks the way he went out by avalanche

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This seems to be a common way for alpine adventurers to go out. Avalanches are predictable under certain conditions, but then they happen even when conditions look good.

I just saw a documentary in the theater called Torn, about famous climber Alex Lowe, who died in 1999 in a random avalanche while approaching a climb. Another guy died as well, but Conrad Anker survived the avalanche. Lowe had a wife and three kids (the oldest was 10 at the time). Torn is not a climbing documentary. The backdrop of the documentary is that Lowe and the other guy's bodies were found recently, so his family went to Tibet to recover the bodies. But the story is really about how Conrad Anker became part of the family in the wake of Lowe's death. It's not exactly a soap opera, but there are some awkward moments because Lowe's oldest son is the director of the documentary and he's trying to understand the whole story (remember he was only 10 when it happened).

I just learned that Torn will be on Disney Plus on February 4.

Torn trailer