Yesterday I wrote about a book. So why not a movie today?
“King Lines: Chris Sharma’s Search for the Planet’s Greatest Climbs” ($30, www.kinglinesmovie.com or www.reelrocktour.com) features the world’s best climber working on some of the world’s hardest climbs, including a long and drawn-out drama with an amazing free-standing arch above the Mediterranean Sea.
Sharma goes rope-less for the climb, ascending free and unencumbered but for shoes and a chalk bag. The route he attempts to climb, “Es Pontas,” is among the most difficult ever climbed.
In Sharma’s words, what makes this climb so difficult “is that you’re upside down, you’re hanging on your arms and on your fingertips the whole time,” he said. “On top of that the wall is absolutely blank for seven feet. You have to actually just leap through the air and stick another hold.”
That critical hold is just the size of three of Sharma’s fingers, and that explosive upward leap, on the underbelly of a steep overhang, is, Sharma said, “a pure, all-four-points, cut-loose dyno.”
In the film, he leaps and tries that one move over and over, plummeting to the water stories below at each miss.
Does he make? I’ll not spoil it for you. . .
Other film highlights include Sharma in the remote jungle plateaus of Venezuela; France’s Gorge du Verdon; sea cliffs of Kalymnos in Greece; and Nevada, where Sharma works on a new route (with a rope this time) some think might be the world’s toughest line ever climbed.
Along with the movie, there’s a film tour, the Reel Rock Film Tour, which wraps up this month. (See here for the calendar: https://www.reelrocktour.com/calendar/index.html)
For the trailer, see here: https://senderfilms.com/KLclip.html
For more info on the film, see www.kinglinesmovie.com.
