Another offering from the man who doesn't seem to believe in having limits.
I really wanted to see this film at the Kendal Festival last November but it was unfortunately shown in one of the very small venues and with peoples' heads and a roof column obstructing my view of the screen I decided to leave it until I could fully enjoy it. The film charts Dave Mcleod's attempt to climb the Longhope Route on a remote 350metre sea cliff on the Island of Hoy in the Orkneys. The route was originally climbed with some aid over 7 days in 1970 and Dave attempts to be the first person to free it in it's entirety. Due to the difficulty of one particular pitch of the climb a huge amount of time and effort was required in battling the weather, cleaning the rock and trying the moves hundreds of metres above the sea, at one point abseiling off what appears to be a disconcertingly small pile of rocks.
Just like I found with The Pinnacle this film gives as much weight to the history behind the climb as it does to the climb itself, painting the backdrop to Dave's ascent with poetic diary readings, a proper Scottish soundtrack and interviews with former ascensionists, bringing a more personal side to the route rather than focusing purely on the difficulty of the climbing. I like this balance, it brings insight and a more human side to what would otherwise be just an impressive big chunk of rock. Ed Drummond's return to St Johns Head to be interviewed for the film is particularly poignant.If I have one criticism it is that I would have liked more footage of the initial pitches although there is some historical footage and photographs, instead of the focus of Dave's ascent being on the hardest, new part of the climb and the part which warrants the DVD tagline of 'the hardest sea cliff climb in the world'. This is palm sweating, edge of the seat stuff though. Dave is not content with just climbing the thing however, he wants do it in good style, climbing every pitch without falls in a single day in a tremendous test of stamina and endurance. This style of fast ascent combined with the difficulty of filming in the location and the time-scale of the project probably explains why it wasn't possible to film the whole ascent in detail.
The highlight of the bonus features is the Indian Face. I don't think I'd seen Dave on anything slabby before this and he looked like a totally different climber. Gripping!
Overall an interesting film, a nice contrast to the numerous recent bouldering offerings
NEclimber Rating 7 / 10
Copies of the DVD are available from Dave Macleods' Website
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