🌄🍿 The Dawn Wall

In January 2015 Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson spend nineteen days living on the blankest face of El Capitan, trying to free climb a line most people thought had no holds on it. The film goes back through Caldwell's life to explain why this wall and why him. Then one of them gets stuck on a single pitch, and the question changes.

Group viewing for 📂 First outdoor climbing weekend at Sarn Ridge, a week before we go. Eight of us, one projector, a wall that was not quite white. I had bought a chalk bag that morning and borrowed Caleb Ostrow's spare helmet, so I arrived dressed as somebody who climbs outside.

I watched it as a film about a finger. Caldwell lost most of his left index finger to a table saw years before the climb and was told his career was over. He retrained his whole grip around nine fingers. Mine was discharged the day before, after six months, and for a ring finger that only complained. I kept quiet about the comparison and felt it anyway.

The part everybody talks about is the right one:

• Jorgeson falls off the same traverse for days, skin gone, taping his fingertips at night.
• Caldwell is past it and could finish alone.
• He waits.

Caleb, who teaches physics, paused it twice to explain the forces in a sideways fall and was told to stop by five people at once.

Watched With: Hana Kobayashi

• The table saw, told plainly and without music.
• Pitch 15, the traverse. The middle third of the film lives here.
• The portaledge at night: two men, a phone, and sandpaper for their fingertips.