Alex Honnold is one of the world’s most famous rock climbers, best known for his ascent of El Capitan, for which he became the subject of the Oscar-winning documentary Free Solo.
His friend Tommy Caldwell is a superstar climber in his own right, breaking climbing records and appearing on magazine covers. In 2015, National Geographic even called him “arguably the best all-around rock climber on the planet.”
Now, the two have teamed up for the new National Geographic documentary film The Devil’s Climb in which they endeavor to conquer The Devil’s Thumb in Alaska, one of the most dangerous climbs in the world. Many have attempted and many have died; author and mountaineer Jon Krakauer even wrote about the mountain in his book “Into the Wild.”
As with all National Geographic productions, the film is full of stunning nature shots. But the climb was not just about that. Caldwell ruptured his Achilles tendon shortly before deciding to embark on the climb and didn’t want his injury to spell the end of his career. Honnold wanted to attempt the near-impossible and climb all five summits of The Devil’s Thumb in one day. The two also decided to bike from Colorado to Alaska in the lead-up to the climb, making the trip all the harder.
They joined forces with director Renan Ozturk to capture not only their personal goals and triumphs, but to bring awareness to the conservation efforts in the Tongass National Forest.
Here, Ozturk discusses the challenges faced during production and the process of capturing the beauty of the landscape for the audience, but also why the power of friendship between Caldwell and Honnold is the beating heart of the film.
I know you’re a climber in addition to being a filmmaker. How did you get involved with The Devil’s Climb?
I’ve been a long-time friend of Tommy and Alex. I’ve been friends with Alex before he was even a professional climber and we were both living on the road, sort of as vagabond climbers, back in the day. We’ve done so many expeditions together over the years, and I’ve been a National Geographic photographer/filmmaker. So yeah, it’s kind of just another adventure in the series of amazing trips and things that we’ve done together. It’s great to have this one be a little more focused on a message just beyond the adventure, since it was out there to support the Tongass National Forest as well as climbing.
More than just a story about climbing, the Devil’s Climb is a story about friendship and perseverance. Tell me about why it was important to you to highlight these very human elements throughout the documentary and what you wanted to convey about the human spirit.
Well, I think everyone can connect with a story of friendship, and that’s what it was with Tommy and Alex. But they’re kind of transitioning – well, I think they’ve already transitioned as they’re trying to do good for the climbing world and be cutting edge climbers, but also be good dads and fathers to their families, and also do good for the planet. And this whole trip only came about because of Tommy’s relationship with a girl named Marina Anderson, who’s an activist in southeast Alaska for the Tongass National Forest. And all those things came together to make this story. So it wasn’t just one thing. You could really follow the journey not only through the adventure, which keeps you watching, but you get to learn about just how incredible that landscape is and experience it on the ground and in places a lot of people don’t get to see. The Tongass National Forest is the largest temperate rainforest in North America, and it’s really important for the environment. And that was the unsaid goal of the whole thing, to bring awareness and attention to that.
This film was also not without its challenges. Not only is this one of the hardest climbs in the world, Tommy’s Achilles injury also played a factor in the difficulty of the climb. What were some of the biggest obstacles you faced in making the movie, both mentally and physically?
Well, it’s always hard trying to film a couple of the fastest humans on the planet who were constantly moving thousands and thousands of miles over such a long period of time. So, yeah, I think that was the main challenge. Especially when you’re filming a big traverse in the mountains and the weather is so fickle and they can’t really slow down for safety reasons. The tactics we employed to film that traverse are something that’s never really happened in filming mountain climbing before, because we were able to spread our team out across the whole climb and film it in real-time as it happened, without any re-creations. I don’t think a lot of people understand just how special that was. You can do it in Yosemite when the weather’s good in California, but when you’re in this place – in Alaska – it makes it really, really challenging. But the logistics and the climbing, it all just came together in a perfect way, combined with both Tommy and Alex coming into their own golden age of filmmaking themselves. They’re learning how to be their own filmmakers. And the fact that technology is so good where they can film 4K on their phones and have it be cut into the final film just makes it that much more real and personal.
As with all National Geographic productions, the documentary is beautiful, filled with sweeping imagery and unbelievable nature shots. I’d love to hear about if there was any special equipment used and what the overall filmmaking process was like for such an intense project.
Yeah, every member of the team basically had to be an ultra-athlete to be able to keep up with them. Some of the things that we did in the jungle in the Tongass National Forest to get up to the climb were harder than the climb itself. We were all doing that together for 15-hour days where the equipment was getting beat down more than I’ve ever seen because of how wet it was. Cameras aren’t meant to survive those kinds of things. And yeah, there’s a lot of programs that have beautiful nature shots and drone shots and things like that, that’s a given. But the thing that wasn’t a given is those tender moments between these friends, and I think that’s what I’m most proud of. And that’s because we can have these smaller cameras now, like these little Sony full-frame mirrorless cameras, that can be taken along the way. We were actively teaching Tommy and Alex to film themselves with those cameras, as well as us using them. And it just felt more like a family environment in the filmmaking process, rather than “We’re filming you, you’re a spectacle on display.” Since we’ve all been friends for so long, it kind of broke down those walls, which is nice.
To stay on filmmaking for a minute, it feels very much like a first-person film, in which, like you said, you utilize a lot of footage from Alex and Tommy’s phones. Why was it important to you to tell this story in this way and how closely did you work with them to better portray their experience?
Yeah, I think it was our direction from the very beginning. I just knew that both Tommy and Alex are very camera-aware. They’ve been in some of the biggest climbing documentaries of all time. And you can’t really reinvent the wheel when it comes to that. And the next obvious place to go was just including them in the process. Because climbers are creatives, and even though they don’t want to admit it, they’re incredibly creative and funny and really insightful, and they bring out the best in each other. So when I’m pointing the camera at Alex asking him a hard question, I’m not going to get as good of an answer as when Tommy’s giving him shit trying to ask him the same question. And we just tried to do that and enable them to do that as much as possible and make it easy for them. Sometimes they were holding these giant cinema cameras. Sometimes they were just holding their phones. But that was something we set up from the very beginning. And yeah, I’m glad that you picked up on that.
Thank you! I’d also love to hear about some of the unexpected moments, happy or challenging, you encountered. I imagine an undertaking like this wasn’t easy!
Yeah, there were a lot of close calls. Like I was saying before, we were on an unchartered jungle bushwhacking approach – probably one of the hardest Alaskan bushwhacks in the world – and it was really hard. Even people who were on our team on the safety side, who spend their careers bushwhacking through jungles, said this was one of the hardest things they’ve ever done. And at one point, we reached a point where even Tommy couldn’t climb ahead. We had probably eight people on the film crew with us, and Alex had to free solo a section of vertical slime jungle with a tiny piece of rope to secure it for the rest of the team, in his gumboots. And while he was doing that, a giant rock came down and almost killed someone below. These are the hazards that you kind of have to accept and mitigate and manage as you’re dealing with them. But it just goes to show this wasn’t just a normal, walk-in-the-park production. There are a lot of real, real risks that not only Alex and Tommy took, but so did every single member of the team. They went deep and committed to making this film what it was.
Not to spoil the ending for our readers, but they make it in the end! Tell me about the emotions and the feeling of triumph when they were successful. In the documentary, they look exhausted but thrilled and I imagine it was such an emotional day.
I think with most of these climbing films, you’re building up to this final emotional experience where everyone’s elated, and you want the audience to feel that. But at the same time, for this film, the audience also should feel as [Tommy and Alex] felt, where it’s just this moment of pure joy at the end of all of this hard work. And it was just a cherry on top of a trip that was supposed to represent a different type of adventure – an eco-pointing adventure, where it’s all human-powered. They’re not trying to go to the Himalayas and risk their lives as dads where, like, one in three people come back from the crazy objectives people are doing now. Instead, they’re choosing an objective that’s more about bringing awareness to a place, and then doing a climb that’s still incredibly cutting edge, that only they could do. But then they’re also doing it in a way that signals something to the younger generations where, hey, there’s a different way to adventure. You can do it through picking your objectives creatively. So I think it’s a little different type of finish in that moment. Whereas it’s not just a blank joy. It has a lot of meaning behind it because of what it stood for in that moment.
Yes, you build the tension well of, like, “They might die!” And then they make it!
Yeah, there’s a lot of question marks up to the very end because it was uncharted territory. Anything can happen, especially with the quality of the rock in the mountains. It’s new rock. So things are always coming off, a rope can get cut. Somebody can get…[trails off]. Yeah, don’t need to explain it to you, but there are a lot of things that can happen.
What lessons or inspiration did you take away from Alex and Tommy throughout their expedition and success?
It’s just the power of friendship and what you can accomplish together. It’s a bit of a cliche, but when you put those two guys together, it really elevates everyone around them and makes you want to be your best and perform your best. Whether that’s physically or creatively or just showing up for your friends and the other members of the team. I think that was felt palpably throughout the entire adventure. And everyone was just executing and performing their best, and whether that meant kindness to each other, or the way that we dealt with these really stressful situations. [Tommy and Alex] did the same thing, whether they were in a life-or-death situation, or they’re joking around. It’s not like they don’t take it seriously, but they know that through humor and joy, you can get through these challenging things. And we took that and learned from that. And in the same way, that friendship aspect really, really comes across, as does the trust that they have in each other.
Tell me more about the conservation effort and the goals you wanted to achieve through the film.
I think the most important thing is to follow Marina Anderson and the work that she’s doing with Sustainable Southeast. That’s an organization in Alaska that’s really looking after how the Tongass National Forest is being managed. The issues get really complicated when it comes down to laws that are being passed that allow for clear cutting in these forests, and the future of these lands, between what’s owned tribally and with the government. I think just the fact that more people will be aware of what it is, and if they see it on a ballot, or if these issues come up, they’ll be able to sign petitions. I think that’s a big goal of why Tommy even wanted to do this trip in the first place.
Lastly, how did this film impact you personally? Did you learn anything unexpected or new about climbing that you’ll take with you to future projects? What are you interested in exploring next?
I think that what I learned most is just the power of friendship and the way that it can influence positive change. Like if you have a meaningful friendship in your life, the strength of that can help other people and help the world in powerful ways. And that’s what Tommy and Alex did with this film, and I’m sure they’ll continue to do it throughout their lives. And yeah, those are the kind of things that that I’ll be doing next. We’ve got a few feature films in the works as well.
The Devil’s Climb is streaming on National Geographic via Disney+ now.
