Why Climbing Movies Are Rad, Even if You're Not a Climber

How to start watching this growing—and very satisfying—film genre, beyond "Free Solo."

Yes, Free Solo and Alex Honnold are the best. But there are others. (National Geographic)

Whenever I mention to someone that I rock climb—that is, to someone who does not climb—they often say the same thing: “Oh my god, like Free Solo?”

That Oscar-winning 2018 documentary follows climber Alex Honnold as he attempts to “free solo,” to climb without a partner or any protective ropes, up the 3,000-foot wall of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. It’s a shocking feat, as one slip would result in certain death. Spoiler alert: He does it, and the resulting film, directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, is a stunningly shot cinematic masterpiece. Vasarhelyi and Chin would become the go-to directors of the sub-genre, and Honnold would become the sport’s leading movie star due to not only his skill, but also his boyish good looks, sense of humor, and authentic onscreen presence.

I, for one, will watch anything he’s in. But no, I do not climb “like Free Solo.” Like many people, I did start climbing around the time that Free Solo came out, in my case as a date-day idea that my partner, Jesse, and I decided to try out together, and we got hooked. We use ropes and belay partners, though, and wear helmets, and, in my case, get scared a lot.

However, we love nothing more than a good climbing movie, or even a mediocre climbing movie, because climbing movies have a nearly fail-proof formula: A climber picks a very hard project. They and the filmmaker explain to viewers why it’s hard. They throw in some compelling backstory and stakes. They work on their project. They succeed or fail, and it’s hard not to get emotionally involved—even if you aren’t a climber. Go to even a standard climbing gym and observe for a bit, and you’ll often find yourself getting invested in some random stranger’s quest to conquer a 50-foot wall with a bunch of plastic holds on it, just because they’re trying so hard. Climbing movies amplify this effect.

Free Solo hit at a pivotal moment in climbing history, and its breakthrough success, combined with a few other factors, have made climbing movies proliferate exponentially. While people have been climbing in America since the middle of last century, the sport produced only a handful of documentaries until around the time of Free Solo. As climbing itself became a more mainstream sport and produced a class of elite athletes, and the internet and social media matured, climbing became a sport that could fully professionalize.

No one pays to watch climbing like they do to watch mainstream sports such as football and baseball, so the way climbers make reliable money is through sponsorships. But lots of people have to see a climber wearing all that beautiful Arcteryx gear; the way to do that is to get a movie made about you, anywhere from 5 minutes to several hours, from iPhone and GoPro shots to Oscar-winning epics, available on Instagram, YouTube, or NatGeo on Disney+, if not in theaters. The biggest climbing stars now have to be like Honnold—watchable, compelling, and able to craft their own narratives via these films. (I won’t name names, but there are some spectacular climbers whose personalities are … just not made for the screen.)

In other words, the successful ones are working to keep you watching, another reason why climbing movies are so rad. Here are some of my favorites (excluding the absolute classic Dawn Wall, which is somehow not available to stream), listed in the order that you should watch—even if you never touch a rock in your life, you’ll find plenty of reasons to laugh, cry, cheer, and recognize the word “dirtbag” as the ultimate compliment.

1. Touching the Void, 2003

This film stuns on so many levels, and it’s honestly better if you’re not a climber when you watch it because this is the stuff of our nightmares. Mountaineers Joe Simpson and Simon Yates made the first successful ascent of the West Face of Siula Grande in Peru in 1985, which is the point at which most climbing documentaries would end. But getting down the mountain was a bigger problem. After Simpson falls and breaks his leg during an icy descent, conditions get worse and worse. As Yates accidentally lowers him over the edge of a large cliff, Yates finds himself being pulled down, unable to communicate with his partner over the howling winds or to bring him back up, and facing certain death if he falls, too. So he makes a harrowing decision to cut the rope. The film itself revisits, and even sometimes re-creates, these events and everything that comes after. The trauma is still raw, deep, and impossible to unpack, but two follow-ups, What Happened Next and Return to Siula Grande, try. They never really land on a satisfying conclusion, but they wrestle with basic questions of life, death, and what we owe each other.

2. Free Solo, 2018

Now you can relax with the gold standard of modern climbing movies, basking in Honnold’s quirky charisma with (spoiler alert!) no trauma.

3. The Alpinist, 2021

This is a beautiful film about a guy who dies. I will never recommend this movie without mentioning that first. (It came as a surprise to me when I was watching, but I think it’s better to know what you’re getting into.) It makes a good companion piece to Free Solo, following a free-spirited, 23-year-old Canadian solo climber named Marc-André Leclerc. Though he allows the filmmakers to follow him at times, he shies away from cameras in general, so he’s not as well-known as climbers like Honnold; in fact, at one point in the film, he sneaks off to send a project (that’s climber-speak for finishing a hard climb one has been working on) without the cameras there. “It wouldn’t be a solo to me if somebody was there,” he explains. The film ends with news of his death in an avalanche in 2018, a reminder of the true stakes that extreme climbers face.

4. The Cobra and the Heart, 2025

The Cobra and the Heart, part of this year’s Reel Rock collection of films (which you can rent or buy at the site), gets as emotional as The Alpinist in very different ways, with some interpersonal drama that takes many surprising turns. Every time I tell someone about this gorgeous movie, I end up spoiling too much of it, so I’ll restrain myself here and give you the basic premise: Twenty years ago, Swiss climber Didier Berthod and Canadian boulderer Thomasina Pidgeon fell madly in love in the climbing mecca of Squamish, British Columbia. Soon after, he experienced a devastating failure on a project called Cobra Crack, which was documented in an early climbing film. An injury and a mental breakdown led him to flee to a Christian cult and not return even upon learning that she was pregnant with their child. This gripping film documents what happens when they try to reconnect.

5. Arctic Ascent, 2024

Now it’s time to kick back with some solid adventure in an awe-inspiring place, filmed majestically, with climbing’s most reliable star. This three-episode National Geographic series features Honnold and up-and-comer Hazel Findlay scaling some of the world’s toughest walls in Greenland, accompanied by a team of environmental experts doing their own important research on climate change. A great example of using this kind of movie to not only further an individual career, but also to boost a crucial cause with intimate ties to the sport of climbing itself.

6. Young Guns, 2016

My next three choices all work together to tell pieces of ongoing current climbing stories. We start in 2016 with this Reel Rock selection (currently available for free!), introducing a phenomenon new to the last decade: Kids who are climbing starting at a young age, and becoming sensations by their teens. Here we meet 15-year-old Ashima Shiraishi and 16-year-old Kai Lightner, jaw-dropping talents testing their skills on climbing trips to Norway and Japan.

7. Here to Climb, 2024

This recent Max movie documents climber Sasha DiGiulian’s rise from child prodigy to pro adult, and is one of the only climbing films to show the behind-the-scenes of a modern climber’s essential function as an influencer. As DiGiulian racks up a number of first female ascent records, she also negotiates brand sponsorships that sometimes cause uproar in the climbing community (like a lingerie shoot) and contends with online body-shaming from a fellow climber named Joe Kinder. He was roundly shunned by the community afterwards, but damage was done, and not just to DiGiulian, as we see in the next selection.

8. Death of Villains, 2025

This marks the final in our trilogy: This Reel Rock 2025 film catches up with Lightner, last seen burning up the climbing scene as a teen in Young Guns. Now he’s in his early 20s and demoralized after a growth spurt rendered him “too big” to climb by conventional climbing wisdom—and, more significantly, by Lightner himself. It seems he particularly took to heart the body-shaming that DiGiulian experienced from Kinder. In this film, we learn that Lightner willed himself to make a comeback by climbing one of the hardest routes in existence, named Death of Villains, in Utah. (It’s graded a 5.15a; climbs start at 5.0 and currently top out at 5.15 d.) It just so happens that it was first ascended and bolted—that is, essentially, found and set up for sport climbing—by none other than Kinder. And in the film, Kinder helps this young, gentle, Black man to conquer the route and find his confidence again. Don’t worry, Kinder doesn’t get off easy here; the two have a heart-to-heart about Kinder’s wrongs, and how they harmed Lightner and the sport at large. It’s not so much a tale of redemption as of nuance.

9. Valley Uprising, 2014

Now you’re ready to dive into some rollicking climbing history. Here you’ll learn about the countercultural climbing movement that began in Yosemite National Park more than 50 years ago. What’s now a mainstream sport began with a rebellious spirit, necessary to conquer walls no one had previously climbed—and do battle with National Park Service rangers. You’ll learn about the rivalry between booze-swilling Warren Harding and rule-following Royal Robbins; pioneering female climber Lynn Hill; and a legendary drug plane crash that made some climbers very rich. You’ll also see how climbing, and the park, have evolved into the tourist mecca it is today, with climbers—particularly Honnold and his Free Solo fame—playing a large part.

10. Dirtbag, 2017

In climbing, “dirtbag” is a term of endearment, a way of describing a person so dedicated to the sport that they’ve stripped their lives of everything else—living in a van or camper to move easily from crag to crag across the country. This film follows the ultimate dirtbag, Fred Beckey, as he continues to remain obsessed with mountains even into his 80s and 90s.

11. Resistance Climbing, 2023

A diverse group of climbers escapes the strife of everyday life in Israeli-occupied Palestine by conquering cliffs in the nearby hills of the West Bank. American climber Andrew Bisharat, who has family history in the region, visits to document the ways climbing helps to boost spirits in a dispiriting situation, illuminating the larger meaning that sports can take on.

12. The Long Wall, 2023

This is some advanced climbing humor, but you’re ready for it now. Two very funny young men tackle the longest climbing route in the world, which happens to be 8 miles from where I live and where I do the majority of my climbing, the West Trapps in Upstate New York. The catch: It’s more than 9,000 feet … horizontally. Drew Herder and Ben Wilbur traversed this motherfucker over 36 hours, at one point even deploying a portaledge so close to the ground that someone could just toss up snacks and drinks. It works largely because these guys are just so fun and scrappy; I hope we get more climbing movies from them in the future.

13. Cliffhanger, 1993

The actual funniest climbing movie ever made, even though it’s technically a scripted Sylvester Stallone action drama. Somehow a script idea originally based on the drug plane crash detailed in Valley Uprising became this mashup of total absurdity centered on the botched heist of a U.S. Treasury plane as it flies through the Rocky Mountains … then crashes. Stallone plays a rescue ranger pursuing the criminals as they try to retrieve the $100 million they lost when the plane went down. There are endless absurdly maximalist action scenes, including one where Stallone impales a foe on an ice cave stalactite. Whatever you see in this film, please know: This is not what a normal climber’s life is like.

Me, not free-soloing:

(A. Jesse Jiryu Davis)

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