San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
NEW ADVENTURE FILM CAPTURES MOUNTAINEERING IN ANTARCTICA.
After waiting out an ice storm on the edge of Antarctica, a team of seven climbers hopped into a small plane and flew south to a formation of jagged granite towers in the Drygalski Mountains called the Wolf ’s Jaw. There they set up camp for a 10-day expedition with a simple goal: knock out as many summits as possible.
That’s the premise of a new documentary from the North Face called “Queen Maud Land,” which screened at the Castro Theatre last month as part of the annual climbingthemed Reel Rock 13 film tour. The film chronicles six climbers (the seventh was the cinematographer) during the expedition, which took place last year, as they grapple with frostbite, ice storms, rotten rock and subzero temperatures while ascending thousand-plus-foot peaks in one of the planet’s most unforgiving environments.
“More than any other place I’ve ever been, I feel like we are not meant to be here,” remarks climber-filmmaker Cedar Wright during the film, as the climbing party sets up base camp on the ice.
Wright, 43, of Toll House (Fresno County) is a longtime rock climber who trained on the granite walls of Yosemite Valley and was tasked with capturing the Antarctic expedition on film. On the trip with him was a roster of heavy hitters in the adventure community: Alex Honnold, Jimmy Chin, Conrad Anker, Anna Pfaff, Savannah Cummins and Pablo Durana, whom Wright tapped as cinematographer on the project.
Given the stakes of the climbing and the cost of the expedition itself — it cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring together — Wright was a bit nervous about producing a cohesive documentary.
“Honestly, it was maybe one of the worst filmmaking experiences of my life because it was just so hard to make this movie, and it almost broke me. For a second, I thought maybe my climbing and filmmaking career were all on the verge of destruction,” he said during a recent interview in the Presidio. He said he thought, “If you screw this film up, you might be slinging friggin’ chalk bags at REI or something, you know?”
In the style of Wright’s other films, “Queen Maud Land” is a true-to-life depiction of a hairy undertaking and the personalities charged with pulling it off. It’s not so much a polished Instagrammable portrait of
human triumph and personal inspiration as a behindthe-curtain look at the goofy exchanges, scary moments and personal relationships that drive a successful team adventure.
Anker and Chin exchange old-man jokes while setting up camp on a snowy ridge. Wright and Honnold needle each other while gearing up at the base of a peak. The team sets up a mini-surprise party for Anker on his 55th birthday.
“There’s a little close-knit community here we’re developing over the course of this expedition that I always seek out,” Anker says at one point during the film.
That feeling of community is what Wright set out to capture.
“A big part of what I love to document in my films is that, yeah, these trips can be gnarly and scary and all these things, but they can also be really fun. A lot of successful climbing is usually about an interesting partnership and friendship between these two people that click in these unique ways that allow them to have these interesting adventures,” Wright said.
“I’m really interested in the characters and the relationships and the stuff that makes this climbing game fun. So I like to capture the fun and the real moments — the quirk, the weirdness of people.”