exploration this idea of using a craft
to get out and see places that no one
else sees
pretty quickly I realized that there was
also this adrenaline component
and all of a sudden the tide kind of
switched from exploration to like
full-on risk-taking adrenaline
Thank You pleasure and honor to be in
Washington DC this place national
Geographics been an amazing home for me
now my path into filmmaking was very
unconventional I graduated from the
Evergreen State College and very quickly
was like I’m not going to graduate
school I’m going to move to the San Juan
Islands and become a kayak guide but
this path this decision to get into the
sport of sea kayaking was really
important for me because what it taught
me was exploration this idea of using a
craft to get out and see places that no
one else sees and it was a great tool
because a sea kayak in the Pacific
Northwest gets you out onto the
coastline places like the Washington
coast here where no one goes no one goes
to these places and it touched me it
made me feel like okay there’s something
here there’s there’s something to this
idea of exploration now pretty quickly I
realized that there was also this
adrenaline component and we started
playing around in rock gardens like you
see here and all of a sudden the tide
kind of switched from exploration to
like full-on risk-taking I was like wow
this is this is amazing you know and
running big waterfalls and just pushing
it but I started realized it wasn’t the
adrenaline that was working for me what
it was was this this idea of focusing so
intently on something to do it well and
that’s what you have to do when you run
a big waterfall like this you have no
choice you don’t get distracted you you
think about your line you concentrate
and then you execute and that gives you
know that can give you an incredible
rush aside from the adrenaline and so
this idea of exploration and this idea
of focusing it was starting to hone some
of the key ingredients in being an
adventure filmmaker you know the first
stuff that I filmed was terrible I
couldn’t really get anyone to watch it
but my process was I’m gonna just keep
doing this and I’ll eventually get
better and I tap
back into you my roots of sea kayaking
bought better cameras and started
chasing what I knew which was the sport
of kayaking and really incredible
destinations that no one really goes to
this is Newfoundland
we spent a bunch of time up there
filming icebergs and the whales and then
just finding the unique nooks and
crannies where light comes in in special
ways this is a shot from the magdalen
islands and what this did was it slowly
started cultivating my skills the camera
skills they were getting better and I
kept thinking okay well what’s next and
pretty quickly I was running out of
story ideas so I went okay I got it I
got to start looking for big missions
and this this came up
this is Peru and there was a grant out
called the vacation to hell and the
winning team was going to go to a place
that was predetermined for them and it
happened to be the Rio alga the last
remaining unknown tributary to the
Amazon the one of the hardest places to
get any information on because all the
topo maps were littered with these big
white blotches said dados insufficient
A’s so we couldn’t really tell like well
are we gonna drop 200 feet a mile 100
feet a mile what’s going on in here we
just dropped in we just sort of went
well we’ll figure it out and we got into
this river about 4 days and if you’re
not a whitewater kayaker this is not
good ok this is not what you look for on
a river flooding that’s what the brown
water is and then just choke boulders
and we’re down in there five days we
want to succeed we’re on a grant there’s
this pressure to succeed what do you do
how do you make these decisions and what
what kind of risks do you ultimately
decide to take and as a team we decided
that we were gonna hike out now this is
one of my all-time favorite photographs
okay this is what five guys do when
things go bad okay they all look in
completely different directions
they do not operate as a team Todd here
he’s like okay we’re all gonna die I’ve
picked up a camera Shane I’m not quite
sure what Shane’s doing
Piro Valentino here he’s our Peruvian
guide and sort of leader and Pierrot is
calling his mom his sister’s dad and in
the meantime telling us like I hope you
guys have really really good insurance
because the only way out of here is a
helicopter eventually we found a little
bit of a three-way to get ourselves up
and to get to this spot took two days
the river valley now is down here many
many thousand feet and you know I had my
tail between my legs and so did the rest
of the team we were barely talking to
each other we went we failed we
completely failed and you know it’s just
hard not to think about like what would
you do differently should we have gone
should we have kept going but it started
teaching me the basics of you know
making sound decisions in these really
treacherous environments and then on the
way out it taught me one of the most
amazing things ever with my buddy Shane
and Andrew and that was a new scale for
fun we decided that we needed to like
classify fun so we came up with this
idea of the three types of fun and type
one fun you know it’s like all fun and
games when you plant it you go out and
you do it it’s fun the whole experience
just fun fun fun you talked about it a
week later it was fun okay type 2 fun is
like you plant it and you’re like this
is gonna be great fun is gonna be really
cool and then you get out in the field
and it’s like it’s actually pretty epic
you’re working really hard and you’re
kind of looking at each other going like
I don’t this is not fun right now but
then two weeks later when you’re all
hanging out you’re like that was amazing
that was so much fun I’m really glad we
did it
but the Rio iocket and the vacation ahel
taught us that there was actually a
third type of fun and type 3 fun is like
it’s fun while you plant it and then
it’s fully epic while you go and do it
and then actually two weeks later you
kind of don’t even really want to talk
about
anymore but you were supposed to have
fun when you originally set off to do it
so you got call it fun from this trip
was also cultivating this idea of how do
you get things that people have never
done before how do you get these iconic
shots or different shots and right away
I stumbled across this idea of using
table cams this is very early on in my
filmmaking and it just kept evolving
we’re like oh if the camera moves you
get these amazing shots and it wasn’t
like I was reading a book on this we
were just experiencing at first hand
movement in shots makes them really cool
and this is a fundamental in
cinematography now we built all kinds of
different rigs and we just were getting
these awesome shots and we were making
images that people like National
Geographic we’re taking notice this next
clip shows you some of the stuff we’re
achieving from from the cable cam and
other types of custom systems to make
movement
the folks at producing show called
NatGeo amazing called me up and said hey
we we think there’s a project that might
work really well for you we’re doing
this series and we need all these short
snippets of like extreme adventure sport
and the next clip we went all out to
impress them and film several short
pieces all adventure related here’s some
of the highlights from that NatGeo
amazing series yeah your senses are
definitely heightened and your body goes
into the spider flight response
the dream that when you’re a child and
you look up at a bird and you see it
flying and you wonder what it would be
like I think it’s the closest we can get
to feeling that well ice is kind of a
living breathing entity that’s always
changing and growing just never really
know speed is definitely why I got
hooked on this boat flying through the
woods is just the best view when you’re
kayaking in a hard rapid a big rapid
with a lot of moves or even a waterfall
there’s a sensation where you’re tuned
in so acutely to what’s going on that
it’s almost like time slows down so we
came to National Geographic and pitched
this idea to expeditions council to go
for the first time ever with kayaks to
Kamchatka and also dovetail it in with
the fish story of salmon and make a
one-hour television show with Zeb Hogan
for the monster fish series for those of
you guys that don’t know we’re come
chauka is it’s very far eastern Russia
and there’s no supplies nothing so
you’ve got to literally take everything
you could ever imagine a need to go a
long long ways across the world and then
we got dropped off in the middle of
nowhere and the helicopter just leaves
and disappears and this first river was
the current sky River which had a major
volcanic eruption back about ten or
twelve years ago now and wiped out all
the fish on the river and so we’ve
landed and we’re just like oh my god
there’s a volcano erupting in the
background
and we’re just mesmerized we’re just
like wow we where are we now you might
kind of wonder why there’s there’s
infrastructure here well there was at
the time this was you know a huge huge
river for salmon and so there was a
research station up there that had been
abandoned and the big reason why we
wanted to go back into this river is no
one had been in there since you know 10
years almost a decade before our trip
because there were no fish left there
and we wanted to go back to see if there
were fish starting to come up the river
now we did three trips and the next clip
is just some of the moving pictures of
what these rivers were like for us he
says it’s good
it’s pretty good-sized bear tracks
somebody was here before we were
hundred fifty Leah what’s out of maybe
half a kilo so this was a huge part of
the monster fish show was trying to
figure out why this place is actually
threatened from the perspective of
salmon even though there’s not any
infrastructure there and any big
industrialization and big reason is this
is caviar they poach the salmon out of
these rivers for caviar and it’s crazy
you know we saw relatively small-scale
operations for the most part while we
were there but we also were on the hunt
for bigger scale operations now this
trip was a huge success and when you’re
successful here they usually keep asking
you what do you want to do next what do
you want to do next and we had this idea
of making a film with this guy Dean
Potter and he is one of you know the
great adventures and flyers and free
solo climbers of of my generation for
sure and he had this plan that he wanted
to fly further and faster than anyone
had ever done before and he was going to
get there by doing his arts of walking
high lines and free solo climbing and
then doing an ultimate flight at a place
called Mount Butte and what was next for
us was a big mission on El Capitan and
the whole goal at the top of El Capitan
was to film Dean free soloing without a
rope free rider which is one of the
harder trad routes and what we were
doing was filming Dean but we were also
trying to figure out how can we do this
in a way that there’s no possible way we
could knock Dean off the wall because
Dean sang to us if one of you guys hits
me you’ll kill me like yeah if you drop
a lens cap you’ll kill me like yeah okay
okay so we spent a bunch of time
planning exactly where we would shoot
angles from in this idea that you know
there’s no way that we could possibly
knock Dean off but we also want to be
close to him to get the shot now the
next clip is very rough but I like
that’s what I like about it it gives you
a very visceral experience of what it’s
actually like to film someone like Dean
doing something like this what it’s like
to deal with him but then also just the
the chaos or kind of a controlled chaos
that’s going on amongst the the
filmmakers I’m gonna have to go by you
he’ll be able to move
that’s right here I’m gonna mantle by
your feet that’s it no no over here yeah
maybe tired hey Loctite with those
stainless you got used to long time I
agree thanks fully agree and then on top
of manage I’m the camera gear over on
the wall we’re also managing our ropes
because we’ve got hundreds of feet of
rope
dude you’re cooking linguine master
good packing up what yep
hope that rusty cable doesn’t break
right now bro huh
yeah
the hellcat free solo is hands-down the
most intense thing I’ve ever filmed in
my life by the time Mikey got to the top
he had like you know 400 feet of rope
hanging off another another segment of
the film done that was a big one this
one Deen powder soloing free-rider he
trade boardbarn you killed it buddy we
all killed it that was the biggest
mission of my life really to be honest
now it would only actually get more epic
from there we succeeded
we didn’t knock him off the wall so man
we were gonna go to mount Butte to a
place called Hamato camp at the base of
Mount Butte there’s an old logging camp
that Chuck Bertrille runs and this was a
push off point for us to be able to go
up to mount Butte 9,000 foot granite
monolith that kind of stands on its own
in British Columbia and the idea was
that the guys would free climb the
mountain and Dean would jump off the top
and the idea was that we would film them
doing this and so we’re basically moving
up at the same rate that they’re
climbing up but we’ve got all this gear
and we’re trying to capture it on this
next clip just gives you a sense of like
at times you know they could be moving
quite quickly through a crack system and
you’re thinking okay we got to go we got
to move
we can’t have ropes in their way we
can’t impede their process any step of
the way eventually these guys summit it
at the top it was actually pretty epic
and everyone settled in and this was a
night that I will never forget because I
don’t think I slept at all this night
because the idea was you know okay the
next morning you know Dean’s potentially
going to jump off the mountain the next
clips just a little bit of what it was
like now trying to assess that jump
we got a thousand-foot wall to snow
ledge and we’re concerned we don’t have
enough distance to take clear of the
wall we’ll see how the wall dries and
the jump is um much more cutting-edge
than anticipated it’s not very far
before you hit a big snow snow ledge so
you got to get flying quickly have a
mountain that’s very steep but not quite
steep enough mm-hmm like I think it’s
the spot but yeah it’s hard to say until
you say no I was doing it so the end
result of this was we went back to
Hellmuth go camp because Dean was like
I’m not jumping off the top of the
mountain the only way that this could
work is if somehow I could be extended
off off the top of the mountain and so
right right away we’re thinking you know
okay we’re gonna fail like this is the
payoff for the show the show’s over
we’re gonna fail you know we’ve got to
have Dean jumping off the top mountain
so we knew back at home Ithaca camp we
would be able to talk to Chuck and Chuck
has basically every tool that you could
possibly imagine in the shop from fixing
old logging equipment and Chuck Burchell
and bless his heart just says very
candidly well why don’t we just build a
ramp we’re like really you would want to
help us build a ramp so that Dean can
jump off the top of the mountain and
literally chuck was destined to do this
he had all the welding equipment he had
drill presses everything you could
imagine so we built this thing in
Chuck’s shop over two days 40 feet long
and everyone I think had very varying
degrees of weather it was kind of work
or not this next clip to me is just it’s
harrowing because it’s the actually the
effort and the extreme that we would go
through to try to make this project work
the last phase was getting it on the
wall which was probably the most
complicated
the way it worked was Matt went down
built an anchor on the wall the rest of
the team lowered Matt piece-by-piece
each one of those section I need and one
of the other fellows we’re gonna count
walk away from the wall the real crux
was actually once that forty feet was
all bolted into place was pushing that
ramp out but the reason getting it up
and over is so hard is that is 400 to
500 pound scaffold is sitting against
the wall right now if it was vertical we
just be able to push it and with the
gravity would take
I mean it was a very involved and
intricate process I mean it took almost
two days to get that ramp into the
mountain I think think after this we
were in there I think somebody could
confidently walk out to the end unclip
and leap off that’s the idea anyway but
I definitely was fun there’s no doubt
about it
craziest freaking day of my life whoo so
the flight decks in and I think the kind
of the rule was that everyone needed to
kind of go out there like the production
people needed to take a walk out on the
flight deck to try to like you know coax
Dean into the fact that you know yeah
it’s cool it feels stable out there but
really ultimately at this point we’d
done everything we could possibly do and
it would come down to Dean on whether or
not he would actually jump off the ramp
walking there though even though I had
made that decision like like I was
having some uncontrollable like bodily
nerves going on like I felt like burping
vomit and I’m shaking I usually don’t do
those things before I’m getting ready to
do any of my art
I’m very tired and I knew that I
wouldn’t fly at maximum I I couldn’t
like after you know climbing that route
I was exhausted and had been sleeping
very well kind of nerves so all those
things made me question question but
then standing on the ramp I something
just comes over me really and I just
make up my mind I’m gonna do it and I
just execute plan or stick with plan
holy
just like that we had just like that we
had a TV show and I’m serious you know
it was they was that this was the payoff
for this television show and it’s these
moments like that that all that hard
work you know and it happens you know
that flight that Dean took was three
minutes long but the work that went in
to get that three-minute flight was was
days and days and these moments whether
they’re you know sitting on the top of
the mountain and taking in the sunset or
capturing that epic epic shot on film
are often just these like little moments
you know inside of all the epicness that
we do and you know that’s why it’s fun
for me that’s why I do what I do is is
for those little nuggets thanks a lot
you guys
you
to get out and see places that no one
else sees
pretty quickly I realized that there was
also this adrenaline component
and all of a sudden the tide kind of
switched from exploration to like
full-on risk-taking adrenaline
Thank You pleasure and honor to be in
Washington DC this place national
Geographics been an amazing home for me
now my path into filmmaking was very
unconventional I graduated from the
Evergreen State College and very quickly
was like I’m not going to graduate
school I’m going to move to the San Juan
Islands and become a kayak guide but
this path this decision to get into the
sport of sea kayaking was really
important for me because what it taught
me was exploration this idea of using a
craft to get out and see places that no
one else sees and it was a great tool
because a sea kayak in the Pacific
Northwest gets you out onto the
coastline places like the Washington
coast here where no one goes no one goes
to these places and it touched me it
made me feel like okay there’s something
here there’s there’s something to this
idea of exploration now pretty quickly I
realized that there was also this
adrenaline component and we started
playing around in rock gardens like you
see here and all of a sudden the tide
kind of switched from exploration to
like full-on risk-taking I was like wow
this is this is amazing you know and
running big waterfalls and just pushing
it but I started realized it wasn’t the
adrenaline that was working for me what
it was was this this idea of focusing so
intently on something to do it well and
that’s what you have to do when you run
a big waterfall like this you have no
choice you don’t get distracted you you
think about your line you concentrate
and then you execute and that gives you
know that can give you an incredible
rush aside from the adrenaline and so
this idea of exploration and this idea
of focusing it was starting to hone some
of the key ingredients in being an
adventure filmmaker you know the first
stuff that I filmed was terrible I
couldn’t really get anyone to watch it
but my process was I’m gonna just keep
doing this and I’ll eventually get
better and I tap
back into you my roots of sea kayaking
bought better cameras and started
chasing what I knew which was the sport
of kayaking and really incredible
destinations that no one really goes to
this is Newfoundland
we spent a bunch of time up there
filming icebergs and the whales and then
just finding the unique nooks and
crannies where light comes in in special
ways this is a shot from the magdalen
islands and what this did was it slowly
started cultivating my skills the camera
skills they were getting better and I
kept thinking okay well what’s next and
pretty quickly I was running out of
story ideas so I went okay I got it I
got to start looking for big missions
and this this came up
this is Peru and there was a grant out
called the vacation to hell and the
winning team was going to go to a place
that was predetermined for them and it
happened to be the Rio alga the last
remaining unknown tributary to the
Amazon the one of the hardest places to
get any information on because all the
topo maps were littered with these big
white blotches said dados insufficient
A’s so we couldn’t really tell like well
are we gonna drop 200 feet a mile 100
feet a mile what’s going on in here we
just dropped in we just sort of went
well we’ll figure it out and we got into
this river about 4 days and if you’re
not a whitewater kayaker this is not
good ok this is not what you look for on
a river flooding that’s what the brown
water is and then just choke boulders
and we’re down in there five days we
want to succeed we’re on a grant there’s
this pressure to succeed what do you do
how do you make these decisions and what
what kind of risks do you ultimately
decide to take and as a team we decided
that we were gonna hike out now this is
one of my all-time favorite photographs
okay this is what five guys do when
things go bad okay they all look in
completely different directions
they do not operate as a team Todd here
he’s like okay we’re all gonna die I’ve
picked up a camera Shane I’m not quite
sure what Shane’s doing
Piro Valentino here he’s our Peruvian
guide and sort of leader and Pierrot is
calling his mom his sister’s dad and in
the meantime telling us like I hope you
guys have really really good insurance
because the only way out of here is a
helicopter eventually we found a little
bit of a three-way to get ourselves up
and to get to this spot took two days
the river valley now is down here many
many thousand feet and you know I had my
tail between my legs and so did the rest
of the team we were barely talking to
each other we went we failed we
completely failed and you know it’s just
hard not to think about like what would
you do differently should we have gone
should we have kept going but it started
teaching me the basics of you know
making sound decisions in these really
treacherous environments and then on the
way out it taught me one of the most
amazing things ever with my buddy Shane
and Andrew and that was a new scale for
fun we decided that we needed to like
classify fun so we came up with this
idea of the three types of fun and type
one fun you know it’s like all fun and
games when you plant it you go out and
you do it it’s fun the whole experience
just fun fun fun you talked about it a
week later it was fun okay type 2 fun is
like you plant it and you’re like this
is gonna be great fun is gonna be really
cool and then you get out in the field
and it’s like it’s actually pretty epic
you’re working really hard and you’re
kind of looking at each other going like
I don’t this is not fun right now but
then two weeks later when you’re all
hanging out you’re like that was amazing
that was so much fun I’m really glad we
did it
but the Rio iocket and the vacation ahel
taught us that there was actually a
third type of fun and type 3 fun is like
it’s fun while you plant it and then
it’s fully epic while you go and do it
and then actually two weeks later you
kind of don’t even really want to talk
about
anymore but you were supposed to have
fun when you originally set off to do it
so you got call it fun from this trip
was also cultivating this idea of how do
you get things that people have never
done before how do you get these iconic
shots or different shots and right away
I stumbled across this idea of using
table cams this is very early on in my
filmmaking and it just kept evolving
we’re like oh if the camera moves you
get these amazing shots and it wasn’t
like I was reading a book on this we
were just experiencing at first hand
movement in shots makes them really cool
and this is a fundamental in
cinematography now we built all kinds of
different rigs and we just were getting
these awesome shots and we were making
images that people like National
Geographic we’re taking notice this next
clip shows you some of the stuff we’re
achieving from from the cable cam and
other types of custom systems to make
movement
the folks at producing show called
NatGeo amazing called me up and said hey
we we think there’s a project that might
work really well for you we’re doing
this series and we need all these short
snippets of like extreme adventure sport
and the next clip we went all out to
impress them and film several short
pieces all adventure related here’s some
of the highlights from that NatGeo
amazing series yeah your senses are
definitely heightened and your body goes
into the spider flight response
the dream that when you’re a child and
you look up at a bird and you see it
flying and you wonder what it would be
like I think it’s the closest we can get
to feeling that well ice is kind of a
living breathing entity that’s always
changing and growing just never really
know speed is definitely why I got
hooked on this boat flying through the
woods is just the best view when you’re
kayaking in a hard rapid a big rapid
with a lot of moves or even a waterfall
there’s a sensation where you’re tuned
in so acutely to what’s going on that
it’s almost like time slows down so we
came to National Geographic and pitched
this idea to expeditions council to go
for the first time ever with kayaks to
Kamchatka and also dovetail it in with
the fish story of salmon and make a
one-hour television show with Zeb Hogan
for the monster fish series for those of
you guys that don’t know we’re come
chauka is it’s very far eastern Russia
and there’s no supplies nothing so
you’ve got to literally take everything
you could ever imagine a need to go a
long long ways across the world and then
we got dropped off in the middle of
nowhere and the helicopter just leaves
and disappears and this first river was
the current sky River which had a major
volcanic eruption back about ten or
twelve years ago now and wiped out all
the fish on the river and so we’ve
landed and we’re just like oh my god
there’s a volcano erupting in the
background
and we’re just mesmerized we’re just
like wow we where are we now you might
kind of wonder why there’s there’s
infrastructure here well there was at
the time this was you know a huge huge
river for salmon and so there was a
research station up there that had been
abandoned and the big reason why we
wanted to go back into this river is no
one had been in there since you know 10
years almost a decade before our trip
because there were no fish left there
and we wanted to go back to see if there
were fish starting to come up the river
now we did three trips and the next clip
is just some of the moving pictures of
what these rivers were like for us he
says it’s good
it’s pretty good-sized bear tracks
somebody was here before we were
hundred fifty Leah what’s out of maybe
half a kilo so this was a huge part of
the monster fish show was trying to
figure out why this place is actually
threatened from the perspective of
salmon even though there’s not any
infrastructure there and any big
industrialization and big reason is this
is caviar they poach the salmon out of
these rivers for caviar and it’s crazy
you know we saw relatively small-scale
operations for the most part while we
were there but we also were on the hunt
for bigger scale operations now this
trip was a huge success and when you’re
successful here they usually keep asking
you what do you want to do next what do
you want to do next and we had this idea
of making a film with this guy Dean
Potter and he is one of you know the
great adventures and flyers and free
solo climbers of of my generation for
sure and he had this plan that he wanted
to fly further and faster than anyone
had ever done before and he was going to
get there by doing his arts of walking
high lines and free solo climbing and
then doing an ultimate flight at a place
called Mount Butte and what was next for
us was a big mission on El Capitan and
the whole goal at the top of El Capitan
was to film Dean free soloing without a
rope free rider which is one of the
harder trad routes and what we were
doing was filming Dean but we were also
trying to figure out how can we do this
in a way that there’s no possible way we
could knock Dean off the wall because
Dean sang to us if one of you guys hits
me you’ll kill me like yeah if you drop
a lens cap you’ll kill me like yeah okay
okay so we spent a bunch of time
planning exactly where we would shoot
angles from in this idea that you know
there’s no way that we could possibly
knock Dean off but we also want to be
close to him to get the shot now the
next clip is very rough but I like
that’s what I like about it it gives you
a very visceral experience of what it’s
actually like to film someone like Dean
doing something like this what it’s like
to deal with him but then also just the
the chaos or kind of a controlled chaos
that’s going on amongst the the
filmmakers I’m gonna have to go by you
he’ll be able to move
that’s right here I’m gonna mantle by
your feet that’s it no no over here yeah
maybe tired hey Loctite with those
stainless you got used to long time I
agree thanks fully agree and then on top
of manage I’m the camera gear over on
the wall we’re also managing our ropes
because we’ve got hundreds of feet of
rope
dude you’re cooking linguine master
good packing up what yep
hope that rusty cable doesn’t break
right now bro huh
yeah
the hellcat free solo is hands-down the
most intense thing I’ve ever filmed in
my life by the time Mikey got to the top
he had like you know 400 feet of rope
hanging off another another segment of
the film done that was a big one this
one Deen powder soloing free-rider he
trade boardbarn you killed it buddy we
all killed it that was the biggest
mission of my life really to be honest
now it would only actually get more epic
from there we succeeded
we didn’t knock him off the wall so man
we were gonna go to mount Butte to a
place called Hamato camp at the base of
Mount Butte there’s an old logging camp
that Chuck Bertrille runs and this was a
push off point for us to be able to go
up to mount Butte 9,000 foot granite
monolith that kind of stands on its own
in British Columbia and the idea was
that the guys would free climb the
mountain and Dean would jump off the top
and the idea was that we would film them
doing this and so we’re basically moving
up at the same rate that they’re
climbing up but we’ve got all this gear
and we’re trying to capture it on this
next clip just gives you a sense of like
at times you know they could be moving
quite quickly through a crack system and
you’re thinking okay we got to go we got
to move
we can’t have ropes in their way we
can’t impede their process any step of
the way eventually these guys summit it
at the top it was actually pretty epic
and everyone settled in and this was a
night that I will never forget because I
don’t think I slept at all this night
because the idea was you know okay the
next morning you know Dean’s potentially
going to jump off the mountain the next
clips just a little bit of what it was
like now trying to assess that jump
we got a thousand-foot wall to snow
ledge and we’re concerned we don’t have
enough distance to take clear of the
wall we’ll see how the wall dries and
the jump is um much more cutting-edge
than anticipated it’s not very far
before you hit a big snow snow ledge so
you got to get flying quickly have a
mountain that’s very steep but not quite
steep enough mm-hmm like I think it’s
the spot but yeah it’s hard to say until
you say no I was doing it so the end
result of this was we went back to
Hellmuth go camp because Dean was like
I’m not jumping off the top of the
mountain the only way that this could
work is if somehow I could be extended
off off the top of the mountain and so
right right away we’re thinking you know
okay we’re gonna fail like this is the
payoff for the show the show’s over
we’re gonna fail you know we’ve got to
have Dean jumping off the top mountain
so we knew back at home Ithaca camp we
would be able to talk to Chuck and Chuck
has basically every tool that you could
possibly imagine in the shop from fixing
old logging equipment and Chuck Burchell
and bless his heart just says very
candidly well why don’t we just build a
ramp we’re like really you would want to
help us build a ramp so that Dean can
jump off the top of the mountain and
literally chuck was destined to do this
he had all the welding equipment he had
drill presses everything you could
imagine so we built this thing in
Chuck’s shop over two days 40 feet long
and everyone I think had very varying
degrees of weather it was kind of work
or not this next clip to me is just it’s
harrowing because it’s the actually the
effort and the extreme that we would go
through to try to make this project work
the last phase was getting it on the
wall which was probably the most
complicated
the way it worked was Matt went down
built an anchor on the wall the rest of
the team lowered Matt piece-by-piece
each one of those section I need and one
of the other fellows we’re gonna count
walk away from the wall the real crux
was actually once that forty feet was
all bolted into place was pushing that
ramp out but the reason getting it up
and over is so hard is that is 400 to
500 pound scaffold is sitting against
the wall right now if it was vertical we
just be able to push it and with the
gravity would take
I mean it was a very involved and
intricate process I mean it took almost
two days to get that ramp into the
mountain I think think after this we
were in there I think somebody could
confidently walk out to the end unclip
and leap off that’s the idea anyway but
I definitely was fun there’s no doubt
about it
craziest freaking day of my life whoo so
the flight decks in and I think the kind
of the rule was that everyone needed to
kind of go out there like the production
people needed to take a walk out on the
flight deck to try to like you know coax
Dean into the fact that you know yeah
it’s cool it feels stable out there but
really ultimately at this point we’d
done everything we could possibly do and
it would come down to Dean on whether or
not he would actually jump off the ramp
walking there though even though I had
made that decision like like I was
having some uncontrollable like bodily
nerves going on like I felt like burping
vomit and I’m shaking I usually don’t do
those things before I’m getting ready to
do any of my art
I’m very tired and I knew that I
wouldn’t fly at maximum I I couldn’t
like after you know climbing that route
I was exhausted and had been sleeping
very well kind of nerves so all those
things made me question question but
then standing on the ramp I something
just comes over me really and I just
make up my mind I’m gonna do it and I
just execute plan or stick with plan
holy
just like that we had just like that we
had a TV show and I’m serious you know
it was they was that this was the payoff
for this television show and it’s these
moments like that that all that hard
work you know and it happens you know
that flight that Dean took was three
minutes long but the work that went in
to get that three-minute flight was was
days and days and these moments whether
they’re you know sitting on the top of
the mountain and taking in the sunset or
capturing that epic epic shot on film
are often just these like little moments
you know inside of all the epicness that
we do and you know that’s why it’s fun
for me that’s why I do what I do is is
for those little nuggets thanks a lot
you guys
you
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