Assault on El Capitan now in limited release

There's trouble everywhere in life, but much of it can be avoided. Mark says that it was impossible to avoid. Sounds Grossmanish.

I've always thought it was a lot more than just a couple of guys minding their own business that were harassed.

Some of the folks might have been a bit rude or snotty....

Does anyone else think there is a "tempest in a teapot" element to this whole story?

Guess I ought to get this film though..it's an interesting story if nothing else.

This is a classic example of blaming the victim. ;)

The movie is good. It represents all the points of view well enough. It shows pieces of the second ascent and the Kait/Ammon situation even. It goes back far enough to even include me. Other older characters trot through too to wonderful effect.

Perhaps if one were to take the most critical stance with the film, it might be that the movie does not really resolve the Grossman side of the equation with Mark and Richard's variables. But it airs both sides well, leaving the viewer to make conclusions. It remains, in other words, fair and tries to maintain neutrality.

We don't get to the point where on a granular level what Ammon found up there on the route does or does not jive with Richard/Mark's descriptions.

Ammon has basically stayed out of that examination anyway.

And the film keeps out of the question if the route was actually a climb or a construction project or something that is not a climb, perhaps actually a divine enterprise of those two very young men. How their resulting book was heavily used in their church for their youth groups later on, and to what degree their total lack of socializing with the climbing community over years before and obviously since was part of that mission directly or indirectly and at apparently unimportant personal cost.. Since we are trying to look at all things here, lo these many years.

The film puts a very humane face on the whole story and the characters at play in it.

Their book, Richard's I should say, does in fact shares their religious interests and in relatively generous frequency, mostly in the first half of the text. So, and since this book is really part of the whole morality play here, I consider that avoiding the huge social and religious differences at work here among these hundred or so individuals and all of us in following decades, is to not explain or understand fully that whole story. It might get queazy for most of us to "go there" though.

Today perhaps there are only a couple of men left in our community who would advocate for the mortal threats, crapping and crap-throwing Mark and Richard experienced. Back then obviously a few more adherents were in action with this most famous habit of the lower primates. That in some cases there were felonies committed by a very few merely reminds me of what it is like and has been like for over fifty years, surfing on the North Shore of Oahu and many thousands of other surf spots around the globe.

One of the costs to Mark and Richard's disinterest in our deep and detailed history and sociology in Camp Four was thorough misunderstanding by all involved. And M & R's lack of comprehension of how stuff can go down in C4 especially back in the day or in other male-dominated, high pressure subcultures was another cost. They obviously took it all as gospel, shall I say, when it was largely symbolic as most bullying ends up being. But territorialism, male-to-male aggression, and general ludicrous bullying is hardly a new phenomenon in so many types of situations still in our era and one floats best well above these bottom currents.

It is of course truly dismaying to almost all of us, especially today, that they experienced what they did from some of us. They simply were victims of alarming abuse. Like gay teens, like people of color in white districts, like politically different individuals face in big gatherings of their opponents. The list goes on, need I say.

To many today, it is also regretful that with their dedication, energy and resources they chose to put up such a strange 13 pitch climb instead of ascending other terrain that would have given them more chance at satisfying free play for their talents. They suffered in so many ways, didn't they.