UKC

Anyone else watching this? It’s on Nat Geo at 9pm Sundays. 

Watched the first two on catch up last night and thought it was great. Good mix of climbing, science and expedition stuff.

Climbers are Honnold, Hazel Findlay and another American big wall guy whose names escapes me right now. Aldo Kane is the “safety guy” who comes across very well in camera too.  There’s a glaciologist and a local guide too.  

We’re only two episodes in and they’ve already done a new route up a 1500 foot big wall, and taken two newbie climbers (the local guide and the scientist) up it. No mean feat! 

I watched ep1 last night and thoroughly enjoyed it. The 'cast' are a great bunch, and I found the more sciencecy bits from the glaciologist really fascinating and glad they included them. The climbing footage is fantastic too. That rappel town into the icy hole of death was breathtaking.

It's just a bit of a shame it's so buried away and not primetime bbc2 stuff though. It's not even out in the UK as far as I'm aware (maybe Hulu, but who has that?). I had to use my existing Disney+ account but with my VPN set to Atlanta in order to watch it.

Glad you liked it!  Yeah I agree on the science bits - the Glaciologist is excellent and really and brings some meaning to the whole thing.  

Agreed - it is a bit of a shame that it’s buried on the high numbers on the EPG (I have the Nat Geo channel)  if available at all, and it’s only through my habit of watching late night doccos on obscure channels that I happened to see a trailer for it.  

Hoping it’ll get bought by another more common streaming service or channel once Nat Geo have had their run. 

Thoroughly annoyed at still having to wait for it being released on Disney+ in the UK! 

Wasn’t it strange how the skis and pulks magically appeared in their equipment that they hauled up the wall onto the Renland icefield? 
And didn’t understand why they couldn’t just go up the ice/snow chute to the left of the Pool Wall onto the icefield rather than spending days on a big wall. 
All that said, it’s got some nice views with the drone from the production team. 

Yeah there’s a brief reference to the support team (think they collected all the climbing gear at the same time). Goes without saying that a lot of the scenes have been constructed for the benefit of the tv programme after all this is a tv programme expedition, not an expedition proper.

In particular the scenes where they are “leading” the route up the pool wall, whilst being filmed from above, with bolts in the wall. Presumably being shot by a team who have got a heli to the top?

But that’s you make compelling television programmes - absolutely no channel wants to receive a load of rushes of people’s bums shot from 100ft below!

Watched the third and final instalment last night. Best episode of the lot. Alex Honnold and Hazel Findlay are absolute heroes.