UKC

Back in November, Julia Chanourdie became the third woman to climb a 9b with her ascent of Eagle 4 at Saint Léger. The route was first climbed by Adam Ondra in 2018 and had only been repeated once by Hugo Parmentier. 

Petzl have just released a short film documenting her ascent:

Very impressive.

Theres some great shots on the traverse, she looks genuinely surprised to have caught some of the holds. Am I the only on that felt there's a slightly weird feeling to parts of it, seems to be a Petzl thing that's most obvious in some of their rock trip films. 

They skipped a lot of the clips I think - that felt a bit funny - the bit I found impressive was that you think from the front on shots that it looks quite hard, etc. Then you get some other angles that properly show you how overhanging it is and then you think, wow that really is hard.

We see JC through a glass, darkly. 

It's worth noting that apart from a very brief bit of phone footage (not the two guys shown filming it through a phone), this film doesn't show the actual ascent. 

I don't think it detracts from it though. 

No, it's really nicely shot. But I think some of the comments above suggest that was necessarily clear to everyone. 

You are probably not referring to my comment, but just in case someone might misinterpret what I wrote above... when I said "we see JC through a glass, darkly", I was not referring to any aspect of the ascent itself, but to the corporate feel of the video. I felt that a more sensitive film might have told us something interesting about what it was like for this particular young woman to do something so amazing. Instead we got a weird, stilted, semi-scripted spiel. I didn't like it. It felt pointless and unreal.

This is not a negative comment on JC herself - the opposite in fact. I sense she might have had plenty to say given the (lack of) direction,  but was cheated by the money-makers. It's the modern way. I liked it way back when people were just trying to tell a stupid story in climbing videos. In those days sponsors names were in the credits. These days sponsorship itself is the story.

File me under aging hippie.

It does now that I know. 

It's not the best climbing short, but it certainly isn't the worst either.  Well worth the time to view, which is all it cost us after all.