Acclimating at Colorado's high point, Mt. Elbert (14,440')
The film started as an idea back in December of 2011. It came as a snapshot of a runner sleeping in the desert as dawn crept across an iconic mountain overhead. The unlikely catalyst for this vision was, of all things, an obituary for a Brazillian footballer in the Economist.
The image developed into an impressionistic mountain running piece: focused and intentional. I hit up Anton to see if he would be interested to collaborate. He was. Things stewed for a few months until we found the right window of opportunity in August and September. A day and a half of driving landed me in Leadville, the day before the LT 100 race.
While Anton was racing and recovering, I put in some legwork to get acclimated. Mt. Hope (13,900’) was first and Mt. Elbert (14,400’) was second. After a few good days up high, I dropped back down to Boulder for some easy runs on Green Mt. and to visit with friends in town. As Tony started feeling stronger after Leadville, we started scrambling more. The Flatirons were our bread and butter, we often hit one, two, or three of them before topping out Green. As we both started feeling stronger we settled into the routine of these two to 3 hour outings before breakfast and a rinse off in Boulder Creek.
As his legs came around, we got down to business. Each night we’d drive up to some trailhead to camp. At or before dawn, we’d head up a 14’er. Each day was a different peak or two. Each day was a different camera setup. I tried to film the same way that we ran: minimally-equipped. That meant every morning I would pack and repack gear until satisfied that I could handle the weight without compromising the vision. Some days I would carry only one camera, one lens. Others, I would lug the tripod with a couple lenses. These bigger days, I’d head up the trail an hour or two before Tony to try to meet exactly when the first rays of light hit the ridge.
I have a history in rock climbing, and the first films I made were bouldering shorts. That meant that I could keep up with Tony when the terrain got really steep. It also meant that we explored unfamiliar routes together. It was all done ropeless. It was all in running shoes.
CA Notice at Collection.
My time out west was winding down and we still hadn’t gotten on Long’s Peak (14,100’). Tony really wanted to show me Broadway ledges, an exposed, 4th-class traverse just to the left flank of the Diamond. We ended up getting much more than we paid for.
The route was called Alexander’s Chimney, which the guidebook had pegged at 5.6 or so, dependably damp with great rock; four pitches of climbing. We navigated the glacier at the bottom, slab-climbing our way up a conglomerate of bulletproof ice studded with rocks that had fallen a thousand feet and embedded therein. Once above that we committed to the chimney. I led so I could film from above.
The guidebook was right. It was wet. For better or worse, we found ourselves 50’ up an ice-choked chimney with no option to bail. Our cards were on the table. We foot-jammed through the ice cracks into the rushing water behind and scrambled upwards. When I’d find a somewhat stable perch, I’d turn to film. We finally cleared the ice and escaped out right, just as the guidebook had said…though we escaped a little too early, putting us off route. The important part to me was that we were in the sun and on solid rock.
We basked in the warmth to stop shivering and collect our wits. I led the rest of it, climbing the hardest pitch with my camera in the bag to keep it from swaying. To say the climbing was exposed would be an understatement. For several off-balanced moves there wasn’t much below our feet other than a gently stirring breeze. But the rock was solid and the moves were pretty fun.
In an interview a week before, I had asked Tony, “How steep will you go in your evolution from trail running to speed-soloing?” I was looking for an angle, in degrees. Was it vertical? Past vertical? As I recall, he shrugged off the question noting that wasn’t the reason for his pursuits. It was the aesthetics of the line, he said, moreso than the difficulty or overhang.
This route called his bluff. It was at his limit physically. That’s not a place you want to be free-soloing. To his credit, he delivered: methodically working through the moves. And that, I think, is the core of In the High Country. It is a life that is incomplete without the big mountains and it is a creativity and willingness to learn that world thoroughly, sometimes at peril. We were both grateful to top-out, run down, and bask in the safety of the parking lot.
In the High Country will be released in July 2013. The film will tour around the US and abroad hitting film festivals and running stores from New England to California, Poland to South Africa. To arrange a screening, contact the filmmaker through http://thewolpertinger.com
Filmmaker Joel Wolpert with Krupicka on the summit of Long's.
Capital Peak (14,130') gets the alpenglow.
