Climbing
Beyond Impossible
Mark Jenkins, who has climbed and written about climbing for decades, ponders the audacious exploits and soulful purity of Marc-André Leclerc, brought to life in the new documentary The Alpinist.
If you’re not young and brash between 17 and 24 you might as well shoot yourself, because that’s when people are young and brash!” That’s Hevy Duty, hula-hoop virtuoso, twinkle-eyed raconteur and unofficial mayor of Canada’s Squamish rock climbing community, describing Marc-André Leclerc’s exuberant passion for climbing. “He belongs in a different era—he belongs in the ’80s or the ’70s, when it was wild,” expounds Hevy Duty in his heavy Yorkshire accent. “He’s a man out of his time.” These choice words capture the boundless joy and mortal intensity of The Alpinist, a moving new film about one of the youngest, boldest and best alpinists in the history of mountain climbing. The film debuted in theaters on September 10, 2021.
In the opening scene, we witness Leclerc soloing a vertical ridge of horrid rock and useless snow, a delicate, deathly dance that makes your palms sweat and your heart thump against your ribs. As the camera pans out, you realize the young climber is thousands of feet off the ground and a nauseous feeling settles into your stomach. Alex Honnold, star of the Oscar-winning film Free Solo and perhaps the most famous climber in the world today, is narrating the scene. “This kid Marc-André Leclerc. Canadian guy. Hardly anyone has heard of him because he’s so under the radar. He’s been doing all kinds of crazy alpine soloing. He basically just goes out and climbs some of the most difficult walls and alpine faces in the world. The most challenging things that anyone has ever climbed.”
This sounds like hyperbole, but it is not. In 2015, after Leclerc, then 22, made the first solo ascent of the Corkscrew on Cerro Torre, Patagonia legend Rolando Garibotti called it “an ascent of earth- shifting proportions.” In the film, after Leclerc solos Mount Robson, the holiest and scariest mountain in the Canadian Rockies, veteran expedition leader Jim Elzinga states that Leclerc is “doing things people thought could never be done. He’s redefining what’s possible.” Gray-haired Barry Blanchard, who pioneered extreme alpine routes several decades ago, proclaims, “This is the evolution of alpinism and it’s happening right now in our backyard. And it’s happening with this young guy.”
“It wouldn’t be a solo to me if somebody was there.”
Given Leclerc’s otherworldly athletic ability and samurai-like equanimity in the face of death, The Alpinist could have easily been yet another bad outdoor documentary. You know what I’m talking about—head-banging punk rock laid over some superbody with a chalk bag pulling a roof, or mountain bikers flying down hillsides to the howl of heavy metal, or snowboarders hucking cliffs to yet another melodramatic soundtrack. No wonder mainstream film critics have largely ignored the genre since its inception. There’s a lot of content that would constitute a killer Instagram post but doesn’t cut it as a long-form film. For too long documentaries in this space have lacked character development, history, a real narrative. They’ve lacked storylines full of irony or hypocrisy, doubt or nuance, betrayal or hatred or all the other dark things that make us human. I have been waiting for outdoor documentaries to grow up for 25 years. Finally, a few outdoor films have transcended the traditional action-focused limitations of the genre. Touching the Void, even with the reenactments; Grizzly Man, even with the grizzliest audio of any documentary ever; Meru, with the stunning cinematography of Renan Ozturk; The Dawn Wall, a film that finally talks about the honor of true friendship; and of course Free Solo, which single-handedly brought the world of climbing to the world of moviegoers. These films laid the foundation for The Alpinist, which plumbs the depths of a climber’s craft and creative soul better than any of them.
Leclerc is the protagonist of the feature film, The Alpinist.
© Scott Serfas
The Alpinist does cleanly and quietly what all great films do: It tells a story. In this case, the story of a driven young man drawn inexorably to climb immense, ice-plastered peaks. Yes, we watch him solo unimaginable lines, ropeless and as preternaturally calm as the clouds beneath his boots, but we also see him when he was a dorky, gangly kid enraptured by the outdoors. We see him lost and loaded on acid, tripping into a world he barely escapes (and only because of his girlfriend). We see his boyish visage covered in blood after a big fall. We see him living in a stairwell like a proper dirtbag, his curly brown hair so big it looks like an Afro. We see him shy and inarticulate in the hot lights of new attention and nascent fame. Most importantly, we see Marc-André through the voices of his girlfriend, renowned climber Brette Harrington; his mother, Michelle Kuipers; and a host of famous Canadian alpinists—not only Blanchard and Elzinga but also Jon Walsh and Will Gadd. Even the greatest mountaineer of the 20th century, Reinhold Messner, has a few portentous words: “Solo climbing on a high level is an expression of art. . .maybe half of the leading solo climbers of all times died in the mountains. This is tragic and it’s difficult to defend.” In The Alpinist we get to know, if not fully understand, not only a climber but a human being—his strengths and his weaknesses, his desires and his derangements.
In The Alpinist we get to know not only a climber but a human being.
One of the first things you learn about Marc-André is that he is deeply camera-shy and doesn’t give a fuck about fame. He truly is a throwback, as Hevy Duty says, to an earlier age. Believe it or not, there was a time when top climbers didn’t tell their followers what they had for lunch. Pre-social media, you shared your stories with your actual friends, preferably around a campfire. Before IG or Facebook, on an expedition, you spent your evenings with your team talking about life and logistics and weather. On my last few big trips, with the modern magic of a satellite modem, teammates spent their evenings sending images of themselves that masterfully massage their public personas and completely misrepresent their actual feelings. Refreshingly, Marc-André couldn’t give a shit. He’d solo something heinous and not tell a soul.
Indeed, his naive disregard for the media made making a movie about him problematic for directors Peter Mortimer and Nick Rosen. A perfect example is when Leclerc solos Mount Robson without telling them. When they finally get him on the phone, Marc-André explains “it wouldn’t be a solo to me if somebody was there.” It ain’t easy to make a film about a man who doesn’t care what the world thinks. He’s like an Olympian who performs in his own remote gymnasium, without a single spectator, doing moves no other human can do.
Only a handful of elite climbers can free solo alpine routes.
© Jonathan Griffith
In The Alpinist, Mortimer and Rosen discuss their frustration with Leclerc and his cavalier attitude toward their film, but they also admire him for his singularity of vision. “Marc was out there every day since he was a teenager,” Mortimer says in a phone interview. “If you looked at his climbing résumé, you’d think he must be 75 years old. He can’t resist the pull of the mountains. When a weather window opens, he has to be out there. He was hungry. He was on a vision quest. It was so pure, so simple, so stripped down. He didn’t have time or interest in thinking about the media or about our film. We knew we were capturing Marc-André when his potential was becoming his reality.”
Leclerc typically kept only three people in the loop: his mom, his sister Bridget and Harrington. They all totally got him. What he was and why. He would text them from the summit of one peak after another just to let them know he was safe. He was making history and he didn’t really care if anyone else knew about it.
“Some of the climbs he did were changing the face of alpinism,” says his mother, Michelle Kuipers, in a phone interview. “He was enough of a climbing historian to know that, but he had a total lack of interest in being famous.”
Alex Honnold soloed on granite in Free Solo and Leclerc on snow and ice.
© Jonathan Griffith
Naturally, no film can capture the whole of a human—we are all too messy and complex for that—so talking with Kuipers gave me insight into how Leclerc became who he was. Growing up, money was tight, “but it’s all about perception,” Kuipers says. “We focused on what we did have. There are an endless number of things you can do without money, you just have to activate your imagination.” Without a car, the family walked everywhere. When it was raining and cold, Kuipers would create a story that imagined the children as intrepid explorers escaping someplace dangerous or on their way to rescue a friend.
From the start, Harrington and Leclerc were inseparable.
Marc-André was a voracious reader and knew the 1953 tale of Hillary and Norgay on Everest from the age of 4. “He had a fascination with mountains from the beginning,” says Kuipers. Home-schooled from third through sixth grade—“Marc-André would drive his sister crazy by talking in rhymes all day”—then skipping seventh, Marc-André was intellectually and physically precocious but socially awkward. He worked construction with his dad at 14 to pay for his climbing gear. At 15, he screwed eyebolts into the beams in his basement bedroom and started hanging from his ice tools. As a youth, Kuipers says, “he spent a lot of uncomfortable nights out in the mountains, alone.” He became competent in how to deal with difficult situations.
Leclerc liked to solo ascents that he had never even seen before.
© Jonathan Griffith
In the film, we see Leclerc trapped in a snowstorm in Patagonia, keeping his head and downclimbing to safety. We see him soloing the stunning Stanley Headwall in the Canadian Rockies, hanging precariously but precisely from his tools, the picks hooked on mere millimeters of rock. His sangfroid is spellbinding.
But then so is his love for his girlfriend, Brette Harrington. From the earliest days of their relationship, Harrington and Leclerc were inseparable. They lived in the stairwell together, they lived in the woods together; they climbed and they climbed and they climbed.
“Marc is interested in intense experiences,” Harrington says laconically in the film, “living to the fullest.” When I speak to her by phone, she acknowledges that she was the same way, and this mutual need for life in extremis explains, at least in part, why they fell so deeply in love. “We matched on intensity,” she says. “The most meaningful experiences of my life are the climbs I’ve done in poor weather, in extreme places. I like that sort of thing.”
Leclerc was the same. “Marc-André arrived in this world enraged to be in the body of a helpless infant,” says Kuipers. “He needed to start moving immediately. As soon as he could crawl, we were both a lot happier.”
Notably, however, when Leclerc became a climber, this willful rambunctiousness did not translate into a disregard for objective hazard like avalanches and icefalls. Leclerc would study every aspect of a mountain to determine the safest possible line. He would check the weather incessantly, calculating exactly how many hours before the next storm and how many hours it would take him to get up and down. As he says in the movie, “you can control what you’re doing, but you can’t control what the mountain does.” Kuipers recalls how one day Marc-André bicycled to Mount Slesse, soloed it three times by three different routes, but then called to get a ride home because he didn’t want to bicycle across a narrow bridge during rush hour. “He was not a casual risk taker,” says Kuipers. “He was very clear on how much he disliked objective risk. Overhanging seracs, bad weather—he preferred not to take those chances.”
Leclerc became the first climber to solo the Emperor Face of Mount Robson.
© Scott Serfas
Both Harrington and Kuipers feel the film does an excellent job at capturing the irrepressible spirit of Marc-André Leclerc. Still, Brette believes The Alpinist doesn’t fully express Marc-André’s technical mastery of rock climbing. “Marc put his whole life into rock climbing. Over 90 percent of the time we were climbing with a rope. Marc valued all aspects of climbing—aid climbing, ice climbing, alpine climbing—and wanted to be really well balanced.” It wasn’t just about mixed climbing or soloing: “Marc could climb 5.13 slab!”
Kuipers agrees. “Yes, Marc-André came into climbing with a lot of natural skill, but to get to where he did required years of single-minded dedication. I remember him practicing clipping a carabiner over and over.” Leclerc practiced his craft hour after hour, week after week, month after month, year after year. As he pulled off bolder ascents, people expressed dismay at the juxtaposition of his age and his ability (most alpinists take decades to get that good), but his mom was not surprised. “What is it that they say, 10,000 hours? Marc-André did that.”
Leclerc allows us to view a physical, intellectual and emotional awakening of the human spirit.
This is self-evident watching him climb in The Alpinist. Whether he’s rock climbing or ice climbing or mixed climbing, his movements are graceful and fluid. No jerky jumps, no too-long reaches, no desperation. There’s an almost slothlike slowness, like a modern dancer doing a difficult maneuver. (I remember a mentor of mine telling me that to climb fast, you must climb slow.) Experience creates confidence, confidence creates a calm mind, a calm mind creates a calm body, a calm body is capable of astonishing climbing.
You can see Alex Honnold climbing with this kind of self-possession in Free Solo, but there is a deep chasm of difference: Honnold is climbing on solid granite; Leclerc is climbing on the most fickle of substances, ice and snow, and beneath this fragile layer, the kitty litter they call rock in the Canadian Rockies. If free soloing hard rock routes is only for a handful of the most skilled climbers in the world, free soloing hard alpine routes, with the constant risk of avalanche, serac collapse, changing conditions and little chance of retreat, is in the welkin of the gods and goddesses.
Leclerc is known for his alpine ascents, but he was also skilled on rock.
© Rick Wheater
Furthermore, Marc-André Leclerc did his solo ascents onsight. This means he climbed routes he’d never even sunk his ice axes in before. Whereas Honnold practiced the route he soloed on El Cap for Free Solo again and again, with a rope. Leclerc would show up below a massive mountain face and set off into the unknown. He didn’t know what he would encounter. Would the ice be sticky and “thunker” or hollow and treacherous. Would the snow be “styrofoam” or bottomless mush. Nothing had been practiced. Nothing was wired or dialed.
This style of climbing is like running a river without scouting the rapids, not knowing when the next falls will come, knowing only that you will be called upon to use every technique you’ve ever learned, executed with complete composure, just to survive. Onsight free solo alpine climbing is the absolute tip of the arrow in the variegated world of climbing. There is no margin of error. There is no net. There is nothing but you. Imagine you are an archer, and you must hit the bull’s-eye with every arrow, or be executed. This is onsight alpine free soloing.
Leclerc atop the famed Northeast Buttress of Mount Slesse.
© Clark Fyans
Because it is so extreme, this movie would be impossible to understand if the narrative were not intimate, open and comprehensive. Without knowing who Marc-André is, the layperson would assume he was a madman. Without insight into who he was—his upbringing; Brette, his great love; his mother’s nurturing; his vision, humility and adolescent quirkiness—the casual viewer might see Leclerc as a reckless adrenaline junkie. Which is exactly what he was not. This is the misconception of most nonclimbers. They believe climbers to be thrill- seekers, daredevils, heedless heathens. In truth, adrenaline is the enemy of good climbing. The goal is not to be flushed with fear but just the opposite. If you are frightened, your reptilian amygdala, one of the most primitive parts of your brain, takes control and your cerebral cortex is left out of the decision- making. Naturally, this is when you do stupid things. A large part of climbing is learning how to control your fear. Indeed, the very best climbers learn to shut off their fear like flicking a light switch. They are in the moment, of the moment, unbounded before the universe.
Thanks to the film’s stunning cinematography (shot from a helicopter with a Cineflex), viewers will feel the fear they can’t believe Leclerc is not feeling. The vertigo will blow you out of your theater seat. You are right there beside him, clinging to an icy face, then the camera gradually pulls back, further and further, and the flesh-and-blood human shrinks until he is lost to the enormity and malevolence of the black-and-white wall. If you are a person who can’t look down from the top of a skyscraper, you’ll have to close your eyes often.
Leclerc's story is a physical and intellectual view into the human spirit.
© Scott Serfas
Late in the film, mountaineering historian Bernadette McDonald, author of some of the finest biographies of climbers from around the world, remarks that when you “look at the history of alpinism, climbing was a form of freedom. Physical freedom and philosophical freedom. And the ultimate experience of freedom was to climb alone.”
Right before the very end of the film—the actual coda is a tragic plot twist best left unsaid here—as we witness Leclerc pulling onto the summit of an ice-encrusted tower, alone, we hear the voice of his mother saying with hope and pride: “A lot of us live our lives thinking of the things we’d like to do, or the adventures we’d like to have, but we hold back. That’s what really stands out to me about Marc-André’s journey. What is it that you would do if you were able to overcome the things you see as limitations or the things you’re afraid of? What would you do?”
The Alpinist will leave you dumbfounded by Leclerc’s prowess and nerve—climbers will be talking about this movie for years to come—but, unlike other good outdoor films, this is not the heart of this story. The Alpinist is the portrait of an artist as a young man. Like Stephen Dedalus, James Joyce’s literary alter ego, Leclerc allows us to witness an awakening—physical, intellectual and emotional—of the human spirit. Marc-André, through ardor and intensity, becomes who he dreams of becoming right before our eyes.
Climbing to the top
