Best Yosemite Climbing Films

Reel Rock's 2011 record of Alex Honnold free soloing The Phoenix, a dead vertical 5.13a crack above Cascade Falls. The hardest solo of its time.

Peter Mortimer's behind the scenes account of the same day, and how you film a solo without getting in the way.

Dean Potter on The Rostrum in 2008, ropeless, with a parachute instead. Seven minutes on the Alien Roof finish.

Forty five meters of stemming up a Valley corner that steepens the higher you go. Randy Leavitt's 5.13d test piece, nine minutes.

Sharma and Tommy Caldwell on a Leaning Tower project, and Sharma's second ascent of Everything Is Karate, 5.14c/d.

Jordan Cannon and Sam Stroh on Leaning Tower's steep 5.13d free line. A single high stakes day on one of the Valley's least visited walls.

Taylor Martin rope soloing a new route on Sentinel Rock over July and August 2025, and recording it herself.

Jacopo Larcher comes back to the Valley to learn its trad culture and history rather than to chase a big wall objective.

A portrait of Dean Potter's life inside the Valley: climbing, slacklining, highlining, and the free ascents that anchored it.

Patagonia's five portraits of people keeping climbing's culture alive, with the Valley's dirtbag tradition at its center.

Nicolas Favresse and Sean Villanueva, three weeks into learning trad, free Freerider in a five day push. The origin story of the Belgian big wall crew.

Thirty days in the Valley working toward a free ascent of The Nose. On the El Cap list too, but it belongs here.

The 1983 first ascent of Wings of Steel and the Valley locals who tried to stop it. As much about Camp 4 politics as about the wall.

Ben Ditto and Mason Earle return to a line they equipped in Tuolumne's high country in 2012. The Valley's summer neighbour.