Amity Warme climbs Book of Hate 5.13d
2024 · 9 min · Trad, Sport Climbing · Scarpa
Book of Hate is forty-five meters of strenuous stemming up a corner in Yosemite Valley that steepens the higher you go. Randy Leavitt made the first ascent, and the route has stood since as a test piece of hard stem climbing: mostly bolted, but dependent on the smallest of trad gear through the overhanging crux near the top. This SCARPA short follows Amity Warme's ascent of it, shot by Samuel Crossley with additional camera from Max Buschini.
The detail that reframes the whole nine minutes is one she only learned afterward: she climbed it with a fully ruptured A2 pulley in her middle finger. Watch it once for the movement, which is all opposition and body tension rather than pulling, and again knowing what her hand was doing. Short, well shot, and specific about a style of climbing that rarely gets filmed properly.
Review
Nine minutes that reward a second viewing, and the reason is one sentence at the end. Amity Warme climbs Book of Hate, Randy Leavitt's 45-meter 5.13d stemming corner in Yosemite Valley, and only afterward learns she did it with a fully ruptured A2 pulley in her middle finger.
This is for climbers who care about a style that rarely gets filmed properly. Book of Hate is opposition and body tension rather than pulling, mostly bolted but dependent on small trad gear through the overhanging crux near the top, and Samuel Crossley's camera shows the corner steepening as it rises. Skip it if you want a project story with failures. The film is the ascent and little else.
What works is the specificity. You can see the stemming get harder as the angle changes, and you can see where the gear goes. Max Buschini's second camera helps. What it gets wrong is that the pulley reveal comes too late to change how you watched the climb. Put the fact up front and every move reads differently. I would watch it twice: once for the movement, once knowing what her hand was doing.
Anna Hazelnutt climbs Third Millennium is the same length, the same no-frills send format, and a Tommy Caldwell sport route rather than a Leavitt corner. Both are good. Book of Hate has the better route and the better story, even if it tells it in the wrong order.
