Anna Hazelnutt climbs the Walk of Life
2022 · 8 min · Trad · Anna Hazelnutt
An excerpt from Queen Lines, Alastair Lee's contribution to Brit Rock's 2022 collection, following Anna Hazlett on the first female ascent of James Pearson's the Walk of Life in Devon. Tom Randall co-stars. The full film also covers their day on Jonny Dawes's the Quarryman.
Lee is one of the best in British climbing film and it shows: the sea cliff, the light, and the sheer blankness of the slab are all shot properly rather than grabbed. Eight minutes is short, but it captures a genuine landmark ascent at the moment Hazlett's professional career was taking off. Hazlett posts it on her own channel with Lee's blessing.
Review
Eight minutes of Alastair Lee shooting a sea cliff properly, and that is enough. This is an excerpt from Queen Lines, Lee's film in Brit Rock's 2022 collection, following Anna Hazelnutt on the first female ascent of James Pearson's Walk of Life at Dyer's Lookout in Devon, with Tom Randall alongside.
This is for climbers who like slabs, and for anyone who wants to see one of the best British climbing filmmakers frame a blank 60-meter wall. Walk of Life is thin, delicate footwork on trad gear, given E12 on the first ascent in 2008 and settled at E9 6c since, and the film makes the blankness visible. Skip it if you want the full Queen Lines. The Quarryman day is not here, and the excerpt feels like one.
What works is the light and the exposure. Lee waits for the sea cliff to look the way it does and does not grab shots. What it leaves out is process. Eight minutes gives no sense of how many days the route took or what the gear was like at the crux, and on a slab that serious those details are the story.
Compare it with Hardest Trad Flash Ever, the Mammut film on Adam Ondra and Lexicon, which spends twenty-two minutes on gear, fear and the first ascensionist. That is the full treatment. This is a beautiful fragment, posted on Hazelnutt's own channel with Lee's blessing.
