Jeff Lowe's Clean Wall: Touchstone Wall
2022 · 48 min · Trad, Big Wall · NC514
The first part of Jeff Lowe's Clean Wall, a climbing film built around the Touchstone Wall in Zion, the sandstone big wall that has long been a proving ground for clean technique in the American desert. Lowe made the case, in print and on rock, that a wall could be climbed well without leaving hammer scars behind it, and this is that argument in moving pictures. It comes from Lowe's own DVD catalogue and looks it: an instructional-adjacent wall film from an earlier era, transferred and posted rather than restored. The value is in watching a first-generation practitioner work a real route at length. Worth an hour if you care where clean aid and desert big-wall ethics came from.
Review
Instructional-adjacent, transferred rather than restored, and still worth an hour if you care where clean aid came from. This is the first part of Jeff Lowe's Clean Wall, built around the Touchstone Wall in Zion, 820 feet and nine pitches of Navajo sandstone that Ron Olevsky first climbed solo in 1977 with fixed gear placed deliberately so nobody would need to hammer.
This is for climbers interested in desert big-wall ethics and for anyone who wants to watch a first-generation practitioner work a real route at length. Lowe made the case, in print and on rock, that a wall could be climbed well without leaving scars, and this is that argument in moving pictures. Skip it if you need modern production. It comes from Lowe's DVD catalogue and looks like it.
What works is the patience. Forty-eight minutes on one route means you see the placements, not a montage of them, and on soft sandstone that matters. What it gets wrong is everything a modern viewer expects: pacing, sound, and any framing of why Touchstone Wall mattered beyond Lowe's own say-so. Mike Anderson and Rob Pizem freed the route in 2006 and the film has nothing to say about that.
The Man Who Redefined Climbing, the Metanoia documentary, is the film to watch for Lowe the person. This is Lowe the teacher, and the less charismatic of the two, but it is the one where you actually learn something about aid.
