Margo Hayes Makes History

A film about certainty, and Margo Hayes is a fascinating subject because she brings so much of it. In 2017, at nineteen, she became the first woman to climb 9a+ with La Rambla in Siurana. Seven months later she sent Biographie at Céüse, the route Chris Sharma freed in July 2001 that defined the grade, and Reel Rock follows the Biographie campaign.

This is for climbers who want to see a former gymnast's training discipline applied to a route that shut down elite climbers for decades: Hayes visualizing every move with her eyes closed at the base, then climbing it that way. It is also for anyone interested in Céüse's pockets, which the film shows brutally. Skip it if you want doubt. Hayes's calm is the subject and it is almost eerie.

What works is the framing of the second send as confirmation rather than sequel. La Rambla could have been a fluke and the film treats Biographie as the answer to that question. What it gets wrong is the history. Jean-Christophe Lafaille bolted the line in 1989, Arnaud Petit freed the lower half in 1996, Sharma linked it in 2001, and the film gives thirteen minutes to Hayes and almost none to that.

Margo Hayes Found Herself In Rifle is the origin, nine minutes on the canyon that made her. Watch that first. This film is the result, and it makes more sense knowing where the movement came from.