Odyssee (Eiger North Face, 1400m, 8a+) with Tobias Suter and Cédric Lachat
2022 · 11 min · Trad, Big Wall, Alpine · Guillaume Broust
Guillaume Broust's raw edit follows Tobias Suter and Cédric Lachat up Odyssee, the 1400 metre, 8a+ line Roger Schaeli opened on the north face of the Eiger. It is an outtake sequence from the feature Swissway to Heaven, cut long and left mostly unadorned so the route itself does the talking. There is no narration arc here, just two climbers working a very large wall pitch by pitch. That is the appeal: eleven minutes of rope work, footwork and exposure on the most storied face in the Alps, shot by someone who clearly knows how to frame it. Watch it if you want the texture of a big Swiss multi-pitch day rather than a story about one.
Review
Eleven minutes of rope work, footwork and exposure on the most storied face in the Alps, and no narration to get in the way. Guillaume Broust's raw edit follows Tobias Suter and Cédric Lachat up Odyssee, the 1,400-meter 8a+ line Roger Schäli, Robert Jasper and Simon Gietl completed on the Eiger north face in 2015. It is an outtake sequence from Swissway to Heaven.
This is for climbers who want the texture of a big Swiss multi-pitch day rather than a story about one. The crux is a steep, water-streaked 8a+ pitch on the Rote Fluh that takes hours to lead, and the film gives it real time. Skip it if you need context. Nothing here tells you the route's history or why a free rock route on the Eiger matters.
What works is Broust's framing. He knows how to shoot a wall this big without losing the climbers in it. What it leaves out is Suter. He is on the rope with Lachat throughout and the film never tells you who he is or how the leads were shared.
Swissway to Heaven is the feature this was cut from, with the Eiger as one of five areas and interviews from the people who put the routes up. Watch that for the story. Watch this for the pitch that the story could not fit.
