ROCK TRIP | The North Face
2025 · 33 min · Sport Climbing, Trad, Documentary · The North Face
In March 2024 nine The North Face athletes gathered in and around Valle Encantado, near San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina, to climb, bolt new lines and explore the granite spires that punctuate the valley. The film is assembled and directed by Matty Hong and intercuts polished cinematography by Mike Call and Ben Nielsen with on-the-ground iPhone footage shot by Cedar Wright. The edits make room for process as much as performance: bolting, route-finding and low-angle approaches appear alongside climbing sequences rather than being edited out of the story. The value of the piece is documentary rather than athletic spectacle. It records a short, collaborative trip—featuring Matty Hong, Shawn Raboutou, Sam Elias, Felipe Camargo, Angie Scarth-Johnson, Brette Harrington, Cedar Wright, Matt Segal and Caro North—and shows how a mixed international team exchanges techniques and local knowledge while developing new sport lines and scrambling up spires in Valle Encantado. Technical details in the credits (cinematography, music direction) and the mix of phone and cinema cameras give the film a practical, climber’s-eye frame that will interest viewers who care about route development, group dynamics and place-based climbing culture.
Review
A group film that makes room for process, and the iPhone footage is what saves it from being a brand reel. In March 2024 nine North Face athletes gather around Valle Encantado near Bariloche, Argentina, to climb, bolt new lines and explore the granite spires. Matty Hong directs and intercuts Mike Call and Ben Nielsen's polished cinematography with Cedar Wright's phone.
This is for climbers who care about route development and group dynamics. Bolting, route finding and low-angle approaches appear alongside the climbing rather than being cut, and the cast, Hong, Shawn Raboutou, Sam Elias, Felipe Camargo, Angie Scarth-Johnson, Brette Harrington, Wright, Matt Segal and Caro North, is a wide spread of styles sharing local knowledge. Skip it if you want a single ascent. Nine athletes in thirty-three minutes means nobody gets a project.
What works is the mixed cameras. The phone footage has the tone of a trip and the cinema footage has the scale of the spires, and Hong's edit lets them argue. What it gets wrong is that the film never picks a subject. It is a documentary about a trip, and trips are only stories if something happens.
Abaporu is Camargo alone, one route, one idea, thirteen minutes. Rock Trip has him as one of nine. If you want to know what these athletes are like as a group, this is the film. If you want to know what any of them is like as a climber, look elsewhere.
