Stone Locals: Rediscovering the Soul of Climbing

The rare climbing film with almost no grades in it, and it is about belonging instead. As climbing exploded into gyms and the Olympics, Patagonia asked who was keeping the soul of the sport alive, and Mikey Schaefer and Cheyne Lempe answered with five portraits: a couple living out of a van in Yosemite, a route developer, and community builders for whom climbing is a way of organizing a life.

This is for anyone burned out on crushing who needs to remember why they started, and for non-climbers who want to understand what people are protecting when they talk about climbing culture. Seventy-two minutes, none wasted. Skip it if you want climbing footage. There is some, but the film is about stewardship and what climbers owe the places and people around them.

What works is the range of the five. The Yosemite van couple and the route developer are the strongest threads, and the film moves between them without ranking them. Schaefer, from Free Solo's camera team, shoots people as well as he shot walls. What it gets wrong is that five portraits in seventy-two minutes means some get less than they need, and the community-builder segments are the ones that feel short.

Can't Believe This Exists in New York City, Magnus Midtbø's gym scene film, is a single portrait in the same spirit with none of the polish. Stone Locals is the full argument. Watch it when the grades stop meaning anything to you.