The North Face presents: ALPHANE
2022 · 47 min · Bouldering, Documentary · Mellow
A North Face–backed film that follows a small team of climbers returning to Switzerland to establish and chase cutting-edge boulder first ascents. The central thread is Shawn Raboutou’s work on Alphane, shown in the edit as V17 and described in the source material as the first proposed 9a boulder in Switzerland and only the fourth such proposal worldwide. The film interleaves that project with other high-end problems — Trip to the moon (V14), Mystic River (V15), Squalo Bianco (V14), Fight Club (V14) and Dreamtime (V15) — and a short segment on a River Arête project. Ben Neilson filmed the piece; the roster includes Matty Hong, Jimmy Webb, Daniel Woods, Felipe Carmago, Giuliano Cameroni and Shawn Raboutou. The film matters as a record of bouldering at the upper end of the scale in Swiss rock: it shows projection work, sequence-reading and the on-the-rock adjustments that precede proposed grade milestones. For climbers interested in contemporary standards and in how elite boulderers approach problems, the edit collects attempts and finished ascents across a range of V14–V17 tests and preserves Shawn Raboutou’s Alphane ascent as a documented moment in the development of extreme bouldering grades.
Review
The wider cut of the Swiss season, and the one to watch if you want the whole cast. Shawn Raboutou's work on Alphane, the Chironico boulder he climbed on April 6, 2022 after roughly 25 sessions and that became one of the world's few V17s, is the central thread. Around it Ben Neilson's edit fits Trip to the Moon, Mystic River, Squalo Bianco, Fight Club and Dreamtime, with Matty Hong, Jimmy Webb, Daniel Woods, Felipe Camargo and Giuliano Cameroni climbing.
This is for climbers who want to see the top of bouldering as a scene rather than a person: repeats traded between friends, new lines beside old ones, the valley's benchmarks climbed for context. Skip it if you want Raboutou. He is quiet on camera and the ensemble structure gives him less time than the send deserves.
What works is Dreamtime. Fred Nicole's 2000 line, the first boulder proposed at V15, shown beside a new V17 twenty-two years later, is a whole history of the sport in one cut. Fight Club, Raboutou's V14 first ascent from the same trip, is the other sequence worth the runtime. What it gets wrong is the sprawl. Forty-seven minutes for six problems means none gets a full arc.
Alphane, Mellow's companion film, narrows to Raboutou alone and covers the V17 sessions in depth. Watch that for the ascent. Watch this for the company he kept while doing it.
