The Traditionalist - Chapter One

A film about questions, and it is better at asking them than answering. Jacopo Larcher returns to Yosemite Valley with a different aim than his usual big wall objectives: to learn the Valley's trad culture and history first hand. Andrea Cossu directs for The North Face, and the episode mixes on-route climbing with gear work, belaying and route reading.

This is for climbers interested in how experienced trad climbers approach route selection and protection strategy, and in what hard trad means when local ethics and history are in play. Skip it if you want action. Twenty-one minutes here is mostly conversation and context, and the hard attempt the film builds toward is not the point of this chapter.

What works is Larcher as a student. A climber who has freed Zodiac and Magic Mushroom asking the Valley what it thinks hard trad is could be false modesty, and it does not read that way. What it gets wrong is that a chapter one needs a chapter two, and this one ends with the questions still open.

Babsi Zangerl & Jacopo Larcher vs Zodiac is Larcher on El Cap as an executor, ten minutes, third free ascent of a 5.13d. That is Larcher doing. This is Larcher thinking. The two together are a better portrait than either alone.