Vietnam’s HARDEST Deep Water Solos | ft. Kyra Condie & Tim Emmett

A teacher and student film, and the pairing is the reason it works. Tim Emmett, who helped put deep water soloing in Ha Long Bay on the map in the early 2000s, coaches Kyra Condie, a competition and bouldering specialist, through Lightning Crack, a 5.13 on one of the bay's limestone towers with a plunge into open water as the only protection.

This is for climbers who want to see how movement and fall management translate from gym and boulder settings to sustained limestone over water. The film documents the specific fears of climbing high above a landing you cannot see, and Emmett's talk from the boat is practical rather than motivational. Skip it if you want Emmett climbing. He is the coach here, and the eighteen minutes belong to Condie.

What works is the drone. Wide shots of the karst towers set against close footage of Condie on the crack make the exposure legible, and the thousands of formations in the bay give the film a setting no other deep water solo film here has. What it gets wrong is the route's history. No first ascent, no context for why Lightning Crack is among the bay's harder lines.

Es Pontàs: The First Ascent is the deep water solo standard, seven minutes of Chris Sharma on a Mallorca arch. That film is about the discipline at its hardest. This one is about learning it, and I would show it to anyone before their first day over water.