Climbing in Little Cottonwood Canyon

Little Cottonwood Canyon, a glacial trough in the Wasatch Range east of Salt Lake City, offers the kind of compact, technical granite that produced Brent Barghahn’s route documented in the short film 100 feet of Kneebars: Slayer 5.13c. The canyon’s rock and routes reward inventive sequence as much as raw power, and this piece focuses on a single, peculiar sequence rather than a conventional line.

Slayer records roughly a hundred feet of kneebar shuffling under a roof, with a back‑wall crack that pinches to tips through an upside‑down flare crux. Andy Earl’s camera follows most of the route’s sequences but deliberately omits the crux itself, leaving viewers with a clear sense of the route’s idiosyncratic demands: sustained contact positions, unusual rest techniques, and the slow logistics of moving through tight, horizontal terrain.

Shot on Wasatch granite and released shortly before Barghahn’s first ascent, the film is concise and unsentimental—made for people who want to see how a long, specific kneebar sequence plays out on real rock rather than hear it explained.