Climbing has always punched above its weight as a storytelling subject, and this summer the format is spread across a screen, a paperback and a games console. Alpinist magazine's latest reviews round up three releases that ask the same question from very different angles: why do some people push themselves to the edge of the world, and what does it cost them?
First up is The Dark Wizard, HBO's four-part docuseries about Dean Potter, the legendary free soloist, BASE jumper and highliner who died in Yosemite in 2015. Producer Sender Films blends archive footage of Potter's most audacious feats with interviews from figures like climber Timmy O'Neill, who sums him up neatly: blessed and cursed at once. The real revelation is the journals. Potter kept much of his inner turmoil private, and the filmmakers' use of diary excerpts reveals a more vulnerable figure than the public provocateur — someone, as the review notes, who might have been horrified to see his private writing aired. Even viewers who never knew Potter's name will find a study of ambition and alienation that lingers.
On the page, Gabriel Tallent follows up his bestselling My Absolute Darling with Crux, a coming-of-age novel set around Joshua Tree National Park. Teenagers Dan and Tamma graduate from dumpster-dived trad gear and highball bouldering into the serious world of roped climbing, all while navigating poverty, family abandonment and uncertain futures. Tallent writes exposure two ways at once — the vertigo of stone beneath your feet, and the loss of the feeling that someone would catch you if you fell. It's a climbing novel that doubles as social commentary, and it sounds like a proper page-turner for anyone who has ever tied into a rope in the desert.
For a hands-on option, The Game Bakers have released Cairn, a video game where you play Aava, a professional climber chasing the first ascent of the fictional Mt. Kami. It's a survival-climbing hybrid: you manage hunger and thirst, scavenge supplies, and control Aava limb by limb, reading her breathing and shaky legs through the controller to judge fatigue. The review is candid about the game's darker theme — climbing as compulsion rather than escape — but concludes the mechanics genuinely capture the feel of the sport, glitches and all.
Why should travellers care? Because these three works double as motivation. The Dark Wizard will have you eyeing a Yosemite road trip; Crux might nudge you toward Joshua Tree's crack climbs; Cairn scratches the alpine itch on a rest day. They also make excellent pre-trip or flight-day material for anyone whose holidays revolve around mountains. If you're the kind of traveller who plans routes around granite rather than beaches, this trio offers inspiration, cautionary tales and a way to keep the stoke alive between trips — no crampons required.
Whether you'd rather watch, read or play, the edge is closer than you think. Full reviews appear in Alpinist 94, out now.
Alpinist
