Banff Mountain Film Festival @ Seymour Centre
15 May 2012
You should always go, because you get to see stuff like this:
I always aim to see it, because, well… it's methodone for my snowboarding addiction. Makes sure I keep a note to plan a trip and get onto the white stuff at some point during the year.
Just a few things I noticed this year, though. Except for Hanuman, quite a few of the films verged into championing what I'd say verges into the territory of dangerous, crazy type stuff like no line highlining (in the nude no less). While these things are amazing to watch and cool in their own right, I think celebrating the stuff is a bit dangerous. Even the people next to me in the seats were squirming when "Sketchy Andy" for instance missed a foothold or when his chute didn't open properly base jumping after highlining.
For me, despite the not-so-great quality of the movie though, I really loved Hanuman Airlines which details two of my new heroes, the Sherpas Babu and Lakha, who climbed Everest, took off in a paraglider from there, and then kayaked to the sea down the Ganges. Completely epic. I hope someone takes their story and makes it into a better doco. NAtGeo named them Adventurers of the Year last year and I do think they deserve it. Strangely, it's probably safer paragliding down from Everest when you've summited, so this film will probably change the way people get down from Everest forever once enough Sherpas get trained in paragilding.
Um, and don't even get me started about the guy who got taken by a crocodile on the Congo. Still not quite sure what that was doing in the lineup, since it was more extreme adventuring than anything to do with mountains.