​Movie of the Month - The Dawn Wall

“Tommy Caldwell believes difficult journeys, with little chance for success, teach him the most.”

As a student, I spent a summer working as a lifeguard at a children’s camp in northern California. Often in the pre-internet days, little information about a destination was available before a trip - The Lonely Planet was about it! But that was normal in the 90s and besides, I was looking forward to the adventure and being “off the grid”. This was an opportunity for discovery!

On a weekend off, we took to the road to explore Yosemite National Park, one of America’s most famous. The best part about not having devoured every TripAdvisor review in advance is that we could experience the wonder and magic in the moment. We arrived “neutral”, with no expectations or pre-conceptions that could be dashed or exceeded.

I was immediately shocked by the immensity and apparent sheer face of El Capitan, the granite rock presiding over the surrounding landscape. The monolith rises nearly 1000m from its base to the summit along its tallest vertical side. As we stood at the bottom, climbers were almost invisible to us on its face, leaving us feeling tiny and insignificant, yet inspired at the same time.

Fast forward 25 years and I saw the trailer for The Dawn Wall on Netflix. I was intrigued to watch the documentary, which charts the story of Tommy Caldwell and his climbing partner, Kevin Jorgeson, as they scaled the face of El Capitan in 2015, but you don’t need to be a climbing fanatic to be hooked from the start.

The key themes from the movie are hard-hitting and inspiring, not unlike the giant rock itself. On top of the climb, this is a story about:

• Resilience – the pair work on their mental and physical strength to give themselves the best chance of achieving their goal – ultimately, they never give up!
• Friendship – camping halfway up a rock face for days at a time over a period of months, the pair develop a bond of friendship that allows them to be honest and safe with each other, clearly wanting what’s best for the other and setting each other up for success
• Trust and teamwork – their relationship allows them to rely upon and be relied upon, working together to find ways to achieve a shared goal

• Recognising then filtering out noise / distraction - when external factors, such as the media, start to distract them, they make choices to allow them to re-focus on what they set out to achieve
• The importance of planning – although success comes at end of the relatively short expedition, the planning and preparation involved outweighs the climb by years.

As a viewer, I found myself wanting the men to succeed because they had worked so hard – they deserved it!

It also made me realise that by bringing those key ingredients together, we can achieve amazing things in our professional and personal contexts, (without setting foot on a mountain!). It has inspired me to identify where I need more of these elements in my life. For example, how can I develop my resilience and where can I eliminate some of the noise over the next 12 months?

I would highly recommend the movie – you can take it on face value or use it to leverage some of your deeper thinking to kick-start a successful 2022. Enjoy!