Creative

New Documentary Release!

Watch my short film, Baiyansi: A Story of Big Wall Climbing in China

Well, a story I have wanted to tell for a long time is finally here! The story behind one of China's best, up-and-coming big wall destinations, Baiyansi （白岩寺）, was one I wanted to share for years.

What started as a small passion project morphed into a much bigger story of wild adventures, scary moments, and the creation of something new!

Dane and I set off into the unknown back in 2018 with a mission. We loved the adventurous style of multipitch and big wall climbing and had lived in China's Yunnan province for years. We had always been surprised by how little of those routes we could find around us, often needing to travel hundreds–or even thousands–of miles to find the terrain and routes we so eagerly wanted to climb. And we were not alone. Friends and fellow climbers would always ask where they could go to have a big day out. So one day, we decided: "What if we found a wall and created those routes ourselves?"

This is the story of how we pulled off that improbable project, one that has fortunately outlasted our time living in one of the most beautiful places on Earth. It was a labor of love that we and a tight-knit group of climbers and developers put forth to create something that the next generation could take and carry forward to new places. Ultimately, it is a story about community and the things we do for each other. This project was cathartic for me. I needed to recall my time living in Yunnan, a period in my life that was so formative to who I became as a climber, yet a era of life I feared was slowly fading into the fog of increasingly distant memory. This short film was an attempt to crystallize those memories for me and hopefully share in some of the adventurous times with all of you.

Help support new routing and climbing access at Baiyansi (and in China writ large) through buying my guidebook on my website! Both hard copies and e-copies are available. All of my projects, whether guidebooks, films, or new routes, have been independently powered, and they can only come into the world with community support! You can see completed projects and upcoming ones on my site, too.