Midway through Sasha DiGiulian’s new eighty-minute HBO sports documentary, Here to Climb, she expresses one of the film’s major tensions: “You have to be selfish,” she says. Early in her climbing, DiGiulian’s mom acted as her belayer so she could spend time on the wall and not waste time belaying other people. Thanks to support like this—and personal dedication—DiGiulian became one of America’s most accomplished sport climbers, sending some of the hardest sport routes around the world, and she recently ticked off her 50th 5.14 route. But when she shifted from short sport climbs to making first female ascents of longer, multi-pitch routes, she found that focusing on herself wasn’t enough. “Big wall climbing is about teamwork and about partnership,” professional climber Cedar Wright says in the film. DiGiulian, admittedly, needed to learn how to climb with others.

The main narrative of Here to Climb, which debuts June 18 on HBO, uses DiGiulian and Lynn Hill’s 2023 ascent of the three-pitch route called “Queen Line” on the Flatiron’s Maiden to demonstrate DiGiulian’s development as a climber and teammate.

DiGiulian grew up with a poster hanging on her wall of Hill making the first free ascent of the Nose of El Capitan with the caption, “It Goes Boys!” And, in the film, Hill assumes the role of mentor and DiGiulian’s foil. Though they both stand at the forefront of climbing in their respective eras, the two women developed vastly different understandings of what it means to be an elite climber. Hill came from a time before social media, where even groundbreaking ascents, like Hill’s first free ascent of the Nose, were understated. Digiulian, meanwhile, a late-generation millennial, discusses her focus on monetization and hyping her ascents. “I took a very business-forward approach to my career,” DiGiulian says, which allowed her to move from a skilled climber to a professional who capitalized on her social media reach.

“She’s the OG millennial influencer pro climber,” Wright says.

But social media work comes at a price. The film discusses her struggles with her body while operating both as a performance athlete and as an influencer. DiGiulian describes her experience of being an 18-year-old 94-pound comp climber with body dysmorphia and then, gradually, finding comfort in her own skin. She talks about the criticism she received from an Agent Provocateur campaign, where she climbed in lingerie to show a correlation between strength and femininity. The film also examines the fat shaming she experienced online, though the film avoids naming Joe Kinder and the specifics of the event.

Though DiGiulian does note that this “was an incredibly traumatizing period,” the fact that the cyberbullying occupies a mere three minutes of the film might leave some viewers might be left to wonder just how much these things have affected her. Lynn Hill, however, notes that, DiGiulian is “really good at compartmentalizing her emotions,” saying that she was shocked to observe a calm, young DiGiulian giving a slide show not long after the death of her father in 2014.

The film delves a little into the negative impacts of DiGiulian’s relentless drive, however. During one of her attempts on Pico Cao Grande, a volcanic plug on Sao Tome, an island south of Nigeria, DiGiulian rips off a large section of rock, which nearly hits her photographer. After that, the team questions her motives and her acceptance of risk for others. After nonstop rain, DiGiulian and her partner, Angela VanWiemeersch, reassess their objective and bail, one of the few retreats in DiGiulian’s long career.

As with her struggles with social media and body image, her climbing failures and difficulties are only briefly portrayed, but candor leaks into the film.

“I feel like with every big thing she’s done, there’s always a weird asterisk,” Alex Honnold notes early in the film, referring to the significant scrutiny that DiGiulian’s ascents have seen from the climbing community.

After her 2021 ascent of Logical Progression, a long multi-pitch bolted route in Chihuahua, Mexico, DiGiulian that her partner didn’t successfully free one of the crux pitches and that DiGiulian top roped it, which adds a small asterisk to the ascent. Drama has also surrounded DiGiulian’s first female ascents, as with a public tiff in 2014 (detailed in an ) she had with Nina Caprez over which one of them should have the right to rig and film the first female ascent of Orbayu, a 5.14 big wall on Spain’s Naranjo de Bulnes. While the film alludes to another controversy on the Eiger, it glosses over the details.

In addition to the Lynn Hill partnership, the film also focuses on DiGiulian’s experience with chronic hip dysplasia, for which she underwent five surgeries in 2020. She had planned for Logical Progression to be a last hurrah before the surgeries, but before she could arrive, Nolan Smythe, one of the film crew riggers, died while fixing ropes for DiGiulian’s team. The death caused DiGiulian to retreat from the climb and instead push forward with her hip surgery. She struggled through her recovery, fixating on getting back on rock and . “She needs something that’s just on the ragged edge of insanity,” her partner Erik Osterholm said of DiGiulian’s drive to get back to her pre-surgery objective. Her dedication saw her back to Mexico and up the route.

Here to Climb’s arc moves quickly through DiGiulian’s problems, offering a superficial glimpse into what drives her. That’s easy criticism, though. It both minimizes the film’s breathtaking climbing footage and doesn’t do justice to the fact that DiGiulian speaks with vulnerability about her career. All in all, it’s an enlightening look at professional climbing.

Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg directed the HBO sports documentary Here to Climb from Red Bull Media House. The film debuts Tuesday, June 18 at 9pm ET/PT on HBO.

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Loved by many for being a rowdy, charming, and encouraging, and for channeling a pirate’s attitude, Ammon passed away on February 18, 2023 in Moab, Utah at age 52. With over 75 ascents of El Capitan, nearly two dozen speed records of big wall routes in Yosemite and in Zion national parks, and first ascents of hard aid climbs across the U.S., Ammon made a huge impact on big-wall climbing. Besides his extensive BASE jumping resume and innate boldness, Ammon’s friends and family remember the nearly six-foot man with the earrings, the narrow face, and the wide grin for his kindness, his support, and his ability to authentically and unapologetically be himself. Ammon lived a life of volume.

Born in June of 1970 as the third of five kids to Ron, a construction worker, and Joan, a stay-at-home mom, Ammon grew up in a Mormon family in Saint George, Utah. “He almost killed himself every year of his life,” said his brother Gabe McNeely, who is 15 months older. Ammon dodged death from the start after being born breech. At 2 years old, he hopped into a raging section of the Colorado River. His uncle dove in and rescued him. As he grew, danger followed Ammon, or he followed it. He started climbing young, getting high in trees in Saint George and scrambling up 5.6 routes in Snow Canyon state park. He sometimes climbed a hundred-foot radio tower near town. “He would walk along the top,” Gabe said of the stunt. “It was only a foot wide.”

“We used to skate halfpipes when we were kids,” Gabe said. Ammon would do hand plants, the rail slides and pull air way above the coping. When his parents divorced in high school, and his mother moved to Huntington Beach, California, Ammon lost his access to skating. In 1988, Ammon married his high school sweetheart, Kim Page, and their four-year marriage gave him his first son, Austin McNeely. He had a second son Zach, in 2001 with Shannon Culver and a third son Aiden, in 2001 with Saskia Stallings. In 2002 he married Catra Corbett. The pair divorced in 2007.

Living around Huntington Beach and Lake Arrowhead in the 90s, Ammon slowly explored the climbing at Taquitz, Suicide, and the crags of Southern California. Primarily self-taught, Ammon’s knowledge came from John Long’s climbing books and in buying a rope and shoes in 1995. He decided to push himself and became fully invested in the sport.

“He went up on the NA with nothing,” Ammon’s friend, Kurt Arend, said of Ammon’s 1996 arrival in Yosemite and his 10-day solo ascent of the North America Wall. “I think he just had a couple set of cams and a ton of pins. He didn’t have a clue but he didn’t give a fuck. He was just going for it. True Ammon style was just go for broke.” After summitting El Capitan, Ammon met the infamous big wall guru “Chongo” Chuck, who in exchange for Olde English and some Indica taught him all about hauling systems. Ammon moved into a tent in the woods behind Camp 4. With a bit of wall knowledge from Chongo and an unparalleled boldness, Ammon began raging the granite seas of Yosemite. He quickly became known as the El Cap Pirate, climbing routes that others had bailed on and flying his skull and crossbones flag on the side of El Cap. “To plunder the booty!” He’d exclaim with a hearty “ARRRRG MATEY!”

“I wanted to hit El Capitan with all the force I could muster,” Ammon wrote in Alpinist of coming into Yosemite in 2004 for an unmatched season of wall climbing. While known for his antics on the ground, on the wall Ammon was known for his efficiency, safety, and willingness to keep going. “It was like having a special weapon going up on the wall, if you had Ammon, you were going to succeed,” Gabe said of climbing with his brother. His 2004 season reinforced that.

“In all, I climbed 11 El Cap routes in five months, nine of them in record time, five as first one-day ascents,” Ammon wrote in Alpinist. “It was the greatest number of speed records anyone has made in a year in Yosemite. But without my partners, it would not have been possible. I owe many thanks to Chris (McNamara), Ivo (Ninov), Cedar (Wright) and Brian (McCray) for these amazing adventures.”

Ivo recalled their record setting May 2004 33:02 ascent of the Pacific Ocean Wall route on El Capitan. “We blasted with Ammon leading the first 11 pitches,” he says. On the Island in the Sky ledge, at the end of Ivo’s block, Ammon just wanted to sleep, so Ivo pulled two beers from their haulbag. “We drank the beer and blasted to the top of the Capitan.” says Ivo, “He’s my brother. We didn’t have to talk.” The pair climbed 30 El Capitan routes together and set numerous speed records, including on the routes Pressure Cooker, Zenyatta Mondatta, Native Son, Magic Mushroom and The Reticent Wall. “Rarely do you find people like this.”

Chris McNamara also set speed records on El Capitan and in Zion with Ammon. “I can’t say I ever saw him get scared,” says Chris, “He’s also just one of the biggest hearted, nicest people.” The combination helped Ammon push his partners in a supportive way. On Rodeo Queen, Chris had a meltdown in the middle of the night wanting to bail on a pitch. “You’re going to feel a lot better if you finish this,” Ammon said, wanting his friend to make it through the difficulties and raise his game.

“He truly was like that modern day pirate,” says Chris. “He was charging hard at all times, life to its fullest and always a little on the edge of what’s appropriate or legal.”

Dave Allfrey and Skiy Detray were with Ammon when he took a 70 foot fall in 2010 while short fixing on the first one day ascent of a route called Scorched Earth. “He burned the ink out of his arm,” says Dave. When he fell, his aiders caught in his belay system, disengaged his GriGri, and he fell to the end of his rope. His fall bent the third bolt of the anchor upwards. “It’s not to the bone, let’s keep going,” Ammon said, according to Skiy’s recount of the ascent. The fall, one of many giant whippers in Ammon’s life, left a permanent scar in the tattoo band on his left forearm. The team fired the route in record time.

In late summer 2011, he made the second ascent of the notorious hooking route Wings of Steel  over 13 days with Kait Barber. Jeff Vargen made a short documentary, Assault on El Cap, about their ascent.

Austin McNeely, 13, alongside his father and Uncle, Gabe, made the first ascent of the Jose Memorial Variation, a five pitch variation to the Zodiac. He presented the epic to his fifth grade class for a “What I Did This Summer” presentation. He described not pooping for six days, and then doing the porch swing, the hundred foot rope swing at the top of the Dawn Wall. “They didn’t believe me dad,” Austin told his father. Surprised, Ammon gave his son a disc of photos from their trip showing them on the side of El Cap and the epic. Austin returned to his fifth grade class and gave his presentation again. This time, the teacher’s mouth hung open. Austin climbed a few other walls with his father, including a spring 2020 ascent with their friend Hayden O’Shay, which involved another classic Ammon epic.

“I thought he was falling to his death. He was screaming ‘Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!’” says Nicola “Motherfuckin’ Nickoli” Martinez. Ammon had led most of  the Muir Wall on El Capitan and, on the last pitch, Nickoli had hiked to the top of El Cap to help the team carry down loads. “I thought I lost my friend,” Nickoli says. After a moment, Nickoli yelled. “Ammon! Ammon! Are you there?”

“Yeah,” Ammon responded, pretty bummed. “I lost my leg.”

During one of the tension traverses on the last pitch, his prosthetic, which was attached by a button, scraped against the granite. The button came undone. His leg, which hadn’t been backed up to his harness, flew off the wall, bouncing past the Heart, past Mammoth Terraces, and onto the Valley Floor. Nickoli helped the team haul the last pitch and then hiked down to find assistance for Ammon’s descent. Before he drove to El Portal to get crutches, he stopped at the base of El Cap and hiked up to the area between Sacher Cracker and Moby Dick.

“I fucking found the leg,” Nickoli said. Just two feet from the wall, Ammon’s leg sat there, having taken a 3,000 foot fall and surviving unscathed. Nickoli returned to the summit and gave Ammon his leg.

“He had the biggest grin,” Nickoli says.

Beyond his leg taking flight, Ammon himself had an extensive flying career, having started BASE jumping in January of 2007, jumping off the 486-foot IB Perrine Bridge in Twin Falls, Idaho, with Chris McNamara, Ivo Ninov, and Sean Leary. He base jumped off of El Capitan, often narrowly and sometimes not so narrowly escaping the rangers upon landing in the meadow below. Once, he got tased by the rangers after jumping the formation. Unfortunately, Ammon suffered a few accidents while base jumping, twisting an ankle badly after jumping off El Cap in 2007. In 2013, Ammon nearly lost his left leg while base jumping in Moab Rim. On September 3, 2017, Ammon struck the wall while base jumping in Moab. He spent thirteen hours at the base of the wall before being extracted. Besides fractures of his left wrist, left leg tibia/fibula, and left clavicle, Ammon also severely damaged his right leg, resulting in amputation. He received his prosthetic after the accident. He often base jumped with a crew in Moab, Utah, climbing towers like Castleton and jumping off. With his prosthetic, it became easier to do the short hikes and base jump than the long approaches to climb.

Ammon supplemented his climbing and base jumping by working as a rigger over the years, often hanging acoustic insulation. With Ivo, he drove across the Midwest changing fiber optic cables in ATM machines. He occasionally worked doing tandem base jumps at skydiving sites. The past few years, Ammon had been working seasonally in Moab, Utah, for a hot air balloon company chasing the balloon and then loading it when it came down. Before his death he was transitioning to a job with Austin working for a Moab zip line company. In between work and base jumping, he continued to climb, establishing new routes in the Bartlett Wash including The Never Ending Story with his partner Sarah Watson, who had met him in Moab.

On February 18, Watson, Ammon, and a friend hiked to Hurrah Pass to watch the sunset. Watson stepped down on a diving board, which had a two hundred foot drop. As the sun dipped towards the horizon, Ammon lowered his prosthetic to descend onto the small stretch of sandstone. Weighting it incorrectly, Ammon lost his balance and fell to his death. He was 52.

The following day, a crew of Moab residents jumped to his body. They built a shrine where he fell and marked it with a flag. Below Last Hurrah Pass, the pirate skull and bones of the Jolly Roger flies.

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Seven days without climbing makes one weak—that’s been my motto for years. I love climbing. I started on the small indoor wall at my Vermont high school because I wanted to hang with the cool kids. Shortly after graduating, I moved to Yosemite to climb full-time. That was 16 years ago. Today, my life revolves around the sport: I write for a climbing magazine based in Boulder, and I live full-time in my minivan outside the office so I can save money for climbing trips.

There’s just one thing I haven’t been able to do in my climbing career: rest. When it comes to climbing, I’ve always thought if some is good, then more is better. When I try to take time off—which I’ve managed to do for just a few days at a time over the past decade—I become restless, anxious, obsessed with everything I could be doing. Taking time off—giving my body a chance to rest—is something I am very bad at. That is, until I was forced to do it.

Just before a late-summer trip to West Virginia to check out Summersville Lake’s deep-water soloing, I went bouldering in Rocky Mountain National Park’s Lower Chaos Canyon. Antsy after two days of not climbing because of magazine deadlines, as soon as work ended, at 7 p.m., I drove an hour from Boulder and hiked two miles to the canyon. I flicked on my headlamp as the sun was setting and, upon reaching the boulders, climbed until just before midnight. Tired but excited as ever to be climbing in the alpine night, I decided to try one last problem. I grabbed the holds, made the difficult moves through the beginning, finished, and topped out. But as I rocked forward to stand up on top of the boulder, I slipped and pinballed six feet down into the jagged talus.

I screamed in pain and hobbled up to assess the damage. I had smashed my left foot into the granite and twisted my right foot between the rocks. I packed my single crash pad, which I’d missed in the fall, and limped two miles to my car. An X-ray revealed a fractured second metatarsal in my left foot. My swollen right foot was sprained. The doctor said no climbing for five weeks. My fall plans of climbing on El Capitan were ruined. I realized that I now, unfortunately, had to rest.

“Exercise is only part of the equation to better performance,” says Chris Heilman, a leading sport and exercise psychologist who lives in Driggs, Idaho. Muscle growth occurs when protein synthesis exceeds protein breakdown—that is, your muscles are allowed to rebuild faster than they’re being broken down. And this new growth only occurs during rest periods. “When you exercise, you are giving your muscles little microtears. When you rest, you’re repairing those microtears,” say Heilman.

“When you don’t rest, you wear out and dig yourself into a hole,” says Heilman. For climbers, that can mean everything from tendinitis in the elbows to chronic finger and shoulder pain, and even sickness—excess protein breakdown weakens the immune system. But equally important and often overlooked is the mental benefit of rest. “Allowing your mind to rest, to have focused downtime to mentally wander, is really important,” says Heilman. Rest days—or even weeks—give the mind a chance to process the training, to come up with new ideas and betas for climbs, and to simply take a break and return to the activity renewed.

All of this isn’t necessarily news to most of us: athletes have been told a thousand different ways that resting is important—vital, even. But that doesn’t make it any easier. “Resting can be anxiety inducing for two reasons,” says Steve Magness, who coaches professional runners and the University of Houston cross-country team. “When athletes make any type of exercise or sport part of their routine, they are making it part of their identity. So when you say stop exercising, it’s like telling someone to stop doing something that is a part of them.”

This made sense to me—that a loss of climbing could translate to a loss of identity. During my rare bouts of rest, usually taken for work-related reasons, I panic when I feel the hardened skin at the tips of my fingers soften. Soft skin means I’m less of a climber, less of myself.

“The second reason that resting can be anxiety inducing is anything that we care enough about to do repeatedly becomes ingrained as a habit, almost like a compulsion” says Magness. “And like any compulsion, if we don’t get our fix, we have an emotional reaction—like anxiety—to try to force us to get our fix.”

Learning to release that anxiety proved difficult for me. On a climbing trip, 35 days has a way of breezing by. But when you’re hobbling about on crutches, spending all your time in the office or at home, you become hyperaware of all 3,024,000 seconds. Television kept me distracted from work, work from television. I spent most of my time by myself, fixated on my injury.

To keep some semblance of sanity, I decided to go to West Virginia anyway—not to climb, but to cover the taking place there. While my girlfriend, Nina, and other competitors climbed the steep sandstone 40 feet above the water, I sat on my a stand-up paddleboard, soaking my swollen foot in the water and photographing the action. All I wanted to do was climb, but there was something nice, something therapeutic about being surrounded by friends.

In fact, Magness had mentioned that one of the most effective ways to recover is being around friends. “If you hang out with your friends and socialize, your stress hormones will plummet, and you’ll be recovered way quicker than if you did, say, a solo ice bath.” In fact, there’s a growing body of research suggesting that the endocrine system—which contributes to muscle growth, red blood cell count, and energy levels and is depleted after a hard workout—rebounds much faster when you’re surrounded by friends. “The social component is so huge to recovery,” says Magness.

After jumping between two jugs and finishing a steep route, Nina swam over to me. She crawled onto the paddleboard and navigated the huge piece of foam. My other climber friends sat on the boats, resting between attempts, working on their tans, and enjoying the summer weather. For a moment, I relaxed. The tranquility of being in the water, having my girlfriend there, and being surrounded by friends made me feel better. I almost started to smile.

Over the next few weeks, my foot slowly healed. I walked with less of a limp. A few weeks after West Virginia, I was able to put on a big climbing shoe. Nina and I even went to Yosemite, and I followed her on a few longer routes. I learned to relax a bit more, to care less about my performance while climbing. By the time the trip ended, my broken bone felt solid again—just in time for me to return to my cubicle. It wasn’t long until I returned to religiously climbing again. This time, though, my body felt better. I had a more calculated, less manic approach. I stopped climbing with a little left in the tank, letting my body heal before I injured it.

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