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Thank you.

Hi, I'm Briana Garza.

Thanks for joining u for this special presentation.

As you know, we love sharing stories from our community.

And these are about to get wild.

I sure hope so, Briana.

Hi.

I'm Steve Rogers, event director of the Lookout Wild film festival.

We aim to showcase captivating outdoor adventure environmental films from all over the world.

Or as we like to say, wild places and the people they inspire.

With the region's stunning outdoor landscapes, it's no surprise that we have incredible outdoor stories to share.

We want to take a look back at some inspiring homegrown stories.

Three films from the 2024 festival stood out as adventures that not only showcased the setting of the films, but the spirit of Chattanooga.

First, we want to shar the story of how mountain biking gained the strong foothold it has today.

The dirt trails we've come t know and love in the Tennessee Valley were not always available to cyclists to enjoy.

So how did we get here?

Check out Mecca in the Making.

This is a story about average people.

In an average town that made a not so average transformation.

They weren't particularly skilled or even that smart.

You know, like most of us.

But they wanted something they didn't have.

All right.

And they did something about it.

This is Chattanooga 500 million years ago.

This is Chattanooga with dinosaurs.

Here's Davy Crockett.

Civil War moonshine, railroads.

Lots and lots of railroads.

Chattanooga Choo-Choo.

Run it down again.

Let's go.

All of these railroads transformed Chattanooga into the industrial center of the South.

The air was really dirty.

Don't just take it from me.

Here's the mayor.

The air was really dirty.

Downtown was an armpit.

It was just dirty, ugly downtown.

We're in a belt wit a lot of coal and a lot of iron.

So Chattanooga was built as a railway hub.

There was a lot of industry here, so a lot of soot and smoke and emissions.

There were a lot of factories belching, a lot of bad stuff in the air.

That bad stuff would settle halfway up the mountains, covering the city in the thick smog.

Air quality control experts have termed Chattanooga a pollution bowl.

There was a point in time where you couldn't see Lookout Mountain from downtown.

People used t use their headlights to navigate during the day.

Chattanooga was a real ___hole, and there was basically nothing to do except go out in the woods.

In the early days in the mid late 80s, folks didn't know about mountain bikes.

It was very focused on road.

There was a lot of kind of hardcore roadies.

And you know, I'm a roadie too.

I love riding the road, but it's a totally different thing, right?

Love just the experience of being in the woods, being one with your machine.

You know, back in the day, you were slogging through the mud with horses and ATV's.

You know, it's all Jeep trail up there.

As I grew up in the woods and the love trail, I was, I mean, when I was 12 or 13, we were building trails in the woods, right?

Our, you know, single speed bikes on.

And when.

I was growing up, these sports.

Weren't.

Sports.

There's cycling, but it wasn't it wasn't big.

It was kind of under the radar.

We were hunting down bike trails.

We didn't know any of the land owners.

We didn't know who was in charge.

And it got totally shut down.

People with shotguns showing up at folks car saying, yeah, you don't need to be up here.

There were nail boards being put under the leaves, and sometimes somebod might string up some barbed wire here or there.

So.

Everybody just wanted trails in Chattanooga.

We just kne it was going to make a change.

There's so many great places around here.

We've got the potential.

We have the land.

We need the trails.

We need singletrack, tight, little twisty, roly poly, fast and flow singletrack fun ass singletrack.

Chattanooga.

Historically, the stuff we wanted to have here, we've had to do it ourselves.

I think that volunteer spirit i part of what makes it special.

I starte building a little single track, real quiet little single tracks in the middle of nowhere.

That, you know, would connect t existing jeep roads and whatnot.

And before I was done, about three years later, I had about 13 miles of hand-built single track.

I spent some of the finest times of my life up in this area.

And, you know, they made it illegal.

Eventually.

We just needed land manager permission.

First They needed an organization, one with a good acronym, Southern Off Road Bicycle Association.

Yeah.

That'll do.

A lot of us were just too dumb to have a vision.

We just were excited.

We just had the energy.

It was just a matte of being obnoxious a little bit, because most land managers did not want to deal with it.

Raccoon Mountain was kind of the holy grail.

Raccoon mountain is steep, rocky, and only ten minutes from downtown, perfect for trails, but it was owned by the Tennessee Valley Authority, otherwise known as the TVA.

I remember telling the TVA folks, we get these trails built.

There will be people from all over the country coming here to ride these trails.

And she puts a piece of paper on the table and says, here, sign this.

And I'm like, oh, okay.

Sign it.

Okay.

You can build trails on Raccoon Mountain now.

I spent several years getting up early Sunday morning and going up the Raccoon Mountain and building trail by myself.

This is going to be a trail that goes around the top of the mountain.

You get 360 degree views, basically.

It's not like one da you just suddenly quit your job and think I'm gonna start building trail.

I mean, you can do that but you probably won't get paid.

It was all volunteer, and we bought, a trailer and a and an assortment of tools.

And it was, let's go and we'll hand build.

We were.

We were broke kids.

I wanted to build the trails that I like.

Stewart is about one of the most hardcore mountain bikers you can want to know.

He would be out there with his hand rake.

Metal rake with the handle, cut off the short saw around my shoulder.

Riding, cutting it, riding it.

Snip and clip and saw broken things off.

And I tell you, obsessio is going out there in the rain.

Id go up on a rainy da and just sit there for two hours and watch the rain collect and run off.

It's like, where are you going?

You know, we gave Barry volunteer of the year.

One year for raccoon.

He had over 2000 hours in one year.

I mean, that's a 40 hour job just in volunteer time.

I like the challenge of it going through the seasons.

I don't like the Yellow Jackets.

Hot summer days, cold winters, rain out.

They'd have volunteer days where they would bring 20 or 30 people out.

And the whole time we were building raccoon, I felt that momentum that onc we get it, once we get it going.

And I was like, man it's just going to keep going.

Raccoon mountain was completed.

Thousands of riders started to hit the trails, and Chattanooga as a city was changing.

Chattanooga's built itself on being an outdoor city.

I think Chattanooga started seeing the mountains for the first time, and folk started realizing that we've got a lot of potential her for spending time in the woods and on the streams and in the creeks.

People began to collectively think of Chattanooga, you know, as an outdoor town.

People began to sort of realize, wow, it's a thing.

And Chattanooga is really, really fortunate and extraordinary in terms of what we have.

We're in the process now of talking about how we support green spaces and trails, but there hasn't been a real institutionalized effort to do that.

Part of what I think is going to come from this boom is more trails.

Raccoon mountain opened out.

All these guys are coming back and buying high end bikes.

[funky music] Whats up dude?

Set a creek.

There.

I'm Les Warnock, so I'm currently the president of Sorba.

Every single one of these trail systems was just their blood, sweat and tears.

You know, this is just a perfect stepping stone.

You build these trails, and eventually you're going to catch up.

Your going to start running trails, becoming more comfortable with them.

And then you're going to want more.

The desire for mor trails had only grown stronger.

There were more people willing to do the work and the scene exploded.

The more trails there were, the more bikers wanted to get involved and they wanted to build more trails.

It was clear to me that we needed some kind of really ambitious vision.

Well, we need 100 miles of Single track.

100 miles of new single track.

Within ten miles of downtown Chattanooga.

By 2010.

Their sights were set.

100 miles of single track was the next evolutio of Chattanooga mountain biking.

But they would have to find a way to build it themselves.

People with a vision started piecing together big tracts of land.

It took a long time to get land managers to to allow mountain bikes in a lot of areas.

The mountain bike community as a whole has done a fantastic job of getting trails opened.

We're good at mobilizing.

When there's something that, you know, we see potential.

So we just started the first pro build out here at Walden's Ridge as phase one of the construction out here.

Most of the trails in Chattanooga, with the exception of one right now, are bi directional.

So it'll be the first downhill trail.

There's no funner type of riding than then downhill trails.

I think it had been in the works for four years whenever I first started.

So, you know, came on with Sorba.

So it's it's awesome just to be dropped in the middle of it and then be able to help out wherever I can.

This is what Chattanooga needs.

We need this.

We need this progression.

You can build features that are bigger, you know, require more speed.

It sounds silly, bu there have been sleepless nights where it's like I'm laying in be with all these ideas in my head and I'm thinking about, you know, what this means and how are we going to get this all done?

And all those different things are just like bouncing around in my head.

And I go watch Netflix.

I feel seriously, lucky to be a part of this.

And I think that's why I feel so obligated to.

Because, you know, I love this type of riding is exactly what I want in Chattanooga.

It's just been awesome to be involved with it.

And, also kind of nerve racking [laughs].

We have such different styles of trails.

Cross-Country and downhill.

Old school, fast and flowy.

Rocky and technical.

Downhill runs all the gravity trails.

Raccoon Mountain.

White Oak Mountain, Enterprise South, Five Points, Stringers Ridge.

Moonshine.

Lula Lake, Walden's Ridge.

Project.

Damn, We've got 100 miles of trails.

It was always here.

Right, the mountains.

The river.

Why we weren't paying tha much attention to it back then.

I can't say.

People are happier and they feel better when they spend time outside.

It's not a hell of lot more complicated than that.

Cycling is freedom with, you know, one of the most amazing machines humans have ever invented.

I mean really, it's about going fast.

I think that, more than anything is just my favorite thing to do.

[Rock music] It was so fun.

The future of mountain biking is more people in the woods, and it's more people that don't kno what they're doing in the woods.

Well, this place rocks for outdoor adventure and outdoor recreation.

I can never work in a cubicle.

That's for sure.

We're all doing our part to make it better.

And, yeah, it's awesome.

And Chattanoogas the Best.

People have these, you know, these visions, and they want to see something come into fruition.

And they do it themselves.

And that's how all of the trails have been developed in Chattanooga thus far.

This is good for our city.

If you really want something, you might have to just go do it yourself.

So I guess stop watching this and go do that thing you know you should be doing, or just go ride your bike.

Wow, weve been watching Mecca In the Making.

We have Garrett Henderson-Black here, our filmmaker.

Garrett tell us, what drew you to this story?

Im an And so is the production company that I work with.

And we were out riding one day and just were curious abou how all these trails got here.

Who built these?

Who funded them?

So we started doing some research and we found out that basically all the trails in Chattanooga are made by volunteers.

There was no real organization at first that created these.

It was just a bunch of guys who wanted new places to ride and singletrack in their city, and they sa they had the landscape to do it.

So they decided to get out, started building trails themselves.

And, yeah, that's kind of wha interested us to tell the story about this group of volunteers that decided to just go out on their own and build all this.

So why did you want to tell this story through film?

Well, that's just kind of the medium that I work in.

I'm a filmmaker, and, I thought that it would translate well you know, it's a visual sport.

Our landscapes are extremely pretty.

So you get to see the mountains and the rivers and the trails that wind between them.

And it just seemed like it would translate well to the screen.

So you're an experienced filmmaker.

What was your biggest challenge making this film?

The biggest challenge was probably tracking down all of the different peopl that helped create these trails.

Since it was, for lack of a better word, unorganized at first.

They eventually got organized and came up with a group, but it was just a bunch of kind of renegade out there building these trails on their own and finding out who all these guys were and what they were doing now was.

It was tough, but we tracked him down and convinced him to get on camera and talk about it.

Why would you say the outdoors are such a great subject for filmmaking?

To really connect wit the subject like the outdoors.

I thin seeing it is much more impactful than just hearing about it or reading about it, especially when it's something that's such a, you know, visual feast, like the outdoors.

And in Chattanooga, we have the mountains and the rivers, and it is a very striking visual landscape.

And to be able to actually see it really drives home the message we're trying to tell about why it's so important to have these trail and preserve these green spaces.

It just is a much more impactful way to tell the story through film than it would be in any other medium.

So tell us, Garrett, what do you have coming next?

So next.

The the production compan I worked on this with, Sunflower Films, is working on a feature length documentary about industrial hem and all of its different uses.

It's a plant we've known about for a very long time and has a rich part, in American history.

And it's just become legal again.

So we're trying to tell a story about all its different uses and, construction and fiber and medicine and food.

So we're, trying to get that out next year.

We were working on it for two and a half years.

That's super exciting.

Well thank you for speaking with me.

Thank you.

Great film.

Thank you.

Now we move from the mountains to the river.

For so many folks in the Chattanooga area, they're central to our outdoor activities.

But they've also become the places most polluted by some of our more careless activities.

Anyone who has enjoyed our waterways may have seen floating litte fishing line hung from the trees or chemical slicks on the stagnant waters.

And that's why Cash Daniels decided he wanted to get involved.

Known as the Conservation Kid, cash has dedicate a great deal of his young life to cleaning up our waterways.

Plus, he's taking the message to other young people to get them involved, too.

But we don't want to give away too much.

So check out the Conservation Kid and see what he's done and how you might get involved to.

Their names are camo and blue.

I've always loved animals, especially things that live in the sea.

I got this tiger shark somewhere in Florida.

It's actually a puppet.

My name is Cash Daniels.

I'm from Chattanooga, Tennessee, and I am known as the Conservation Kid.

I got inspired to clean up the river when I found out that 80% of al ocean trash comes from rivers.

So I had to do something about that.

So I started river cleanup when I was seven.

So I had been doing this for a whole six years now, and then people just started calling me the Conservation Kid, and it sort of just stuck.

I founded the Clean Up Kids with my friend Ella, who lives in Canada, to reach kids all over the world.

And last year, we reached our goal to pick up 1 million pieces of trash by the end of the year.

This award is the Prudential's spirit of community and this is the Glory Barron Prize.

Hellbender used award and this is the We Naturalist People of Nature award.

It's been raining for days.

Do you want boots?

Yeah.

Probably be a good idea, right?

You shouldn't be.

Everything all right?

My mom and dad they didn't litter or anything, but they were not big conservationists.

And one day I just said, why don't we recycle?

And now we have recycling bins, and they just help me along the way.

It's for sure a full time job dealing with him, dealing with his emails and his phone calls and everything that he has going on.

It's definitely not what I signed up for, not what I thought I'd be doing.

But here we are.

I would much rather him be in the outdoors than stuck on a screen all day, so I'll do anything I can to help him pursue his passion because it is changing the world.

It's doing something for the greater good that most kids aren't concerned about.

So I do run a recycling program for aluminum cans.

You didn't you didn't drink all this beer, did you?

no good.

My mom car smells like a brewery.

You know, like a brewery.

Thank you, thank you sir.

Have a good one.

So, Cash will tell you I cut him off of our bank account.

And I did this becaus I couldn't afford him anymore.

He wanted all of this money to do all of these things, which is great.

But you also have to learn tha there's a business side of it.

You need to learn how to make money, be an entrepreneur, do something to earn money, to put it back into a different way.

So he started.

He was like, you know what?

I can make money from aluminum.

They're endlessly recycle that nothing ever goes to waste.

Let's take that mone and turn it into something else.

That's how I make money so I can make the monofilament bins.

What I'm building right now are bins for fishing lines right here.

It goes like this.

So the fishing line can't blow out, and fishermen put local fishing lures or a line tha they don't use anymore in here.

I see fishing line hanging from trees from everywhere.

So these bins hel with that problem by fishermen putting their line in them.

And I actually recycle them and I send it to Berkley fishing.

They make fishing habitats out of it.

So this would be harming the environment if they got into the river is actually giving back to it.

So it's a closed loop system.

Right now I'm going towards a pie to put up my monofilament bin.

Putting this here is a good spot because they're goin to be coming out this way.

So.

So we are here at the Chattanooga Creek.

So our goal for.

Today is to.

Clea this place up, make it look like there's no trash here and.

Do the best we can.

And have a reminder.

There we go.

We got here and picked up all of these tires.

Nobody really recycles tires.

Because you have to pay to get them recycled.

So people don't really do that even though they don't cost that much, they still just dump it in the river instead of recycle.

That one.

Okay.

Is taking something ou of the environment in two ways.

Aluminum and plastic that could harm it.

Recycling all of it, making money and turning everything into something better than he found it.

Right?

Good afternoon guys.

We have the hono and the privilege to get to hear from Cash, the conservation kids Daniels today.

My name is Cash Daniels, and I' known as the Conservation Kid.

I work along the Tennessee River, which is the river we have here.

And not just because that's where we live and that's.

Where we're close to.

But because it is the most polluted of microplastics than any other river tested in the entire world.

So this is a little.

Bit of a representation of microplastics.

So.

And how much plastic sinks.

So even though you don't see much when you go out onto the river, 60 to 70% of all plastic actually sinks.

And those fish that eat.

Those microplastics are carried up.

Through the food chain to us.

When I go to schools I think what inspires the kids is that there's another kid doing it, and not just another adult coming to tell them about it.

You expect to keep doing that?

Yes, I do expect to keep doing.

This when I get older.

To help the environment.

In a real profession there's lots of jobs you can do.

You can make movies about the river and how conservation is important.

You could be a wildlife biologist, study animals and help them.

There's lots and lots of jobs you can do to help.

So cash is leading this incredible effort to clean up our waterways around the greater Chattanooga area.

The Tennessee River Gorge Trust is a nonprofit lan trust in the Chattanooga area.

So we wanted to bring him out here and show him tha what he's doing really matters.

And it does have an impact.

We're taking cash down the Tennessee Rive Gorge to our bird observatory.

And oh, you see one?

Oh, yeah.

Right there.

Oh I see it!

Yeah.

Our wildlife research is centered around birds.

And the big ones that we've been researching as of late are the worm eating warbler, the Louisiana water thrush, and the belted kingfisher.

Here, at the river gorge trust, we use birds as an indicator species.

Indicator species refers t some sort of species of wildlife that its presence or absenc can indicate the overall health of your environment.

So here, if we have a flourishing population of this certain bird species, that might indicate that our forests are healthy and thriving beyond anything, one of the things that I'm most impressed with Cash is just how dedicated and motivated he is, and it really gives us hope that the river Gorge Trust inspires us to keep working hard, because we know we have a younger generation coming behind us that's going to continue to carry on this conservation legacy.

To find someone at that age that is that passionate about the outdoors and doing what's right and leaving a legacy for other kids.

And, and what's so cool abou cash is when he goes and talks to the kids, they can relate.

Kids are important because they're the next generation.

And even though kids may b a small part of the population, we are 100% of the future.

But when I'm on the river, I feel just.

I'm where I'm supposed to be and where I belong.

I see that next generation, to have the passion and the love of the outdoors that I once had as a kid.

It's good for the soul, man.

My dream of the future would be to not see any plastic.

When I go to the river or the ocean, just to have a clean world to carry on.

The legacy of th conservationist came before me.

Like Steve Irwin, my friend Jim Abernathy all the great conservationists.

I feel like it's my responsibility and all of our responsibility to carry on their legacy.

Alright we have the Conservation Kid himself here, Cash Daniels.

Cash, tell us how you got into water conservation.

I got into conservation when I was seven years old.

and before that Id always loved animals, especially ocean animals.

And one day I was at the beach with my family.

and I found a plastic straw there.

And earlier that day, I had seen a manta ray and a sea turtle swimming in the ocean close to the pier we were on.

And when I found that straw, it really struck me, like, I put two and two together and like, this plastic is going to harm the animals that I loved.

And I went back hom to Tennessee, landlocked State and I did research about how trash affects the rivers and how the, the ocea connects to rivers and the wow.

How did you get connected with making this film?

Well, I saw, some of theirs, and I emailed them, asking, hey, would you like to, do something on me?

They were really interested, and.

we went back and forth checking out dates and stuff, and then they came down here, filmed it over a, two days.

And it was really It was a really fun experience.

So tell us, what is it like having a film crew following you around?

It's a lot stranger than your normal day.

I'd say it was interesting.

It was just really interesting having a group of people follow you around the entire day.

So tell me, why do you think the outdoors are such a great subject for documentary films?

Yeah.

Well, I grew up with documentaries about, nature, the ocean, rivers, things like that.

And I just think that's how yo develop a passion for something is what you experience, what you see on television.

Like, I grew up watching, David Attenborough' documentaries, Sylvia Earle's.

And that's what I want to do one day is definitely make documentaries of my own, because that's how you reach people.

Everybody's on Netflix watching a documentary, everybody's scrolling through Instagram, and I always say, you cannot protect something you don't love, and you can't love somethin that you've never experienced.

So Cash tell us what's next on your conservation journey?

Well, I'm trying to put out more monofilament bins, working with other states like, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, those three.

I'm working with my friend Greg Vital on getting a balloon ban.

Because here in the state of Tennessee, it is illegal to, let g more than 25 balloons at a time.

But if you still have a balloon release every single day of the year in a lot of different places, that still equals thousand and up to millions of balloons.

And a couple weeks from now, I'm going to Saint Augustine to clean out some historic wells there.

Because some of the wells there they have this grate over them, and you can fit plastic bottle and other trash down in there.

So I'm working with the city there to try and remove the trash down there.

You're doing amazing work.

We're excited to see what you have coming next.

Thank you.

You know, Steve, these stories of adventure and adversity have made me want to get out and make my own wild story.

As you may have noticed, we're here at GHO, a place where folks lik to gear up for their adventures, and it's been a fun place to get to know our guests.

And speaking of inspiration, we're about to share with you the story of a trad climber looking to push himself and his rock skills and solve complex problems.

Okay.

I'm learning so many new terms with these films.

Steve, what's trad climbing?

Well, let's let Zach explain it.

Here's a wall of faith.

Zachary, mountain bike man.

Here he comes.

Climbing for me.

It is a super cool space where you can find growth and push yourself in just so many ways, and really focus on this power and in the physical aspect of the sport.

And with trad climbing.

It's isolates more of the endurance, but there's this almost faith game too, of how much do you trust what you're falling on if you fall?

So my names Zach and I'm originall from Charleston, South Carolina, honestly, all my childhood memories are outside.

Everything we did as a family was fun stuff outside.

Whether that was getting pulled behind the boat.

Or.

Making a trip u to the mountains riding bikes.

I was jus kind of just got burnt into me.

That whatever you're doing or wherever you're at, do something fun outside.

So in climbing, most people start off in a top rope environment.

And since you're starting on the ground.

There' a rope is connected to the top.

You have a player on the ground, and they just.

And they belay from the ground and you're going up and you're always just have this quick, fast, you know, solid catch and you're always feeling super solid.

And so everyone kind of starts in that environment.

And I had an opportunity to learn how to start lead climbing.

So I got into that environment and instantly found out that there was so much more to climbing than just pulling on rocks.

When you're lead climbing, you're actually climbing above your anchor, not below your anchor.

And that creates an environment where you have to really trust the system because you're risking a a pretty significant fall.

So that's kind of what today.

So we're in this cave here.

And we're going to be doing some sport climbing, and just pulling on some hard stuff is a project that I've been wanting to do for a little while now.

So we're going to pul and cheat our way up to the top.

So let me get the rope set, and then I'm going to just work on, just getting all of the sections together, just working on individual moves.

I think thats long enough here.

One more.

No.

Oh.

Come on.

Hey!

Oh my goodness.

And so the adventure begins.

Have you ever met Miss Louis?

She's a good.

Now she stands up.

You know where she might, She might.

I love that little girl.

Girl with the fire red hair.

Miss Lindy, my miss lindy.

I love that little girl.

with the fire red hair.

Seen miss lindy like, stand tall.

Man?

I'm literally so tired.

And when she does.

Rock and roll take your breath away shes mine.

Yeah, she mine.

It can be a really frightening experience being up on the wall and.

And knowing that there's a fall and intimate fall about to happen.

And, and and there can be some stress built up.

But once you are in the moment of just in that moment of freefall it's actually really relaxing.

If you learn to trust it, you won't grab onto the rope.

You'll just let your hands back and kind of lean back.

And as my mentor always says, you give it a give it a go breath.

So a big and you kind just relax and you're at peace with what you've done.

And you're just falling back into, into these kind of catching arms of the rope and, and just being caught and being at peace with, with what's happened.

And, and and you can learn to make i extremely relaxing experience.

When you have this trust.

So in my pursuit of progression in trad, I have set a goal for myself.

So the goal is to send or red point a 510 trad route and to the red point is meaning I start from the ground and climb all the way to the top of the route with ever resting on gear.

No falling, no nothing.

And this is kind of the ultimate show of trust and faith in the gear, because you're climbing above it and you're just going all in on this shooting to accomplish your goal.

All right, so we just got here at the base of the route, right here, it's a stepping stone to 510 a and just checking it out.

Got this interesting start here with, and then he goes in his face out onto the sirat and then back on to the face.

So, Yeah, I just got to get all of our gear flaked out and ready to go.

Yeah.

Pretty generic, but, yeah, I'm just getting stoked.

This is a point zero.

Hopefully you don't have to use this, look how small that is.

Just so tiny.

So this is a scary one to hang your life on.

But it is there for a usage.

And then we got all of our stoppers.

So these just jam into a crack.

They don't have any movement to them.

And those are very useful.

And then we're not bringing these today.

TCS are their own animal.

So then all of our gear we have to extend, so we have to then bring quick drawers to extend our gear, to keep the rope away from the gear so they, the rope doesn't, like, slap the gear, out of the wall.

So it's what we save our back row on the harness for.

Lets Go.

You know, I just love so much about this.

Is.

It was like.

I was, like, struggling, like, really hard to climb up this thing.

Now she's on top rope.

Just crushing it.

That and it's, like, not even fair, but just need to trust the gea more and trust my climbing more.

So I had a lot of these moves I got.

There's just a couple places that I mean, if I just slow down and find my feet, and just be methodical about my climbing I'll be able to get this climb.

No problem.

You know, when you're climbing, ultimately, we have to have this this reassurance.

Just always in the back of our head is I have this awesome, beautiful catch awaiting me.

And with that confidence, we can really push ourselves.

And and it's just like in our lives, if we know that we have this a support group behind us that's just waiting there to catch us if we fall and we have a God, that we have a relationship that we know is there just to catch us when we fall.

It gives us confidence and and it gives us hope, and it gives us inspiration an motivation to to push ourselves and to and to step out and almost make these, these leaps, leaps of faith in our, in our life.

Okay.

All right.

Climbing.

[sighing] [heavy breathing] Okay.

[heavy breathing] Wheres that foot?

[grunts] [grunts] Whoa!

[panting] [panting] [grunting] Yes!

Let's go.

So it's climbing.

You can't just show up and start climbing and know you're going to be caught by the rope.

You have to build a relationship with it to build this trust.

In this faith that you will be caught.

And in the same.

The same applie with the relationship with God.

You can't just one day be like, I trust him and I'm just going to go and know that he's got my bac and know that he's there for me.

And you know, we have to in a controlled environment, we have to make a controlled environment to to be able to to experience him and get to know him and build a relationship with him.

So, so we can trust him.

And it's the same with climbing.

We have to build our own relationship with the gear.

We can't watch our friends trust the gear.

We have to learn how to trust it ourselve and spend time doing that.

So.

So then when we get into a situation where we wan to push our physical abilities and see how far we can go and g as high as we can, we have to.

We have to have that faith in that trust in the gear to be able to make it.

And and to be able to climb hard.

Kind of what it all boils down to, just you can only clim as high as you trust the gear.

Just like you can only go as far as your faith in God.

All right.

We have Zach and Calvin here from the film walls of Faith.

So, Calvin, why the subject matter?

What interested you in this?

So, actually, Zach actually came up to me.

His brother was puttin on, actually, a film festival.

Walla Walla University in Washington state.

And he's like, man, we need t we need to come up with an idea for this festival.

And so we're just kind of brainstorm and kind of came up on this idea that, man, we should do this, this fil about rock climbing and feature our local are where at least where I'm from.

Yeah.

Zach, what was it like having a film crew following you around to get the film done?

Yeah, it was really fun because it was really a lot just like Calvin and I.

So it was the fun part was like I'd have to then like set up the ropes and stuff and then get Calvin's se and then I'd get ready to climb.

And it was just interesting like trying to make it count cause, you know, you guys spent all this time going out somewhere, and part of the film was, a red point attempt, which is basically just climbing a whole route without falling.

And to be like, okay, we got everyone out here, we got all the parts together.

Like, don't fumble the ba cause you don't want to, like, hike a bunch of friends out here on another weekend when we were getting close to our deadline.

So Calvin mixing adversity and adventure in one film is no easy feat.

What would you say was th biggest challenge of this film?

So I'd say one of the biggest challenges was just honestly for me trying to learn how to do a lot of the climbing stuff and just learning about climbing because this was the first time I'd ever shot anything climbing.

So Zach actually helped me so much with that.

I think another lik really big factor that made it hard was the weather.

it was raining so much all that spring.

So like in the entire film ends up being like overcast, which ends up working well as far as lighting wise.

And then on our like final red point attempt sequence, the skies opened up and it was like a beautiful way to to end the film.

So that was that was great.

Why would you say this is for you?

Zach, why would you say the outdoors is such an important subject to capture documentary style?

I think that, I mean, the outdoors is just.

I mean, it's just amazing, like, it's the setting is on aspiring.

Like, you don't have to make something impressive happen.

Like the impressive feat is just the atmosphere that you're in.

And I think that' what makes the outdoors so cool.

Of a setting.

Because it jus it just puts you into that state already from the beginning.

And, in, in terms of telling the story, it's just different people's experiences of how they appreciate about the part of the outdoors that they're recreating and it's beautiful.

All right.

What's next?

What can we expect from you guys?

So we've been actually brainstorming a couple of things.

One thing we won't, we won't go too, too deep into detail, but there is a little little idea we have going on of doing this cycling film mixed with skiing in the southeast, which you wouldn't hear about skiing here.

I'm intrigued.

It'd be like a bikepacking skiing trip, so I' just going to leave it at that.

You know, it sounds like a lot of suffering me, but.

It'll be a type two fun type.

Adventure.

type-two Fun?

All right.

Zach.

So tell me about the the scene in the movie.

The red point scene.

Like, how many times did you have to go through that route?

What was that process like?

Yeah.

So kind of the motivatio for me to even approach Calvin for making the film.

Was it the style of climbing is, is trad climbing traditional climbing where you're placing your own gear?

And it was it's a it was a new style to me that I was like just starting to develop.

when we did shoot, it was actually my first tim on the route I'm, like, trying to figure out the whole sequence and learn, the route.

And I'm three quarters of the way up.

I'm at the crux of the route, the hardest part, and it's starting to rain.

And I'm just like you know, 80ft off the ground.

Like, the only way I'm getting down is by finishing this route and getting the top.

it was it was very difficult.

But it was it was a big win.

And then on the day we filmed the the Red point ascent, I went up there and just rehearsed, the couple hard sections of the route and was able to piece it all together.

Then on my, on my first, like, full go at the red point, but I definitely was pretty maxed out.

I didn't have much mor in the tank, so it felt so good.

And it's just when you, like put in all that work and effort you kind of investing in your ability.

And then to see that pay out.

It's just it feels so good.

And and it's really like the accumulation of all that work and it was really nice.

The message is clear in the film.

You guys did a phenomenal job of taking adversity and triumphs and combining those things.

I hope you enjoyed the film and can't wait to se what you guys have brewing next.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We want to thank you for joining us, and we want to thank you, Steve, for bringing us these stories of perseverance, conservation and adventure.

It's been my pleasure, Briana.

As you mentioned earlier in the show.

This year's film festival offer some more of what you'd expect from the Look Out Wild Film Festival, with some fresh surprises from around the world.

You can find out more information at LWFF dot I know you're looking forward to the next festival, as so many regular attendees are, and maybe we'll see some new faces as well.

Thanks again for watching.

And keep on the lookout for more of the storie from our community on WTCI PBS.

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