Don’t watch this video at work. Go home, sit back and watch it fullscreen.

I found this short film called ‘ Obsession’ by Chris Doyle on vimeo a few days ago. It’s about Richard Simpson, an English climber, and his obsession; climbing Wolfgang Gullichs 9a route ‘Action Directe’ in the Frankenjura. Richard eventually made the 6th ascent of this route in 2005 and next to Action he also managed to climb other hard classic routes like Hubble 8c+.
As the story goes, Richards life is now devoted to boxing… but Chris Doyle mentions on his blog Richard “still aims to climb one 8c every year”.

Obsession from Chris Doyle on Vimeo.

This classic video brings me to another classic film that is still in the making. It’s a film by Keith Bradbury aka Uncle Somebody about Tyler Landmans ‘Font rampage’. For the past few years Tyler climbed almost everything that was on his ‘todo’ list including the boulder Jade V15 (8c). He made a trip to Fontainebleau at the beginning of 2009 and climbed a huge amount of hard boulder problems. In Dutch climbing magazine BLOK Tyler says that he lost his motivation after this Fontainebleau trip. He returned to his home in England, probably in the best form of his life, where he thought about climbing one of the last projects on his list, Hubble 8c+, mentioned earlier above. But he didn’t.
Tyler is now studying in Boulder, Colorado. Still bouldering, but below the radar. Check out the two trailers.

Teaser 2 from unclesomebody on Vimeo.

Teaser 1 from unclesomebody on Vimeo.