Review: Mountains on Stage, Showcase Avonmeads

Arriving at the Bristol Showcase cinema complex to watch the UK’s first summer version of Mountains on Stage initially felt a little odd: Nothing could be further away than the Great Outdoors than the heavily carpeted confines of a multiplex, but a steady influx of fresh air and adrenaline addicts gradually pervaded the foyer, all anticipating an evening quite unlike anything this venue is normally used to hosting.

This festival is the brainchild of Cyril Salomon and Manon Grimwood who – inspired by a visit to the 2013 Grenoble Mountain Festival – felt compelled to bring the very best in mountain adventure movies to Paris. From there it expanded and now tours Switzerland, Belgium and Italy as well as France – and Salomon got such a great reaction to his first UK winter event in 2016 that a summer tour on this side of the Channel was inevitable too.

The evening kicked off with an intro from Emily Sarsfield, the UK’s top ski cross racer. Her easy-going bonhomie made a welcome change from mobile phone adverts and interminable trailers, and after a brief but informative outline of the event we swiftly kicked off with the first screening.

Erwann Pelisset’s Mountain Bike is the New Ski did exactly what it said on the tin, with professional biker Kilian Bron talking us through life as a biker on snow.

Ascending the peaks of the Aravis chain in winter with the skiers and boarders, and then taking his chances on the bike seemed an odd thing to try – though the visual results were stunning. However, the obvious question from anyone – sporty or otherwise – is why do it? And whilst Bron’s answer bordered on the expedient, it also demonstrated a rather likable brand of belligerence common to many hardcore action sport achievers: he’d had a great autumn’s downhill riding on grass, and when 40cm of snow appeared he simply didn’t want to put his bike away.

If you fancy a try, be careful: It requires hard conditions with a layer of powder on top. If it goes well, though, be thankful that Bron found that out the hard way…

Next up came Poumaka, courtesy of Andy Mann and Keith Ladzinski.

Looking to get out of her comfort zone, block climbing champion Angie Payne chose to follow explorer Mike Libecki to the French Polynesian jungle. This lush environment is home to the eponymous rock tower, which at first glance looks like someone has taken Rio Je Janeiro’s Sugarloaf Mountain, stretched it up upwards to breaking point and then stuck it in a dank, cloudy jungle. It’s only when you get closer to the face of this behemoth, however, that the truth about climbing it is revealed.

Whilst the vertical on Poumaka made for exhilarating viewing, this film’s differentiator came from watching the brave duo try and negotiate endless vegetation and hideously soggy conditions, cleaning the ropes relentlessly to stand any chance of progressing. It was a bit like seeing someone climb up a 700m high chocolate gateau. Payne gamely admitted to shedding a few tears on the way up, though given the steam room conditions she was working under you’d never have been able to tell.

With the hors d-oeuvres taken care of, we were then treated to a 25-minute adventure from Nicolas Hairon, Julien Irilli and Jeremie Chenal.

Between Sky and Peaks followed alpinist and paraglider pilot Irilli as he attempted to combine his skills to seek out previously untested take-off points. Paraglider foils now weigh as little as 1.5 kilos so it’s possible to take them anywhere, and given that Irilli likes to ascend the largest and most inaccessible peaks possible around his native Annecy he’s able to start with enough altitude to mountain hop to his heart’s content.

Our hearts, though, were in our mouths watching him take on the largest and most intimidating peaks of the Ecrins and Mont Blanc ranges – though unlike most of the other on-screen activities showcased at Mountains on Stage this is something you can enjoy a taste of with a negligible level of risk if you choose to take a tandem flight.

La Vie au Bout des Doigts (The Life at the Fingertips) will be familiar to any serious climber, and despite being made in 1982 its content hasn’t aged a day.

It helps that its subject – the legendary Patrick Edlinger – looked for all the world like a Hollywood star, though his long blonde locks, headband and sculpted physique soon became irrelevant as we watched him push his chosen sport into the world’s consciousness, risking life and limb with every ascent.

There comes a point where any climber simply can’t hang on any more, and watching Edlinger give his arms a break by hanging upside down from his toes made everyone in the room start questioning their own margins – though thankfully the movie was made before his eventual fate became known. Edlinger died aged 52 falling down the stairs, and whilst that may not make most of us decide to try and emulate him, it’s certainly a thought-provoking epilogue to an extraordinary life.

After a 15 minute break, we reconvened for Pierre-Emilio Medina’s I’m Leaving your Ship!

Watching paraglider pilots Eliot Nochez, Thibault Cheval and Julien Millot in this 17 minute jaw-dropper was vaguely reminiscent of Clarkson, May and Hammond’s antics when Top Gear was in its heyday – and one can imagine the French trio sitting in a pub after a few too many, dreaming up their stunts in exactly the same way.

In a nutshell, they’d worked out that stretching a line between two flying paragliders opened up the potential for all kinds of tomfoolery, and after turning one of their number into a flying human pendulum and another into a rider on the world’s scariest zipline, they went for the best spectacle that this format could possibly produce – and had a go at making an airborne high wire. Needless to say it wasn’t 100% taut, though the comedic traction that accompanied the inevitable fall seemed to somehow increase the more we all saw it coming.

Alastair Lee’s Blocheads made a suitable finale for a UK audience – and very British it was, too. Suntanned bare flesh and blue skies were firmly off the agenda as we followed the pioneers of the UK bouldering scene – often clad in woefully-unsuitable denim jeans – and saw how they climbed the unclimbable.

Quite often they didn’t, at first – which made for challenging viewing as protection for these brave characters comes in the form of a few crash mats and a helpful friend waiting to catch them. With falls of nine metres-plus quite common the ultimate miracle of this film wasn’t that they ever got to the top – it’s that the injury count wasn’t far worse and that they kept coming back for more. The triumph of Lee’s direction, though, was in portraying the climbers’ genuine frustration at failure as so much more painful than any number of broken bones.

If the first five films offered up a little too much in the way of good looks, seasonable weather and huge mountains, Blocheads dispelled any suspicion of Gallic bias – though it was specially-included for the UK leg of the tour. There were in fact six British venues on the schedule for this event, though given the quality of what was shown and the genuine passion for mountain sports conveyed by its compere, it’s likely that next year’s Mountains on Stage summer tour bus is going to need considerably more gas…