Echo Wall DVD - Review

Echo Wall DVD - by Rare Breed Productions. Price - £19.99 www.rarebreedproductions.co.uk

What is it? Edinburgh Mountain Film Festival double award-winning film charting top Scottish climber Dave MacLeod's project to climb a desperately hard and dangerous new routes high on the north side of Ben Nevis. Filmed and produced by Claire MacLeod, running time 44 minutes plus 28 minutes of extras including an extended interview with Jimmy Marshall.

It's frighteningly easy to make dull climbing films. Some of the best climbers in the world have managed it. Climbing some of the most dramatic routes in the world. Why? I think it's because the effort and the movement and the scenery are only half the story, the other half is what's happening inside the climber's head.

That's what makes Echo Wall so special. It's a fascinating and visually dramatic look at Dave MacLeod's thoughts and emotions as he tackles a desperately hard new route high on the north side of Ben Nevis. Half of it is visual drama, but the other part, the crucial part is emotional drama.

MacLeod in person is a quiet, thoughtful kind of guy, almost shy. But watch the film and it's clear that he's also massively determined and focussed in a way that's unusually intelligent. Everything is concentrated on the perfect route, the perfect moment, getting it right for that place and time.

That means dedicated bouldering, soloing a desperately hard 8c Spanish sport climb for mental toughness - 'I need to try and be bold and in control when I'm climbing right at my physical limit' -  and, incredibly, around six days spent with a shovel clearing a massive snow bank that's sending meltwater down the line of Echo Wall.


The climbing on the wall itself is a slightly scary journey into a level of commitment that's way beyond what most of us will ever experience. The dramatic tension of the climbing really is on the same sort of scale as the Ben itself. As the whole thing builds towards the long-awaited ascent, MacLeod's frighteningly open about the risks and his own doubts and fears, there's no machismo, no BS, no fake certainty, just a quiet acceptance that if he gets it wrong he could die.

'That final crux is going to be, terrifying ... you'd definitely hit the ground,' he muses. 'It's a terrifying thought.' And it is too. And underlying it all is the knowledge that his wife is behind the camera, that when he talks to camera about death and risk, he's actually talking to the woman he loves. Like I said, it really is frightening.

And that whole underlying conflict between control and fear crystallises in one crux moment when Dave can't stop himself looking across at his wife as he hovers on the brink of the commiting, unreversible crux...

It really is a fantastic film, visually extraordinary and an emotional journey that's as intense as the terrain. I'd recommend it to anyone with an interest in mountains and human beings. The best climbing film I've seen for a long time.

As a postscript, I asked Dave whether at that moment when he looked across at Claire, there was any uncertainty in his mind whatsoever. He sort of half smiled and then, in his calm, Scottish way, batted the possibility away. 'No,' he said gently. 'I knew I could do it.'