Luxury Liner – The First Ascent of Super Crack

USA, 2008, 6 min
Directed by Chris Alstrin

Screening:
Thursday September 18, 6pm - 7:30pm
Peery’s Egyptian Theatre

November 1976. Indian Creek Canyon, Utah. A crystal clear day with warm sunshine. Earl Wiggins launches up the first pitch of Supercrack, a perfect splitter hand crack that had been discovered and named in 1971 by Jim Dunn, Billy Westbay, and Stewart Green while heading down to climb the 5th ascent of North Sixshooter Peak. Five years later, armed with a rack of hexentric nuts, Jim and Stewart returned with Earl, Ed Webster, and Bryan Becker to climb and film the first ascent of the world's most perfect crack. Earl flashed up the first pitch in ten minutes, proving these amazing parallel-side sandstone cracks could be safely climbed with the era's basic climbing equipment. Ed made this photograph, which appeared on the cover of Ascent magazine, by looking at Earl through the aperture of a chimney right of Supercrack. “Luxury Liner – The First Ascent of Super Crack” retraces this historical climb using new footage as well as archival footage by Stewart Green.

Director Chris Alstrin

Chris Alstrin, filmmaker residing in Colorado Springs has been in the film business for the last 7 years. Starting with just a small handheld camera on a trip to Vietnam is how he really fell in love with the motion picture. Since then he has traveled abroad on several expeditions to film. His last film produced Higher Ground has been well received and he is really excited for his future films Luxury Liner and The Continuum Project. Keep posted for his release dates www.alstrinfilms.com