Sports

Celebrate the great outdoors indoors, with our favorite wild films

Image
In Sufferfest 2 climbers Alex Honnold and Cedar Wright bike all over the Southwest to climb towers. And suffer.
Photo: Cedar Wright
Erin Ryan, Mark Adams, Leslie Ventura

Sufferfest 2: Desert Alpine, AKA 34 Pieces of Choss and 5 Horrendous Life Experiences

I’ve watched Alex Honnold videos plenty. The sweeping landscapes and evocative music and astonishing free solos that make my brain double take and my stomach twist. But his superhuman powers are even better used for hilarity in the sequel to The Sufferfest, his 2013 travelogue with buddy Cedar Wright that saw them biking across California to take down all of its 14,000-foot peaks.

The suffering was pretty epic. On a North Face blog about the project, Cedar writes: “The Sufferfest was a traumatically awesome experience, and by the end of the adventure I was ready to sell my bike and spend a month rocking back and forth in the fetal position on the couch.” But amnesia, ever reliable, allowed for Sufferfest 2.

The film follows the duo as they bike more than 700 miles through the Southwest and climb 45 iconic towers, rapid-fire.

“I mean, the thing about suffering is that you don’t really need to train to suffer. You just do it,” says Honnold. Boy, do they. Wind storms, ass abrasions, evil cactus and rocks so chossy they actually fall apart—the misery is all happening. And sick climbing is, too. And then there’s the puppy they find on the roadside and make a home for in a Tecate beer box. In a full theater of Banff Mountain Film Festival watchers, I squeed. Loudly.

If the awesomeness of the landscape and the climbs don’t get to you, the enormity of the human spirit will. What might you accomplish if sanity weren’t in play? —Erin Ryan

Desert Runners

I've been sedentary my entire life, so when I finally decided to take my health into my own hands a little under a year ago, it wasn't exactly easy. My computer has seen lots of inspirational quote memes saved to its desktop over the last eight months. And on one day when I needed some extra motivation, I did what any fitness junkie would do: consult Netflix.

Okay, that’s probably not what my trainer would do, but my body was aching and the couch was calling my name. After a quick search I settled on Desert Runners, a documentary that follows a cast of ultra athletes on a mission to complete the 4 Deserts Race Series, an annual series of four 155-mile races across the world's harshest deserts in Chile, China, Egypt and Antarctica.

The film is a testament to the human body, a study on both physical and mental endurance. And just like I'd imagine the races to be, the documentary is taxing and heartbreaking, powerful and motivational. If you're like me, you probably can't fathom running one marathon, let alone a 155-mile one—let alone four in one year in extreme heat and cold. But there are amazing humans out there who live for this stuff, and Desert Runners honors them by telling their stories. —Leslie Ventura

Without a Paddle

“Tom, you were a boy scout.” “Naw, but I had a Brownie once!”

Somewhere between stoner and bro comedy, 2004’s Without a Paddle isn’t exactly winning over the high-brow crowd. But if you’re more Workaholics than The Office, the critical failure/commercial success is right up your alley.

The flick focuses on an epically disastrous camping trip taken by a trio of friends (Seth Green, Dax Shepard and Matthew Lillard), as they search for a long-lost stash of cash using an old treasure map found in their childhood treehouse. And as the title suggests, the ill-prepared crew encounter more than a few roadblocks along the way—from a Grizzly bear mistaking Green for its cub to a wild ride down raging rapids and getting ridiculously high from a marijuana field set ablaze by a safety flare.

If the treasure quest premise isn’t enough to capture your attention, the outlandish situational comedy and hilarious one-line zingers likely will. And if you solely read this article looking for awesome nature-focused films, well, its got some pretty sweet panoramic shots of the wilderness …—Mark Adams

Share
Top of Story