Official Trailer for National Geographic’s ‘Explorer: The Last Tepui’
“If we push on, we’re risking your life” This Earth Day, learn why the tepuis – much like the Galapagos – are a treasure trove of biodiversity worth protecting.
Disney has revealed the official trailer for a one-hour special made for Earth Day this year called Explorer: The Last Tepui, the latest in National Geographer’s long-running “Explorer” series. The film follows elite climber Alex Honnold (best known from Free Solo) and a world-class climbing team led by Nat Geo and climber Mark Synnott on a grueling mission deep in the Amazon jungle as they attempt a first-ascent climb up a 1000 ft sheer cliff.
Tepuis are flat-topped mountains with sheer cliffs that have hollowed valleys between them. Tepui means “sprouting rocks” – a term coined by locals of the region. The reason Weassipu had not yet been explored is fundamentally a logistic one; much of the wildlife exists on a plateau extending from the side of the sky-high archipelago.
This is where Honnold and his world-renowned climbing skills come into play.
After establishing a base camp at Double Drop Falls deep within the Amazon rainforest, Honnold, fellow professional climbers Federico Pisani and Mark Synnott, and director Dr. Taylor Rees and her production crew hacked through 5 miles of untouched rainforest to the base of Weiassipu.
Honnold was born to Charles Honnold and Dierdre Wolownick in Sacramento, California, and was climbing in gyms by the age of five. By the time he was 10 years old, Honnold was climbing almost daily and participating in local and national climbing competitions. He graduated from Mira Loma High School in 2003, enrolling in classes at the University of California Berkeley, with plans to major in civil engineering.
Honnold soon dropped out of college, however, spending his time climbing and living out of a minivan, and later, a tent, as he traveled to various crags around California. By 2007, he was basing himself out of a Ford Econoline to focus on climbing full-time.
The same year, Honnold made a rare one-day free ascent of Free rider and free climbed the Salathe Wall (3,500 feet), in Yosemite National Park. He also managed a spectacular free solo of both Washington Column’s Astroman (1,000 feet) and The Rostrum North Face (700 feet) on the Rostrum, two of the most iconic Yosemite big wall routes, in a single day.
Sources:
- https://youtu.be/vmPredMTXpg
- https://www.firstshowing.net/2022/official-trailer-for-national-geographics-explorer-the-last-tepui-doc/
- https://innotechtoday.com/the-last-tepui-national-geographics-latest-documentary-takes-us-to-one-of-the-last-places-on-earth-to-be-explored/
- https://www.climbing.com/people/alex-honnold-rock-climber-academy-award-winning-documentary-free-solo/
- https://gearjunkie.com/climbing/alex-honnold-the-last-tepui
- https://us-east-2.console.aws.amazon.com/polly/home/SynthesizeSpeech
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