With his mental health at an all time low, a veteran Free Solo’s for what may be the last time.   
  
In years following the Oscar winning film, Free Solo, the act of soloing may have grown to become a glamorized endeavor. This film explores a man's controversial motivations behind free soloing.  
  
In today's climate, the amount of service members challenged with suicidal thoughts are at an alltime high. HURT is an 12min fictional short following a veteran who free solo’s recklessly as an escape when PTSD and heartbreak thrusts his mental health into decline.  
  
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As a Squamish climber and helicopter rescue swimmer veteran struggling with PTSD, and having known multiple climbers who've died soloing in my community, I drew on my past to bring this vision to light in the hopes of preventing more deaths like those we've lost.
  
I created this film following military traumas combined with a hard separation which created what I can only describe as cerebral warfare. This evolved into a cycle of selfhatred where I didn't want to commit suicide, but I also didn't want to be here anymore. I didn't want to deal with the pain; a pain which seemed to go away when the stakes got higher soloing; when in actuality the stakes should never feel raised soloing.  
  
Pushing my limits eventually led to being stuck 5 pitches up a climb in a position where I didn't want to downclimb nor did I feel comfortable doing the next move up. If anyone was around, I would have begged for help. I felt the pump building; frozen on the crimps I was desperately gripping. I recall looking down and imagining, as though reality, my body bouncing down the cliff into the talus field below. For the first time I thought "wow, this is not worth it". Though I managed to walk away from that situation, I felt like I'd entered an alternate reality where I'd somehow survived. In truth, a part of me felt like I'd actually fallen that day.
  
Following this incident, I started noticing how prevalent soloing was in Squamish. So I started talking with members of the climbing community about the motivations behind certain peoples' choice to free solo and occasionally, their less talked about/less glamourous motivations. I learned that it wasn't uncommon for individuals in pain to look to this outlet to separate themselves from whatever traumas they were dealing with (breakups, loss of a significant others, anxiety, depression, etc).  Even soloing legends like Dean Potter and Alex Honnold had reportedly pushed their soloing limits following heartache.  
 
So, we decided to make a film, originally with the fairly humorous working title of "SADLO" (soloing sad), to highlight a yet to be shared perspective on free soloing.  
 
NOTE: Some scenes are better understood with headphones and subtitles on.
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: https://vpo.ca/stores/Squamish  
  
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