On November 4, 2020, Emily Harrington made history as the first woman to free climb El Capitan’s Golden Gate in Yosemite. With the COVID-19 pandemic keeping people at home and isolated, this was seemingly the first piece of good news in months.
Suddenly, Louder Than 11’s Jon and Jess Glassberg had to turn their rented RV into a mobile press wagon to feed photos and clips to global news outlets like CNN, ABC, NBC, and Al Jazeera.
“There’s no service in Yosemite, except one parking spot,” says Jess Glassberg. “We’d have to fight for it and then tether with our phones out the window.”
Back in 2015, Jon Glassberg captured Harrington’s first ascent of Golden Gate, which took place over six days. That film got millions of views on The North Face’s channel and sparked this new challenge for the already esteemed climber: do it in a day.
To put it in context, El Cap is where the best climbers in the world go to prove themselves. Many have ascended it through one of the routes over days or even weeks, but very few have the stamina to throw down hard moves 3,000+ feet in the air 20+ hours into the day.
Thanks in part to all the well-deserved fanfare, what was slotted to be another YouTube video now had the potential to be so much more, for Harrington and for the Glassbergs.
Jon Glassberg has been climbing since he was 11, and when he went to college, the rise in digital media meant he could shoot his climbing and have a platform to put it out on. This helped him get the attention of sponsors and paved the way for climbing to actually pay the bills. If you’re familiar with the sport or professional athletes in general, you know this doesn’t always leave room for much else.
“Climbing, if you’re obsessed with it, is something you always do,” says Jon. “You’re always chasing the next hard thing.”
He now considers himself a filmmaker first, but thanks to these years of hard climbing, he has the ability to understand the mindset of his subjects—and the strength and stamina to keep up with them on location. But it was a chance encounter with Jess Talley (now Jess Glassberg) at the Mountainfilm Festival in Telluride that propelled him from climbing to mainstream success.
Jon brings business acumen and is very dialed when it comes to producing and directing. Jess has an incredible eye and is really good at creating a compelling story. While Jon was chasing ticks, Jess was crafting her skills first in the high school darkroom and later in a PhD program in Paris. The mutual respect between them is clear, as is the adoration.
“Jess is much more creative and smarter than me,” says Jon. “It’s a good partnership.”
Good is underselling it. In the current landscape of maybe selling your documentary to a streaming service, Girl Climber, which the duo created alongside Red Bull Studios to celebrate Harrington’s feat on El Cap, has now done an IMAX theatrical run for 105 theaters and around 15,000 people.
It’s been at Alamo Draft House, Regal, and other independent and chain theaters and has qualified for the Oscars. It’s touring Europe and Asia, in addition to the festival circuit, and is even bringing the pair back to Mountainfilm where they first met.
They attribute a lot of this success to who Harrington inherently is as a person. She’s authentic, smart, and vulnerable, and fans instantly connect with her. She’s also comfortable in the uncomfortable.
“One of her superpowers is being comfortable doing something new,” says Jon. “She’s one of the best, most accomplished climbers, not just because she’s the most naturally talented, but because she’s a very hard worker.”
To watch Girl Climber, head to Amazon Prime Video or keep an eye out for local showings. Visit Jolt.Film/Watch/GirlClimber for more information.