The Moonflower

Friday evening, Bec and myself along with a few other friends from Lancaster took the train up to Kendal to catch the premier of The Moonflower new film from Posing Productions. Jon Bracey and Matt Helliker were there, along with Alastair Lee who introduced the film. It chronicles there ascent of a new route on the North Buttress of Mt. Hunter in the Alaska Range. which they named the Cartwright Connection in honour of Jules Cartwright, a British Mountain Guide who tragically died while guiding the Piz Badile a few years ago.You can see the trailer below:

Cartwright originally envisaged the line as a companion to his route The Knowledge ED4 on the same buttress, which he climbed with Ian Parnell in 2000, although feeling that the climbing on this new line may be of a more sustained nature. In may of this year Jon Bracey and Matt Helliker set out to complete this line, which they did.

The Cartwright Connection, Alaskan
 Grade 6: 5.8 A2 AI6 M6, 2000m 

I won't ruin much of the story now as I think its best saved for when you watch the film, which I think it great. The lack of footage of a lot of the actual climbing, and the quality of the camera work done by the climbers could be criticised but I think this gives a real raw look at what climbing a bit alpine route it like. I think Alastair Lee might of been a little short on footage to work with as I'm pretty sure I saw some of winter climbing on the Ben at one point that he'd subtly woven in! On the other hand, some of the aerial footage and time-lapse photography that accompany that taken by the climbers is very impressive.


Bracey and Helliker climbed the route in a clean but slow style, carrying a portaledge and plenty of food. It will be interesting to see however in the coming future if this route has the potential to be climbed fast and light in a single push style as some of the route on Hunter, and many of the other big mixed test pieces in the Alaska range already have.


So, an excellent achievement for the alpinisits and a great film. I highly recccomend buying the DVD or downloading it from posing productions here. It's certainly solidified by ambition for a trip to Alaska.