Durham NH Native Wins An Oscar For Documentary

Our great Granite State once again producing award winning work.  According to a story from WMUR, Matt Renner, who grew up in Durham, helped produce the winning documentary, Free Solo that won Best Documentary at last night's awards.

Free Solo is the story of Alex Honnold, who is an expert free solo mountain climber.  His two friends Chai Vasarhelyi and her husband Jimmy Chin made a movie about his free solo climb of El Capitan, along with Matt Renner.  Here's a video about the film.

El Capitan is a rock wall mountain located in Yosemite National Park and is described in Wikipedia as follows:

El Capitan (Spanish for The Captain, The Chief) is a vertical rock formation in Yosemite National Park, located on the north side of Yosemite Valley, near its western end. The granitemonolith is about 3,000 feet (900 m) from base to summit along its tallest face, and is a popular objective for rock climbers.

The reaction that you may have about rock climbers may be that of surprise or call them crazy, but if you are a hiker, you understand that climbing is a meditation, (because it has to be) and it's a test to push your personal limits.  When you finish climbing a literal mountain, there's no figurative mountain that can ever hold you back.

Congrats to Matt and all the people involved with this film!