Nat Geo's "Explorer: The Last Tepui," on Disney+, Brings the Earth Day Message Home

One place still left to explore was the daunting sheer sides of the mountains which surely would have their own hidden undiscovered species Having joined fellow National Geographic Explorer and climber Mark Synnott on previous excursions they endeavored to try it one more time even if the scientist now 80 had to be hoisted along the side of a formidable wall in Guyana that had never previously been climbedTheir sciencebased adventure is captured in the onehour special Explorer The Last Tepui premiering today on Disney It39s a moving Earth Day reminder to preserve and protect wild unexplored parts of the planet andamp160 a nailbiting climbing adventure filled with unexpected twistsThat the climbing team is led by Alex Honnold 36 whose feat in climbing El Capitan in Yosemite National Park without ropes in 2017 became the Oscarwinning Free Solo a box office documentary hit further raises the profile of the workThough the Guyana climb was done with ropes quotAlex had always wanted to climb a tepuiquot director Taylor Rees pictured above whose middle name happens to be Freesolo told MediaVillage quotSo he seemed like the perfect fit to be a 39rope gun39 to get the rope up as quickly as possiblequotTo get to the sheer cliff though the team five scientists five film crew members and a support team that numbered close to 75 from the indigenous Akawaio people as porters bushwhackers and cooks took 35 miles of slogging through dense Amazon junglequotIt39s the longest 35 miles I ever walkedquot she said quotAll of us on the shooting team had our cameras on our necks at all times and we were falling nonstop into the riversquotIt was worse for the octogenarian Means quotHe would fall and fall and fall and just get up and keep goingquot Rees recalled quotIt39s one very laborious step after another over huge logs or under things Or into rivers or out of themquotMeans hadn39t disclosed to the team that he was on bloodthinners which complicated plans quotHe held back a little bit of information because he so badly wanted to go and make this his magnum opusquot Rees saidThe team pulled on with him and one Venezuelan climber Fuco Pisani who is also a biologist and could apply the science if neededquotBut one fall in the wrong direction a broken leg any kind of internal bleeding any kind of laceration could have been deadlyquot she noted quotWe were not in an area where a helicopter could have come easily We would have had to make it to some sort of a waterfall or some sort of large opening and then cut down half an acre of forest to be able to safely land a helicopter So it was tenuous It could have gone wrong pretty easilyquotThe team forged ahead as a family And along with the nailbiting cliff scenes one of which involves Honnold hanging by one hand new species were indeed eventually foundContrasting with the vast breathtaking panoramas of the vista are lots of closeup shots of impossibly cute previously unknown frogsquotWe called that frographyquot the director said quotWe had the use of this Laowa probe lens that was a really wide 24mm macro so you could get super close see the whole frog and see the whole environmentquotThe expedition wouldn39t have been possible without the backing of National Geographic and Disney Rees admitted quotIf you think of the weight of the climbing equipment and how many bags that was to fully do it rightquot and then add the film and support teams and their equipment and food quotthat balloons the budgetquotEven so they all went into the endeavor not knowing how it would turn outquotIt39s tricky for surequot Rees said quotBut it all works out I think that39s pretty true for most documentaries in some way If you stay with what39s really happening and you keep your heart with the story a story will happen If you stay too attached to your plans you39ll miss itquotRees seemed destined to work with Honnold due to the middle name her parents gave her FreesoloquotI was very embarrassed by it my whole life until I graduated high schoolquot she admitted quot I was born in Idaho and my parents climbed My dad climbed a bit my mom scampered without ropes way too often She39s a bit of a free spiritquotI recently talked to my dad about it and he said 39It was never intended for you to go off and actually free solo but we thought the word and the concept itself really expressed this truth that in life itself we don39t have safety nets We39re all responsible for our own life experience for our own trajectory39quotTo really engage with life with the full focus that every move you make you39re responsible for making you embrace life in that way is the intentionquot she concludedExplorer The Last Tepui streams on Disney starting Earth Day Friday April 22Photo at top Ryan ValasekNational GeographicClick the social buttons above or below to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writersamp160

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Nat Geo's "Explorer: The Last Tepui," on Disney+, Brings the Earth Day Message Home

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