Park City Film will screen “Girl Climber” this weekend, Oct. 3 to Oct. 5.
The 2025 film follows professional climber Emily Harrington’s journey and her career-defining 24-hour ascent of Yosemite’s Golden Gate route on El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.
Harrington began climbing at age 10 in a gym. At the time, it was a relatively niche sport.
“I was really drawn to the idea of kind of solving the puzzle and figuring out my own way up the wall,” she told KPCW. “As well, I found it to be a bit scary, but it was something I could kind of confront and deal with in a way that felt really empowering.”
Harrington later became a five-time U.S. National Champion in sport lead climbing and earned silver at the International Federation of Sport Climbing World Championships in 2005.
After 10 years of competing, she transitioned into other types of climbing, including mountaineering, ice climbing, ski mountaineering and eventually big wall free climbing. That’s where climbers make their way up thousand-foot mountain faces over several days.
Harrington said it features a combination of styles.
“It requires technical and physical strength, like I was used to for my competition days, but then it's also very adventurous,” Harrington said.
After free climbing the 3,200-foot Golden Gate route on Yosemite’s El Capitan over six days in 2015, Harrington decided to attempt the climb in 24 hours. She said free climbing El Cap in under a day is the gold standard of big wall free climbing.
“Lynn Hill is the first person to free climb El Cap in a day, and she did it in the early ‘90s via the Nose route. And that achievement is just so historic and well known in our world, and it's owned by and pioneered by a woman, which I also just thought was so cool,” Harrington said. “So I was really inspired by that in itself.”
She attempted the climb multiple times and was injured in a bad fall in 2019.
She recovered and in 2020, became the fourth woman ever to free climb El Capitan in one day. She’s also the first woman and fourth person to free climb the granite monolith via the Golden Gate route.
“I was super proud of myself,” Harrington said. “What the movie really tells the story of is just trying hard, putting a lot of effort into something that you really want to do, and the value of that, and the value of having good people around you who lift you up.”
Park City Film will screen “Girl Climber” Oct. 3 to Oct. 5 at the Jim Santy Auditorium in the Park City Library.
There’s a post-film Q&A with Harrington after Saturday’s 7 p.m. showing.
