FWMF Minifest trailer

FWMF Minifest 2017 from Fort William Mountain Festival on Vimeo.

Here is a trailer I put together for the Fort William Mountain Festival Minifest which is running on Saturday 7th of October in the Nevis Centre. Some of my own aerial footage from around Lochaber in the trailer, and the list of great looking film showing.

You can get tickets for the night at mountainfestival.co.uk

Fort William Mountain Festival time is coming again

FWMF Showreel 2017 from Fort William Mountain Festival on Vimeo.

The Fort William Mountain Festival is always a highlight of the year for me. In fact, aside from climbing trips themselves, it’s the most important mountain-related date in my diary. It’s always an inspiring gathering of all the like-minded outdoor folk of the UK. We socialise, watch films, coach climbing and see some lectures that you just get at the many mountain festivals around the world (I’ve been to most of them, many times). 

Anyway, I would say that. The festival weekend itself also marks the end of the busiest work period in my year. Each year I edit the festival showreel, the mountain culture award films and also my own films for the festival. This year has been maybe my busiest. I’ve just finished seven pieces of film and I’m exhausted. As the last one uploads to dropbox, I was straight back on my board and felt much better, and tomorrow morning I’ll be heading off into the fresh snow that finally arrived on the hills today. Great!

Above is the festival showreel. Putting it together always gets me psyched not only for the festival, but for the start of the climbing season proper in Scotland. Here we go!

Hopefully see you folks from all over the UK and Europe at the festival in a couple of weeks. I'm running coaching masterclasses all weekend during the days at my wall (there was a cancellation on one booking yesterday - ring Claire on 07813060376 if you would like to fill it!). We also have a stall at the festival nights as always, selling books and films, so come and say hello.

Mick Tighe's film

Mick Tighe, recipient of the 2016 Award for Excellence in Mountain Culture from Fort William Mountain Festival on Vimeo.

Here is a wee film I made about Mick Tighe, this year’s recipient of the Scottish Award fro Excellence in Mountain Culture at the Fort William Mountain Festival. Hope you like it as much as I did making it.

Fort William Mountain Festival reel

Fort William Mountain Festival 2016 showreel from Fort William Mountain Festival on Vimeo.

I just put together the reel for the Fort William Mountain Festival which is coming up in mid February. The showreel has just a fraction of the films and speakers involved in this year’s festival

I’ve been to the FWMF every year for a decade and I know I’m highly biased, but it is the best mountain festival I’ve ever been to. Why? The combination of location, great shows and especially great vibe. 

I remember being blown away at a previous festival when during a hill running night the MC asked the audience how many people in the room were active hill runners and I reckon over 250 people raised a hand. I don’t know anywhere else where you get such energy of like minded people coming together and sharing their keenness. The great thing about FWMF is that folk are always out on the hill or in a workshop during the day enjoying some climbing or other activity. So everyone shares the ‘glow’ as they head back to the Fort for the evening film and lecture sessions.

As always I’m doing quite a lot at this year’s festival. as well as putting together the showreel, mountain culture award films and various sponsors films, I’ve also entered my own film ‘Miles Away’ and will be premiering the film I’m making this year for the Nevis Landscape Partnership, which will feature characters old and new from the Nevis area.

I’m also running my climbing technique masterclasses. In previous years I’ve run them at the Ice Factor, but this year, I’m pleased to say I’m running them at my own climbing wall!! It will be the first time my wall will be open to the climbing world beyond my friends. The Saturday and Sunday sessions are sold out but there are a couple of spaces left on the rock climbing and also dry tooling/winter sessions on Friday 19th Feb.

Tickets for the festival nights are here. If you want to grab those remaining spaces on my climbing sessions, check out the details here. See you there in a handful of weeks.

Robin Campbell film

Here is a wee film we put together about Robin Campbell for this year’s Fort William Mountain Festival. As well as Robin himself, it also features Jimmy Marshall, Paul Brian and Ken Crocket (thanks for joining in the singing Ken!).

Zeki Basan

Zeki Basan from Nevis Landscape Partnership on Vimeo.

Here is a short film we made about Zeki Basan, a great young character from over in the Gorms. Zeki won the Scottish youth award for mountain culture at this year’s Fort William Mountain Festival. He is the inaugural winner of the youth award and joins a formidable list of winners of the 'adult' award; Hamish McInnes, Jimmy Marshall, Richard Else, Myrtle Simpson, Ian 'Spike' Sykes, Andy Nisbet and Robin Campbell. We also made the film about Robin Campbell for his award this year and I'll post that up as soon as it's live.

I’m certainly used to meeting enthusiastic and smart young folk involved in all manner of mountain sports, but it was great to learn more about Zeki’s passion for bushcraft when we travelled over to speak to him for this film.