Watch Epic 1968 Yvon Chouinard Road Trip to Fitz Roy
Mountains of the Storm is one of the most legendary climbing films ever made
In 1968, Yvon Chouinard, Doug Tompkins, Dick Dorworth, and Chris Jones left Northern California en route to climb Cerro Fitz Roy in Patagonia. It was a trip full of surfing, skiing and climbing.
The crew filmed their exploits on a 16mm Bolex camera and showed it off to small crowds in the U.S.A. They called their movie Mountain of Storms and It became a legendary underground film.
From Ventura to a first ascent on Cerro Fitz Roy, with a stop for sand skiing and 31 days in an ice cave in between, the film not only prefigured the modern adventure movie, it serves as the mythological origin story behind the Patagonia name and philosophy, and informed a founding principle that would come to dominate these men’s lives for the next five decades: what’s important isn’t what you accomplished, it’s how you got there.
Chouinard famously said, “Real adventure is defined best as a journey from which you may not come back alive, and certainly not as the same person.”
