- Here we go. (laughs)
Today, we have something super special.
This is a video that was created
and directed by the great Jimmy Chin.
- My name is Jimmy Chin and I am a professional climber,
mountaineer, photographer, and filmmaker.
- Hello, my name's Jason Walsh
and I'm Brie Larson's trainer.
- A couple years ago, my trainer Jason and I,
were training for "Captain Marvel"
and after I had accomplished what I felt like
were just the peaks of physical performance for myself,
Jimmy said, I wanna take you to my home turf.
Come to Wyoming, we're gonna climb The Grand.
(laughs) I, of course, accepted
because it's a once in a lifetime opportunity.
With all the training I did,
I had no idea if I was actually gonna be able to do it.
It's coming from the place of,
if I can do it, you can do it.
I don't think that I am a super human.
I know that I play one in a movie,
but there's a lot of CGI and wires involved.
So excited to share this with you.
It's something I'm incredibly proud of,
and I've told (whispers) absolutely nobody (laughs),
because we wanted to find the perfect place to release it
and we feel that this YouTube channel with all of y'all
is the place to do it.
- So, I'm gonna do some quick commentary
on this video of our Grand Teton climb.
- Yeah, so here we are (laughs).
(countdown beeping)
(upbeat music)
- And it's always about not looking like
it's got four basketballs in it.
It's like you're always compressing everything
and filling in all the little...
I'm here in Jackson Hole with Jason Welsh and Brie Larson.
And the nice thing about this thing is...
And we are getting ready to climb the Grand Teton.
- Any food that I want for the next couple of days
up the mountain, I have to carry.
You don't think about how heavy water is
until you have to think about carrying it (laughs).
- You're handbag.
- It's my clutch! - It's your alpine-
- It's an alpine clutch. - It's your alpine clutch.
(Jimmy laughs)
- So that is apparently what we're climbing starting Monday.
That's just gnarly.
I'm just now realizing
that I never even Googled the Grand Teton
to know what I was signing up for.
This is true, I never googled the Grand Teton.
We were on the plane
and I realized I didn't even know
what the mountain looked like (laughs).
- I started training Brie four years ago.
She came to me because she had these movies coming up,
"Captain Marvel" and "The Avengers."
- It just didn't sit well with me
to play a strong character without actually being strong.
(Brie yells) - [Jason] Keep going,
you got it, it's moving!
Let's go, let's go!
- I pushed his Jeep, that was our goal previously.
It felt good for about 30 seconds,
then I was like, "okay, what's next,"
and that's when we started dreaming up,
we're gonna get Jimmy to take us to The Grand.
We trained for six weeks pretty hard,
but I would say with all of that
we were in really good shape ahead of time.
We would go to the climbing gym every other day
and just spend hours, hours, hours, hours,
and we were lucky that sometimes Jimmy would come into town
and he would come climb with us.
- They'd never rock climbed before.
- Whoa!
- But, over the last few months,
we've been climbing in the gym together.
Just squat down. (laughs) - Sit into it?
Taught them how to belay.
Taught them some of the basics.
Wanted them to get comfortable with just the movement.
- If you're thinking of climbing up
a wall at a climbing gym, it's flat,
or maybe it's tilted this way
or, even harder, it's tilted that way,
and you're really learning how to connect everything,
all the parts of your body in order to get you there,
and you also start to learn how to use less of your hands.
So, at first, you're just like (grunts)
trying to use your hands as much as you can,
but the idea was to start, as we were getting better at it,
to be able to use less.
- I have in mind kind of a accelerated program,
pushing them pretty hard, but only because I know
that they have the type of personalities
that like a challenge (laughs).
- But he was doing this on purpose.
It's kind of an overload of facts.
You take the mind and the body, and put you in stuff
that you're probably going to confront on the mountain,
but make it a little bit harder,
so that when you get on the mountain it just feels good
and you can enjoy yourself.
- Up to there.
My feet here, right? - Yup.
Their very first day of rock climbing
I took them up a five pitch route.
Yeah. - Oh my god!
That feels so crazy, dude! - Yes, you got it!
- We got thrown into some things that just felt impossible.
It was way, way, way harder than I thought.
- Holy (indistinct), dude!
- I mean, her face says it all.
I felt the same way.
There's only so much...
You've got the adrenaline, you're in this environment,
and it's absolutely beautiful,
and you've got these preconceived notions
about what to expect,
but nothing can prepare you for it until you're out there.
- (breaths heavily) I can't believe I just did that.
(pants) Dude!
- [Jimmy] That was a gnarly pitch.
- Are you sure this is a practice climb?
It was just like full survival mode
and so much processing.
It was 'cause it was all this craftwork
and stuff that I'd never done before.
- [Jimmy] Good job.
- (breaths out) Thank you.
I felt raw and humbled,
and I was like, I have to just be accepting of this.
- And the second day, I took them up a more difficult route.
Also a five pitch.
You saw how much I put my foot in there?
You can actually put it in there where you're pulling
with your foot inside the crack,
and that'll help you move.
All right, really, actually, I guess it was a test for them.
Just to see how they would handle
being thrown into the deep end.
I prefer to know how they react
to really challenging situations on this climb
then up on the Grand Teton.
Casual, right?
- (laughs) Yeah, super chill Saturday, thanks.
(Jimmy laughs)
Because my job requires me
to have a really deep understanding
and sort of control over my mind,
I've had to really spend a lot of time digging into myself
and understanding the different avenues
and pathways that I can get into,
and the ways that I can allow myself to feel things,
and the ways that I can hold it back,
and I knew that there would be stressful moments in this.
It's finding this place that I could access
that was just spacious,
and just kind of training my mind to do that.
Dying here.
It was not easy at all.
It was way harder than the stuff
we were doing in the gym, period,
and, also, it's a completely different thing
when you're climbing at a rock climbing gym
where they have these beautiful little colored rocks
that you're looking at and grabbing onto,
and you know what the path is.
This is like, you are by yourself
with sometimes what feels like just smooth stone,
no colors telling you where your hands
or where your feet are supposed to go next.
(exhales heavily)
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, good.
(Brie grunts)
It's pretty incredible how composed she's staying.
'Cause it's pretty hard climbing
and it's pretty exposed.
Yeah.
- When I got to the top I was like,
I don't even know what just happened.
I love those experiences.
When you get through it and you're like,
I wasn't given words for that.
That's spiritual to me.
Oh, dang (laughs).
- My god. - Good job you guys.
Second day rock climbing! (Jason sighs)
(laughs)
I was just really impressed
with how she could maintain her composure
in a situation like that.
Like, really impressed,
and I've taken a lot of people climbing.
Jason, same thing, I mean, they have that mental strength
and discipline to be like, okay, I need to get focused.
I need to be in the moment.
- Yeah, they got pretty messed up.
I can't do anything.
Can't even open a water bottle right now (laughs).
You sandbagged me (laughs).
(Man off-camera laughs)
I'm living a sandbagged life.
Later, when we met a lot of his friends,
they were like, "oh yeah, you're on the slingshot program.
That's what Jimmy does, he sandbags you,"
and I was like, "what, what is sandbagging?"
Sandbagging is a term where somebody puts you in a situation
that's way harder than the one you should be in,
in order for you to grow.
My career has been sort of like waves.
So I've been riding some pretty big waves
the last five years,
and I just started to feel burnt out,
and I still feel it inside of me
that there aren't more stories that I can tell.
There isn't more that I can bring
until I do this work on myself,
and seeing this as an opportunity to do that.
(ethereal music)
- [Jimmy] There's a lot of different ways
to climb The Grand.
I thought we would try one of the more difficult routes.
They're not where they are in their lives
because they don't have the capacity to try hard,
and it's my job to bring them in that optimal space
where it's gonna be really, really challenging for them.
But, hopefully, also really rewarding.
- That first night the wind was blowing,
I wanna say, it was 60 some-odd miles per hour
with higher wind gusts,
and it was on a constant,
so we didn't sleep at all,
and you're at elevation,
higher than we have been this whole trip.
We acclimated quite a bit for those first couple of days,
but nothing prepared us for this.
(ethereal music continues)
- That one seems okay-ish.
Yeah, it doesn't hurt yet.
This one hurts. - How about that?
- It's probably close to 6 a.m.
We're about to head out to climb The Grand.
(voiceless linguolabial trill)
I felt pretty exhausted just walking
from getting coffee up to my tent again so,
I am not sure how this is gonna go,
but I'm gonna try really, really hard (laughs).
All right, let's do it.
Probably only got like an hour or two of sleep.
I've found that if just don't tell yourself that story,
if instead you just go like, "I got a great sleep,"
you totally move on and forget about it,
and it doesn't hurt as much,
so that was kind of how it started.
(shoe slipping) Oh ho ho. (laughs)
- We have about seven or eight pitches
to the top of the pestle,
and then we'll have a zone to chill,
and then we have the Upper Exum, which is like another...
I mean, if we pitched it out, it's another seven to eight,
so we've got 15 pitches, if we pitched it out.
She's giving me a really dirty look here (laughs).
I got a few dirty looks (laughs) from Brie.
But it was hilarious.
She could just turn it around
and be like, "okay, well, this is what's in front of me,
I'm gonna make it happen."
(laughs)
- The number of pitches just continues to progress
the closer we get to the mountain.
- [Jimmy] (laughs) Yup, yup.
Yup, traverse across.
Watch out. - [Male Off-camera] Good girl!
- [Jimmy] Hike that. - [Male Off-Camera] Hell yeah!
- [Jimmy] Best hold of your life coming up here.
Right here. - Oh yeah!
Okay, nothing like learning how to smear
and trust the smear this high up.
(Jimmy laughs) What better time?
We're at pitch 1,001.
- [Jason] 1,001. - Yes.
- [Jason] We're so close.
- Apparently we're close, we're not entirely sure.
You're being surprised by how things start to overlap,
like my ability to have control over my mind
works pretty well when I'm climbing.
You just don't know that you can apply these other skills
that you learned through other crafts.
(cheerful music)
One of my main takeaways from this
is just you have this time with yourself to really dig in
and see who you are and how much strength I have.
(cheerful music continues)
- So, this little ridge right here (laughs),
I guess less than 1% of people that summit The Grand,
and it's super sharp ridge,
that's just sheer drops on either side,
that really is just a final little F-U from Jimmy.
- (laughs) Oh, dude.
No way. - [Woman Off-Camera] Woo!
- Yay! - [Woman Off-Camera] Yeah!
I don't know how to describe getting to the top.
You just get so deeply rewarded with that view.
That view is out of control.
I was just so moved and so at peace.
I hereby declare this day- - Death.
- The day of a thousand pitches.
There have been no less than a thousand pitches.
- Think she got tired?
- Yeah, I think the last three days just caught up.
- Oh my god, the adrenaline crash after.
I was cooked, I was (laughs).
(Jimmy laughs)
(Brie laughs)
I definitely don't think I need to do this again
for at least a year.
But let's talk about what we should do in a year! (laughs)
Oh my gosh, I still feel that.
It was just the trip of a lifetime.
(sighs) Jimmy told me that he has lots of people
that he meets that are like,
"I wanna come climb with you"
and he said I am the first celebrity
to actually take him up on it.
I would love to get the team back together again.
So, if you have ideas, if you have thoughts,
please, please put them in the comments
so that we can figure out where we will travel to next.
Up until a couple years ago,
I self-identified as a introvert with asthma,
and these last couple of years through gaining strength
and confidence in my body,
and learning how that connects to my mind
has just been so eye opening to me.
So, if I can do it, you can do it.
I mean, maybe don't try doing this without Jimmy,
or at least do it with a guide or somebody you trust.
Just, full disclosure,
don't go climb a mountain by yourself.
I'm trying to think of what else
has been as transformative for me.
It was like doing years of therapy in a week.
I mean, I still go to therapy
but maybe I'll have to do less in the long run (laughs).
If there's anything you wanna see,
I was kind of thinking maybe like a fails compilation.
Like all the times that I fell,
all the times that I ate it,
or more training specifics, like, whatever.
Whatever you think feels inspirational.
We've got lots of extra footage that we can share,
if you're into it (lips smacking).
Much love, hope you're happy in your body, bye!
(light music)