2013 Thin Line Film Fest - Wampler’s Ascent

Subject Stephen Wampler in attendance.

Wampler's Ascent takes the audience into the harried, sometimes terrifying and always difficult world of elite rock climbing. Set in Yosemite National Park, El Capitan Mountain is the biggest sheer rock face in the world. In fact, only 50% of all climbers who attempt to make it to the top actually compete the task.

Wampler's Ascent is a story about Steve Wampler, a husband and father of two children, who is also a man with a severe form of Cerebral Palsy. He lives his life in an electric wheelchair, and has the limited use of only one limb, his right arm. Steve cannot drive or use a fork or button a button, but he did 20,000 pull-ups and slept on the rock for five nights to make it to the summit. His limitations might be quite obvious to the people around him, but while Steve can literally do only two things with his left arm, grasp and pull, he used his spirit and deep will to heave himself up the mountain. He suffered with both hallucinations, severe dehydration and was unconscious twice, but on the sixth day of both terror and torture, he had completed his mission not for himself but more importantly, to show children all over the world with disabilities that they could do anything they put their minds to, in spite of challenges facing them. Wampler's Ascent is an up-lifting, incredible tale of will-power and mind-over-matter that will surely leave the viewer inspired and up lifted.

Film Details

Duration: 77 mins
Directors: Elizabeth & Stephen Wampler
Producer: Jacques Spitzer

Information from the festival website