Wild & Scenic Film Festival

October 13, 2011

Tonight we attended the 3rd annual Wild & Scenic Film Festival, which is a fundraiser for the Nevada Wilderness Project. It was a very well-planned event with food, drink, a band, a few booths with local vendors and sponsors, and lots of people there supporting the whole thing. It was a great mix of movies from animated shorts that were more like the length of a commercial, to 5-10 minute inspiring films, to the 30-minute movie called Walking the Line: New Energy in the Old West. This movie was about one man's walk along the entire 500-mile proposed transmission line down the eastern part of Nevada (from southern Idaho to near Las Vegas). His walk gave us a view of the beautiful, mostly untouched, areas of Nevada that will be disturbed and fragmented by a proposed renewable energy transmission line.

The film that stuck with me the most was Nico's Challenge, a film about a 13-year old boy who climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro to raise money to buy wheelchairs for disabled people in Africa. I don't want to give any of it away...you can watch the entire 15-minute movie at this website. It's incredibly inspiring and well worth 15-minutes of your time.

Another favorite of mine was Into Darkness, about extreme cavers pushing themselves (sometimes literally) into the smallest spaces to get to the most amazing caves. See the trailer here.

During the intermission they held a raffle (I bought $10 worth of tickets). To my surprise I won a prize!!. It was very exciting. True to their outdoor theme, I won a day pass to an indoor rock climbing place (I have never been rock climbing), a Patagonia beanie (will come in handy since winter is on its way), and an Avalung backpack. What's an Avalung you ask??? The Avalung is a backpack with a tube that provides you with a certain amount of oxygen in the event you get caught in an avalanche out in the backcountry. It has a fleece pocket for your goggles, and large enough pockets for your shovel and other backcountry supplies. The backpack alone is worth $220!!! Needless to say, I probably will not be using the Avalung, or putting myself in a position where I would need to use the Avalung, so I need to find a backcountry snow hiker that would appreciate a good Avalung (but hoping they never need to use it).

I hope L enjoyed the evening as much as I did. I know at the very least she enjoyed the animated short films. Regardless, I will bring her back next year. This film festival, no matter who you are, opens your eyes to new things you never knew existed and makes you appreciate the outdoors and the brave people who spend a good portion of their lives in wild places.

Until our next adventure . . .