Classic climb: Catherine Destivelle solos sandstone in Mali
CLIMBING -- Take time out to enjoy this 1987 film that set a standard for climbing pictures. Not only is the climber a beauty with bulletproof shoulders, the film is as masterpiece of staging and arrangement. Very cool.
French climber Catherine Destivelle was 28 at the time she was featured here in Africa soloing a sandstone cliff in the Mali desert.
One of the top climbers in the world at the time, she performed for the camera as well as for the local people, the Dogons of Sanga, scaling unroped to their ancient cliff dwellings and the skulls and skeletons in their ancient graveyard caves.