“Girl Climber,” Which Tackles Risk and Motherhood, Is Coming to Netflix
The 2025 film Girl Climber, which follows American rock climber Emily Harrington’s career-defining 24-hour ascent of Yosemite’s El Capitan, arrives on Netflix on September 16.
The documentary won multiple awards on the mountain-film festival circuit when it debuted last summer. It stood out for pairing a historic climbing feat with a far more vulnerable story about fear, failure, ambition, aging, and the cost of pursuing excellence.
There are two ticking clocks in Girl Climber: the 24-hour window to free climb El Capitan’s 3,200-foot granite face, and Harrington’s own biological clock. In a culture increasingly obsessed with optimization and accomplishment, the questions Girl Climber raises about what we’re willing to sacrifice to achieve something extraordinary feel especially urgent.
Harrington started as an indoor climbing competitor, winning five U.S. national championships by age 22 before turning her attention to famous crags, big walls, and high-altitude mountaineering. In 2012, she summited Mount Everest. “I love exploring my perceived limit and trying to push past it,” she tells the cameras early in the film.
In 2018, at age 33, Harrington became fixated on becoming the first woman (and just the fourth person behind Tommy Caldwell, Alex Honnold, and Brad Gobright) to achieve a 24-hour ascent of El Capitan via the challenging Golden Gate route, a 3,200-foot ascent with 36 different pitches. Girl Climber follows this goal. Throughout the film, Harrington’s focus on the achievement becomes a measure of whether she has truly succeeded in her career as a climber.
That’s because of the climb’s elite-level technical difficulty, and because Harrington’s goal would break through El Capitan’s boy’s club.
The film includes interviews with legendary climbers such as Lynn Hill, Cedar Wright, and Tommy Caldwell to help provide context on the route. Honnold is also in Girl Climber, in a supporting role as Harrington’s partner for the ascent.
The Golden Gate project does not go smoothly. Over multiple years and multiple attempts, Harrington is turned back by weather and exhaustion, including one effort that ends just 300 feet from the summit. Another attempt results in a violent fall and a trip to the hospital.
Meanwhile, the film captures Harrington’s romantic relationship with high-altitude mountain guide Adrian Ballinger and her desire to have children. She knows she cannot keep postponing the next stage of her life while waiting for the perfect climbing conditions on El Cap. Each failed attempt on Golden Gate raises the possibility of quitting—not because she can’t complete the climb, but instead because success might force her to surrender too many years for the project.
Harrington eventually completed Golden Gate in 21 hours, 13 minutes, and 51 seconds, on November 4, 2020. But during the effort, she took another hard fall high on the route, opening a deep gash on her forehead that gushed blood. The film captures the terrifying moment and delivers plenty of thrilling climbing footage.
But Girl Climber refuses to provide a completely tidy answer to the question: “Was it worth it?”
Harrington continues to grapple with that question in the film’s epilogue, when she discusses the death of her friend, mentor, and fellow The North Face team athlete Hilaree Nelson. Nelson died on September 26, 2022, at age 49, while descending 26,781-foot Manaslu in Nepal on skis after summiting. She left behind two children.
Nelson’s death, Harrington’s own serious accident, and her eventual transition into motherhood make the triumph on El Cap look different in retrospect.
I recently spoke with Harrington about Girl Climber and the question she’s regularly asked since becoming a mother: “You’re still climbing?”
OUTSIDE: Through Netflix, Girl Climber is likely to reach audiences far beyond the mountain sports community. What are you hoping the general public takes away from it?
Emily Harrington: I think people can see themselves in my story a little bit more than other films that put climbers on a pedestal, kind of showing them as superhuman. Girl Climber is vulnerable, and it’s very honest, and it shows a lot about fear. I hope people relate to it in their own lives—that being scared is OK. Being afraid of things is OK. Trying hard is OK. Failing is OK. The film is about going through these massive life transitions and continuing to try hard and continuing to find your way. It’s all part of being human on this journey of life. I hope they feel a connection to the film in that way, and some sort of inspiration or little kernel of wisdom that can be incorporated into their own lives in some way.
And then I hope they learn a little bit more about climbing. Free Solo was kind of the first film to introduce climbing to the mainstream, and that’s amazing, but also everyone now thinks that we climb without ropes. So I hope that they learn a little bit more about rock climbing and realize that it’s really diverse and you can experience it in all these different ways. Also that it’s very much focused on partnership and trust. I think Girl Climber does a really good job of touching on that, on these forms of support, on leaning on your friends and your family for that support, and tells this really beautiful story of friendship and partnership.
The film raises the question of whether achievement can become too central to identity. Did finishing Golden Gate actually quiet that drive in you?
That’s a really good question and something that I’m still learning. I had this idea in my brain that once I did Golden Gate, I would just feel satisfied. I’m realizing that there’s always going to be another project and another dream. There’s always going to be something to strive for.
I think if you allow it to completely consume you, to dictate who you are and how you feel about yourself and how you view the world, I think that can develop into a very unhealthy mentality.
But I also think that it’s what enables great achievement in athletics, in everything: becoming obsessed and all-consumed. So it’s OK to be in that phase, to be completely career-obsessed or completely obsessed with your goals, for a period of time. But then, as humans, we evolve, and we change, and for me, the shift happened when I became a mother. I realized that there are these other things in life that I care so deeply about, and so I’m just a much more balanced human now.
Speaking of motherhood, you’ve had some people express disbelief that you’re “still climbing” after having a baby. What do you make of that reaction?
I get that question a lot when I do corporate speaking gigs. Someone will be like, “So you’re still doing it, huh?” At first, it seemed like a very strange question for me. As outdoor people, we kind of exist in this bubble where it’s just assumed that when you live an outdoor lifestyle, and you’re a climber or a skier or whatever, that’s who you are, and you do that for the rest of your life.
But as I’ve gotten that question more and more, I’ve started trying to unpack it in my own brain. I realized that there is still a large part of our culture that sees it as pretty black and white for women. That once you become a mom, you basically give up everything else that you’re doing.
And I think because people assume that climbing entails so much risk—and they don’t really understand the nuances around different styles of climbing and how you can mitigate the risk—they just assume climbing is super dangerous. So why would you do it, especially as a mother?
I think it’s shifting. There are stories out there of women having children and continuing their athletic careers; there’s a wave of women going through this life transition into motherhood and continuing to do what they love and continuing their careers. But we’re not all the way there yet.
What climbs are you most excited about right now?
I’m really excited about a local project here in Tahoe, a route called A Steep Climb Named Desire. It’s a 5.14, and I’ve been trying it on and off since I moved here 14 years ago. I honestly thought it was maybe too hard for me, or not for me or whatever. But now I have this really fun group of stoked women who are trying it also, and I got really close last time. I’m sort of bummed that I have to leave and go to New York next week because the conditions are going to be really good.
I had an amazing summer climbing in the Eastern Sierra. We went to the Incredible Hulk for my birthday. I’m feeling really motivated and stoked to be doing bigger multi-pitch routes. I feel like I’m finally mentally able to wrap my brain around trying hard really high off the ground again. It took me a while to get over the fear and intimidation of trying hard up high. Because it is scary and intimidating. And also because I think your brain definitely changes after having a baby.
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