After my article listing the 10 best climbing ascents of 2011 went viral,  my boss was filled with glee and instantly demanded more articles just like it. My idea was to do a post on the Top 10 Online Climbing videos of 2011. This idea seemed simple and relatively brainless compared to the amount of time, thought and energy I’d poured into the first article. Initially, I had trouble determing criteria for inclusion. Would it be numerical? Number of views. Number of likes. Etc. Or would I also include a few videos that appeal to my own subjective preferences for quality/story-telling/uniqueness.

I was stumped when, after three minutes of effort, I couldn’t figure how to filter my search for videos exclusive to 2011 and then arrange them by number of views. Then I felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of videos out there. I did learn that the number one most-watched climbing video on Vimeo had been about number two, with Jason Kruk getting stuck in an offwidth and shitting his pants. But then last year Keith Ladzinski and Andy Mann’s viral video of Sasha DiGiulian sending Pure Imagination usurped Kruk’s reign. I suppose that’s encouraging on some level, especially if you’re Jason Kruk … or a pants shitter (there are more of them out there than you would believe … there could be one sitting next to you right now … in fact, it could be you!).

But before I could get my act together and compile my list, Climbing Narc beat me to the punch and published his list of top 10 climbing videos—which makes sense since after all he is number one, and I am only number two.

I didn’t feel like following on his heels, and gave up. But that was OK with me. I’ve been spinning weightless and discombobulated in my own little motivational vacuum, and I think I needed a two-week break from constantly generating content—one reason (along with lethargy, apathy and gluttony) that I haven’t posted anything new to this site in a while.

But the video idea stuck with me. To me, if there is one thing that sums up last year—aside from all the fantastic climbing achievements by everyone except for myself and my fellow whiners at Bass For Your Face—it’s that 2011 will go down as the year of the Free Online Climbing Video. The glut of quality climbing-related video content available on Vimeo and YouTube is boggling.

We are amid yet another technologically driven Renaissance. Affordable DSLRs that shoot high-quality footage and cheap video-editing software like iMovie (which does the trick in most cases) have given the average climber a vehicle that was not available even just two years ago. What is going on now reminds me of what happened to the field of writing, and publishing, when technology such as Blogger and WordPress made it easy for anyone with a set of half-working genitals to publish their own site and become, essentially, “writers” with an audience. Or what happened to the field of photography when HDR settings and sharpening filters (et al) allowed any jamoke with a camera to wake up late, miss the good light, and get a photo that doctored up reality into a glowing, retina-burning image that, no matter how fake it looked, ultimately won over the hearts and minds of most people who apparently respond to vibrant colors as if they are zombies and the photo they are looking at is brains.

I am making it sound like these are categorically bad things, but they aren’t. I’ve read a lot of great writing in the blogosphere and made connections to and shared ideas with new, amazing people. Obviously we’ve all benefited in some way from this completely democratic, free-flowing network of information and art.

To get back to the topic, things have certainly changed for videographers—pro, prosumer and amateur alike. Aside from one or two movies, all the best videos that I watched in 2011 were free: free to watch, and free to distribute on your own site for your own gain. Every week, I felt like I was bombarded with another new high-quality vid, so much so that it has made paying for video content seem like an insane anachronism, like buying CDs.

This idea hit home the other day when I finally found time to sit down and watch a review copy of Bernd Zangerl’s “Northern Beats.” The film, which can be bought online for a mere 6.80 euros, was pretty good. “Northern Beats” is basically one long (25-minute) music video with nice bouldering footage. There is no story, nor are there grades or descriptions of what the problems are like. Just footage of some strong Europeans climbing at an area that I later learned online to be Norway (it might have said this in the movie itself and I just missed it). (Also, I wrote about why the omission of grades in climbing films so rarely works here in this review of what might be my favorite climbing film of the year, which, interestingly, costs $20).

Right after watching “Northern Beats,” I watched “Straight out of Africa,” a free feature-length climbing film from Louder Than 11 that, like “Northern Beats,” is also 25 minutes long and all about bouldering. To be honest, I liked “Straight out of Africa” better—even though the quality was way worse and the climbing was set to some awesomely terrible 1980s irony ballads that are now popular with today’s brand of hipsters who are unable to separate real emotion and genuine ideas from sarcasm (i.e., “awesomely terrible” = good, I mean bad, no I mean good … but only with the vague understanding that you don’t think I actually care about any of this).

Watching “Straight out of Africa”—which was successful because it had rad boulders, strong climbers, insight into the climbers’ personalities, and was gritty and, above all, entertaining—made me wonder why anyone would pay 6.8 euros ($10) for “Northern Beats” or any video for that matter. Deadpoint Mag offers a year’s worth of video content touted as high quality with the Stash subscription for only $12, but even that, if this post on Climbing Narc suggests anything, seems like more money than most people are willing to fork over. (I haven’t had a chance to check out The Stash for myself, so I can’t comment on it.)

Even though for most professional filmmakers the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow seems to be getting more elusive than ever before, I think this influx of new creativity and talent into the climbing video genre to be an amazing thing to watch. A new universe has been born.

As for me? I am having a hard time deciding what was my favorite free online climbing video from last year. But I think it has to be Sasha DiGiulian sending Pure Imagination. My reasons for why I am choosing this video, though, better be left to the next post …