UNCHARTED ENDS

• Genre: Exploration
   
• Location: Baffin Island, Canada and the Netherlands
   
• Delivery: 2007
   
• Length: A one hour film
   
• Title: Uncharted Ends
   
• Other partners: Anecdote Films
   

Martin Fickweiler is a Dutch man with a passion for extreme rock climbing. He is focused on exploration and first ascents, putting up new routes on unclimbed mountains all over that planet. Covering uncharted areas in the Sahara, Amazon and the Arctic, these places have been the sceneries for his quest for adventure. High and vertical rock faces that have taken many days' to climb belong to his favourites. As a modern mountaineer, he travels light and in small teams. Leaving nature as wild as it was found.

In 2006 he and two friends attempted to locate and then climb an uncharted remote rock face high in the Canadian Artic on Baffin Island.

Two weeks before he was due to depart his friend and climbing companion Hans Copier tragically committed suicide.  To honour his friend, Martin was determined to place some of his friend's cremated ashes at the summit of an unclimbed and unnamed peak, a place of true rest.  Battling against bad weather and personal hardship, Martin's dream was cut short and Han's ashes were placed only half way up resting on a precarious edge.

This year in the spring of 2007, Martin and a new companion Neils van Veen will return to fulfil what Martin set out to do one year ago and place the ashes of Hans Copier on top of the peak hopefully to be named 'Copier Pinnacle'.

Uncertainties still remained as the departure date grew ever closer. Martin and Niels have never climbed together before, but for a days climb in the tropical island of Madagascar. Never before had they been together in an extreme and isolated location for over a month.

Two uncertainties haunted Martin.  Would their untested partnership work and hold up to such an extreme and yet intimate relationship?  Would Han's ashes be there one year after being perched on a ledge with some of the worst weather to be found anywhere on the planet?  All with the risk of Polar Bears, rock falls and an 800m vertical drop.

From sleeping in 'hanging tents' bolted into handmade holes in a crumbling rock face, to a failed satellite phone, and the fear that of loved ones back were calling out an unneeded rescue, to Martins six day slog back to a remote communication station just to call home.

'Uncharted Ends' follows the build up, to departure and eventual success of ones mans' quest…

Both Martin and Neils, whom are not professional film makers, have returned with a unique and truly amazing story on film, with only a few hours training in story telling and camera techniques from the producers at New Earth Films.

An amazing story set in a stunning location - a place where until now no human had even left a foot print  and now it's a resting place for one mans' soul.

Martin, sponsored by Gore-Tex, will be hosting and showing our film at the European Outdoor Film Tour this year. We will be releasing the film on DVD and intend to distribute it for international broadcast thereafter.  

www.martinfickweiler.nl