UNCHARTED ENDS

• Genre: Exploration, Adventure, Travel
   
• Location: Baffin Island, Canada and the Netherlands
   
• Delivery: 2008
   
• 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.

In the spring of 2007 Martin and a new companion Neils van Veen returned to fulfill the dream and place the ashes of Hans Copier on top of the peak - hopefully to be named 'Copier Pinnacle'.

Martin and Niels had never climbed together before, except for a day climb on 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 left, 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 team, to Martin's 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 man's quest. Both Martin and Neils, neither of who are professional filmmakers, returned with a unique and truly amazing story captured on film. They both had 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 no human had left a footprint - and now a location that is a resting place for one man's soul.

Martin, sponsored by Gore-Tex, premiered the film at the European Outdoor Film Tour.

www.martinfickweiler.nl