Why extreme sports fanatics like Alex Honnold do what they do – new National Geographic series goes inside their minds
- ‘Edge of the Unknown with Jimmy Chin’ looks at why people like rock climber Alex Honnold and snowboarder Travis Rice take the risks they do
- In other episodes you can watch surfer Justine Dupont get almost wiped out in Hawaii, and explorer Sarah McNair-Landry get hunted by a predator in the Arctic
The impetus behind Edge of the Unknown with Jimmy Chin, a new 10-part National Geographic series, came from the fascination generated by Free Solo, the gripping 2018 documentary that showcases pro rock climber Alex Honnold’s rope-free climb of a 900-metre (3,000-foot) vertical rock face at Yosemite National Park.
“One of the things that happened after we made Free Solo was a lot of people wanted to know the story behind the story,” said Jimmy Chin, who executive-produced Free Solo and Edge of the Unknown alongside his wife and production partner, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, and is himself an avid mountain climber.
“We were being asked a lot of questions about risks, and why people do these things. In a way, this show was a response to those questions, and these were a lot of the stories and athletes that had inspired me.”
Edge of the Unknown is one of those action documentaries that have a compelling narrative and a dramatic storytelling voice. Other recent examples include The Rescue (also helmed by Chin and Vasarhelyi), about the rescue of 12 boys and their soccer coach from a flooded cave in Thailand, and Fire of Love, a 2022 documentary about two volcano explorers who died doing the thing they loved.
In creating Edge of the Unknown, Chin and Vasarhelyi wanted to highlight individuals who risk it all to indulge in sports that could potentially kill them.
