180° South

180° South (2010) is an American documentary you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Chris Malloy. In 1968, Yvon Chouinard — who would go on to found Patagonia — and Doug Tompkins sailed and drove to the southern tip of Chile, climbed a volcano and came back changed by what they found. Forty years later, surfer and climber Jeff Johnson decides to retrace that route: from California to Patagonia, mostly by sea.

The journey takes longer than planned. A storm forces weeks on Easter Island; the final push to the volcano demands a solo climb through rain and ice. Chouinard and Tompkins both appear on camera — older, and what they say about those mountains now gives the road-trip a sharper edge. The film's tagline is "Conquerors of the Useless," and the tension that phrase carries runs through everything: what does it mean to reach a wild place once that place is already being lost? Stream 180° South (2010) online on iFILM.