Note
Origin — A Film School Class Project
Glen Denny took an experimental moviemaking course from a professor named Fred Padula in autumn 1966. His class project was filming his friend Steve Miller soloing a steep face on Cathedral Peak — no dialogue, just the act of climbing, with guitar music in the background.
The Name
He named the short film Nyala after the African antelope, then submitted it to the Trento Film Festival — where it won an award. The choice of name appears to be purely aesthetic, with no connection to climbing or Yosemite — Denny simply liked the word.
Who Was Glen Denny?
Born in Modesto, California, Denny moved to Yosemite in 1958 to learn to climb and witnessed the first ascent of the Nose on El Capitan. Inspired by that historic event, he soon climbed the most challenging routes in Yosemite Valley alongside the big-wall pioneers of the late 1950s and early 1960s, making many significant first ascents in Yosemite and the High Sierra. Recognizing the importance of what is now called the "Golden Age of Yosemite Climbing," he began photographing climbs and the social scene of Camp 4 in the early 1960s. He left an enduring legacy in art and climbing history. His cinematography in the films EL CAPITAN (1968) and NYALA (1967) revealed both the vertiginous grandeur and intimate details of life on the walls. His unique vision was also captured in his books, Yosemite in the Sixties and Valley Walls.
What Came Next
Nyala was a proving ground. In the summer of 1967, Denny shot a documentary for the Sierra Club about Miner's Ridge in the North Cascades, where the environmental group was fighting an effort to open a pit mine. More than anything, Denny wanted to make a film as beautiful as El Cap itself. That ambition ultimately led to his collaboration with Fred Padula on the 1978 film El Capitan, now considered a landmark in climbing cinema.
Legacy
His cinematography in the films El Capitan and Nyala revealed both the vertiginous grandeur and intimate details of life on the walls, leaving an enduring legacy in art and climbing history.
In short, Nyala was a student film — a spare, wordless portrait of a soloing climber on Cathedral Peak — that happened to win international recognition and set Denny on a path to becoming one of the defining visual chroniclers of Yosemite's golden climbing era.
