Glasgow film-maker to tackle Kirkpatrick's Pyscho Vertical

A chance meeting with a Glasgow-based film-maker has led to the planned film of Andy Kirkpatrick's Pyscho Vertical

A professional climber's account of coping with severe dyslexia and making one of the world's hardest solo ascents looks set to be made into a film.

Hull-born Andy Kirkpatrick wrote Psycho Vertical after completing a 12-day solo climb of Reticent Wall on El Capitan in Yosemite, California.

A chance meeting with Glasgow-based film-maker Jen Randall at El Capitan in 2012 led to the film project.

Randall, also a climber, makes award-winning documentaries.

Her previous films deal with women in climbing, bouldering and mountaineering and have been recognised at UK and international mountain film festivals.

Psycho Vertical recounts Kirkpatrick's experiences of severe dyslexia in childhood and later life, his "lost adolescence" and personal relationships in between accounts of pitches up El Capitan.

The book won the The Boardman Tasker Prize For Mountain Literature in 2008.

El Capitan in Yosemite

The climber, who frequently makes ascents of routes on El Capitan, a vertical granite rock formation that rises to 900m (3,000ft), has made a name for himself tackling vertical climbs, often in challenging winter weather conditions.

In 2014, he made a 14-day first ascent of the South Ridge of Ulvertanna in Antarctica in freezing temperatures.

Randall, who has begun a crowdfunding campaign to finance the making of the film, said: "I met Andy in Yosemite 2012.

"A friend and I had just realised we were far from ready to climb El Capitan and Andy and his climbing partner Paul took us under their wing and gave us the confidence to go for it.

"We did, and we succeeded."

On the planned film she added: "This is going to be a film about identity, about love. It will be funny, moving, all the things that make life brilliant, hard and worth it."