Vertical Frontier
A Kristi Denton Cohen/ Peloton Productions Film in Association with Sierra Club Productions
Narrated by Tom Brokaw

Kristi Denton Cohen: Producer, Writer, Director

Kristi Denton Cohen has always felt closer to her soul in the mountains than anywhere else. A recreational mountaineer and avid hiker, skier and bicyclist, she empathized with the climbers trying to save Yosemite's Camp 4 from development by the National Park Service from the moment she heard their story. She first spent the night there in 1998, and discovered a spirit of community that has defined this climbing mecca for more than half a century.

"Camp 4 is a place where great adventures start, where people come to test themselves," Kristi says. "In this dusty campground, I witnessed a communal passion for a sport that is really still being invented today. New ideas about protecting the rock, new techniques and new equipment from climbers of many nationalities, young and old, have been born and are tested there every day. Once I met the climbers, I knew I had found a special story that needed to be told."

Kristi's love of the mountains is sincere; she plans to donate all profits from the sale/distribution of "Vertical Frontier" to non-profit mountaineering and mountain environment causes.

Kristi has been producing and directing award-winning videos and events since 1986 for companies as diverse as McKinsey & Company, Wells Fargo Bank, Visa, and Levi Strauss. She has been awarded a Joey Award of Excellence for a national Public Service Announcement for Christmas in April*USA and a Joey and a Silver Cindy Award for a corporate communications video she created for Cal Fed Bank.

Kristi has also produced and directed nationally broadcast direct-response programs, commercials and PSAs. In 1995, she line-produced the first all-digital short feature film, "Mail Bonding". In January 2002, Kristi completed a short documentary about the Ploughshares Fund, a non-profit organization working to halt the spread of weapons of mass destruction around the world. This documentary, which featured actor Michael Douglas speaking of his support for the organization, premiered at the 2002 Slamdunk Film Festival in Park City, an alternative showcase that runs coincident with the Sundance Film Festival each year.

A Mill Valley resident since 1983, Kristi is the daughter of a climber and skier who named her after the downhill ski technique known as the Stem Christie. She has climbed three 14,000-ft. mountains, and in 1993, she and her husband Tom hiked the 200-mile John Muir Trail from Yosemite to Mt. Whitney. In 1999, they continued the journey northward when they hiked 175 miles from Yosemite to Lake Tahoe. In 1995, she joined the AIDS ride, bicycling from San Francisco to Los Angeles.