On Aug. 21, 2017, Nicole Doane and a few of her colleagues from Harborview Medical Center set out to hike up and repel down Wallace Falls in Gold Bar, Washington.
“I was having a good time. It was our ninth repel of the day, and I was feeling confident,” Doane said while recalling the accident to Beth Whitman, host of the She’s Bold podcast. “I might’ve been moving a little bit too fast because when I dropped over to the free-hanging area, I knew I had made a fatal mistake.”
Doane let go of her brake hand, controlling her speed down the canyon, and was left holding the climbing rope with two hands above her head — her loosening grip the only thing between her and a 150-foot drop to the ground below.
“I’m holding onto the rope, and at that moment, I realized that this is the last moment I have,” Doane said. “And, if this is my last moment, I don’t want to be scared.”
After three minutes of holding on, Doane decided to let go and free-fall.
The 67-minute action-adventure film “Where the Rope Ends” documents Doane’s fall, the events leading up to her rescue conducted by Snohomish Search and Rescue, and her long road to recovery.
“Pain was at the forefront, but underneath the pain, I was laying in a beautiful forest underneath a beautiful waterfall on a warm sunny day, and there are rainbows reflecting off the water, and I’m surrounded by the most compassionate people I know,” Doane said. “The beauty in them trying to help me through the struggle became more prevalent than the pain.”
Bailey Sinner, a 2011 Mount Si High School graduate and director of the documentary, was involved in several film production projects before meeting Doane at a yoga teacher training course in 2017.
“We ended up getting paired together for a project, and within the first ten minutes of our first conversation, I asked her if she’d be interested in doing a film,” Sinner said. “[Doane] really wanted to give back to the team that rescued her, so that interested her in doing this film.”
The film, partially dedicated to the search and rescue team that rescued Doane, has been distributed free of charge to 36 search and rescue units across the country. Each unit plans to host a screening event during National Volunteer Week in April to boost fundraising, recruitment and awareness of search and rescue volunteers’ tireless work for their communities.
Filming of the documentary began in 2017 and concluded mere months before its September 2023 premiere at North Bend Theatre.
“That event sold out and was just a great community event,” Sinner said. “I wanted to come back and do another one here. So, I reached out after I got so many requests that people wanted to see it again.”
Since its premiere, “Where the Rope Ends” has been recognized as the Best Feature Film at the 2024 Los Angeles Documentary Film Festival and nominated in the same category at the Las Vegas and Utah International Film Festivals.
Check it out
For tickets to the North Bend Theatre showing and Q&A hosted by Sinner and Doane on March 16, visit https://www.eventcreate.com/e/wheretheropeends. Doors open at 6 p.m. and the movie starts at 7 p.m.
Nicole Doane (left) and Bailey Sinner (right) at a recent screening of “Where the Rope Ends.” Photo courtesy of Bailey Sinner
