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| Above, Totem Pole (center) as seen during my 2016 tour of Monument Valley. Photo by Armand Vaquer. |
During his heyday as an action film star, Clint Eastwood often pushed the envelope to deliver the goods for his movies when outdoors doing action scenes.
One such time was in The Eiger Sanction (1975) in which Eastwood plays a college art professor who is also a retired secret agent for a secret government spy agency that specializes in eliminating (called sanctions) enemies. He is called back into service, reluctantly, by the agency head who is a full-fledged albino (played by Thayer David of Dark Shadows fame).
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| Above a view of Totem Pole taken last October. Photo by Armand Vaquer. |
He is charged to sanction someone connected with an international climbing team of Switzerland's Eiger mountain for murdering a fellow agent who was also a friend. He proceeds to Utah for his pre-climb training under the wing of George Kennedy. Scenes of his training include Zion National Park (Checkerboard Mesa, the Zion Lodge pool (now gone)) and Monument Valley Tribal Park, where Eastwood became the last person to legally climb the 400 foot tall Totem Pole. Scenes of his Totem Pole climb are spectacular, particularly when Eastwood and Kennedy pop open some beer while sitting atop it. While Eastwood climbed the world's tallest spire himself, Kennedy was airlifted onto it by helicopter.
During recent years, I took two tours of Monument Valley with Goulding's Lodge Tours and saw Totem Pole from two distant vantage points.
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