The Great Teplice Send

Among a crew of local sandstone climbers who called themselves the Opuca Gang, Dan Kosáček felt like the weakest link. But when his friend Jirka started goading him towards the notorious four-metre jump across to the Herinek tower — despite having wrecked his own legs in a fall there not long before — backing out stopped being an option.

So in the autumn of 1986 Dan stood on the edge of the rock. Armed with nothing but resolve, a pair of hiking boots, a helmet and knee pads borrowed from a skateboard, he prepared for a leap where his neck was quite literally on the line. There was no way back down from the top — and below him a friend was waiting with a camera that had only four minutes of precious film left in it.

Today, with the distance of years and a healthy dose of self-irony, Dan returns to the foot of the rock. He climbs to the summit to find out whether the battered galvanised box still holds the old summit register that would confirm his long-ago heroic — and, by his own account today, completely insane — stunt.

The Great Teplice Send is a wry and chilling tribute to traditional sandstone climbing, to the recklessness of youth, and to those moments when common sense stays firmly at the base of the route.

The film screened at the International Mountaineering Film Festival in 2026. The opening of the YouTube version is missing its music — the client got into a muddle during the upload.