When Hugh Glass sets off into the vertical wilderness of El Cap, he is at once revisiting his past and unwittingly becoming its prey. A widowed geologist, Hugh unites with his former climbing partner Lewis to reprise their first ascent on El Cap from thirty-five years ago. Back then their destiny seemed written on these walls. Here in Yosemite they met the women who became their wives and left them. Hugh's wife mysteriously disappeared into the desert. Lewis's wife is divorcing him. In the stone maze of El Cap, the two men hope to find a fresh start. But 'The Captain' seems cursed this time around. Even before the aging 'wall rats' leave the ground, disaster strikes three young women high on a neighbouring route. Hugh discovers one body in the forest and spies a second dangling a half mile overhead. He and Lewis doggedly climb on, only to be drawn into a deadly rescue attempt by Augustine, a search and rescue expert who is hellbent on saving his lover, one of the doomed women.