The film ends with one simple, but powerful, line:
“Every experience we had, and everything we learned, started with an idea. And that idea, changed our lives.”
So what was that idea? Where did it all start and why? In this story, three friends set out to prove that crazy ideas are the only ideas worth pursuing, that it’s possible to follow your dreams while making a big difference, and most importantly, to inspire others to rethink their adventures and do the same.
Between The Peaks, as an idea, originated in 2011 when team leader Jonathan Ronzio was inspired to find a way to fuse together a deep passion for adventure and exploration, his background in marketing and media production, and his studies in environmentalism. The resulting idea would become three friends’ remarkable quest to follow their dreams while making a difference throughout the Americas.
The original story concept was to climb two of the Seven Summits— Aconcagua and Denali—and to volunteer in every country the trio passed through while traveling from one to the next. It would be a journey of nearly 12,000 miles up the Pan-American highway from Argentina to Alaska, over the course of 4-6 months. After nearly two years of pre-production, training and planning, Jonathan Ronzio, Ethan Lee, and Ryan Sarka bought one-way tickets to Chile and set out for the trip of a lifetime in January of 2013.