Rising to more than 11,000 feet, Mt. Hood is one of the tallest and most iconic mountains in the Pacific Northwest. With 10,000 visitors annually, it’s the second-most-climbed mountain in the world; only Mt. Fuji in Japan attracts more hikers. 

The idea of using this landmark to tell queer stories—ones that have often been overlooked in climbing, a sport traditionally dominated by straight white men—appealed to filmmaker Devin Fei-Fan Tau as a gay man. 

“Everywhere you look in Portland, it’s like Mt. Hood is following you,” Tau told Sierra in a recent conversation over Zoom. “It’s like a painting in a museum where the eyes follow you. As a filmmaker with a desire to mountaineer, doing the film just made sense.”

In his feature-length documentary directing debut, Tau chronicles the journey of climbers from Portland’s LGBTQ community as they attempt to summit Mt. Hood. Along the way, they offer snapshots of their lives—moments capturing the nuances of coming out, their pivotal conversations with parents and allies, and triumphs big and small over discrimination. Ultimately, the team finds joy and purpose in the outdoors, reaching personal summits—if not, in every case, the peak of the mountain. 

The cheekily titled Who’s on Top? Four LGBTQs Summit Mt. Hood offers a relatable and touching exploration of the challenges four queer people—each representing a different age, ability level, and letter in the queer acronym alphabet—have overcome, and how climbing helped them do it. 

One of the main takeaways for audiences, Tau hopes, is the notion that nature is for everyone. “Nature doesn’t judge,” he says, paraphrasing a line from the film. “Nature is a safe space. It’s really a metaphor for life. What we need to do is bring our outdoors selves indoors,” Tau says, and make room in society to include all kinds of people. 

“Coming out and climbing Mt. Hood are incredibly similar in the fact that they’re both pretty hard climbs,” says Stacey Rice on-screen. A white transgender woman, Rice is the oldest member of the team, at 61. Her fellow climbers range in age from 28 to 44 and include a white gay man, Ryan Stee, and two women who identify as queer: Shanita King, a Black artist, and Taylor Feldman, an experienced caucasian climber and guide who acts as the summit leader for the team. 

For Feldman’s fellow climbers, this trek up the south side of Mt. Hood, undertaken at night to avoid dangerous daytime conditions, is their first attempt. 

Training for the climb, which can take several hours, began in the fall of 2018. The ascent took place in May 2019. Post-production wrapped in early 2020, during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. The film premiered last year and was selected for a number of film festivals, held virtually because of the need to social distance. It is now available on DVD, Blu-ray, and streaming platforms.  

Tau describes making the film as a years-long experiment in getting to know members of his own community in Portland. “I wanted to ask questions that went beyond cocktail conversation—not that there’s anything wrong with cocktail conversation,” Tau says with a laugh. “I just really wanted to get to know these people and elevate their stories.”

Stories about queer folks enjoying the outdoors have always been there, Tau says. We just didn’t always hear about them. In the film, Taylor Feldman emphasizes this point. “You don’t necessarily see a spirit of inclusivity in mountaineering,” she says. “It’s a pretty white, male-dominated sport.” That’s why, she adds, “I personally find it very inspiring when I see someone who’s very out in the outdoors.” 

Lending his honeyed voice to the film’s narration is actor, social justice activist, and social media superstar George Takei. Best known for playing Sulu in the original Star Trek series and subsequent films, Takei is perhaps less known for his lifelong love of the outdoors. At 84, Takei enjoys daily walks with his husband, Brad, and speaks passionately about his deep connection to the natural world. 

In his living room, Takei has on display a sculpture his father made from swamp root while the family was being held at an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II. Another prized possession, this one donated to the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles: a walking stick from climbing the famed Mt. Fuji as a college student. 

“When I saw the film, I was absolutely transported,” Takei told Sierra. “It was such a moving experience. These people more than physically climbed a mountain. They climbed landmarks in their lives. And so it has that deeper, more profound significance.”

Those landmarks vary for each of the climbers. King is recovering from a racist assault that temporarily renders her unable to work on one of her murals. Feldman had a brief but painful falling out with her liberal mom when she came out as queer. Stee is coping with asthma and trauma-induced anxiety from being ruthlessly bullied as a teenager. And nearly three years before training to climb Mt. Hood, Stacey Rice had a heart attack.

In the film, Rice describes having to stand up to an insensitive heart surgeon who seemed to intentionally misgender her as she lay in her hospital bed, awaiting life-saving surgery. For the climbers, attempting to summit Mt. Hood is an exercise in healing. “Being in nature actually is my church, where I find my peace and my centeredness,” Rice says. 

One of the reasons Tau wanted to make Who’s on Top? is that he often felt excluded from outdoor activities as a kid. His uncle would ask his oldest brother to go camping or hiking, but Tau was almost never invited. If Tau asked to tag along, his brother would deflect, saying the activity would be too hard or simply that Tau wouldn’t like it. “It’s not that he knew I was gay,” Tau explains. “He just kind of echoed to me that I wasn’t a part of it all, that I didn’t belong in nature.”

Tau’s sense of exclusion extended beyond younger-sibling FOMO. “I think my status quo was such that I was used to being judged and excluded for sure.” 

That started to change in college, when Tau took a ski trip to Big Bear in Southern California. It rained and Tau wore jeans and the wrong kind of jacket. By the end of the day, he was drenched, cold, and sore from falling—but also, he loved it and couldn’t wait to return to the mountain. “Not to be so figurative, but I remember feeling really free on skis,” he says. In that way, being in nature helped Tau learn to open up. “Growing up, I was so vulnerable,” Tau recalls. “I was really afraid to open up, and I didn’t trust people. Then I had this incredible opportunity to just follow the mountain.” 

For his part, George Takei says he has stayed optimistic in the midst of dire threats in his life—internment, the ongoing rash of hate crimes against Asian Americans, and climate change, to name a few—by remembering the example of his dad, both in the camps and during the years after his family’s release. “Resilience isn’t just flexing muscles,” Takei offers. “It’s the strength to define beauty under harsh circumstances. It’s the strength to create your own beauty and joy.” 

Who’s on Top? is a film that does just that.