Sing Peak
The mountain Sing Peak was named in 1899 after Tie Sing, a Chinese chef who cooked for the first mapmakers and founders of the National Park Service. Every year a community of Asian Americans treks without a trail to Sing Peak. This film ponders why.
Sing Peak is one of the only mountains in the United States named after an Asian person. Deep in the Yosemite wilderness, it was named after Tie Sing, a Chinese chef who cooked for the first American mapmakers and for the 1915 expedition that helped inspire the founding of the National Park Service.
Since 2013, a community of Asian American backpackers has returned year after year to try to summit Sing Peak. There is no trail. It is simply arduous to get there.
Filmmaker Kristy Choi is a proud member of this intergenerational, multiethnic community.
Structured as a collective letter, Sing Peak speaks directly to Tie Sing through the voices of those who pilgrimage to his mountain, honoring his legacy and the many Asian immigrants whose names we will never know.
Sing Peak is a story about how the land has always held us, even when the historical record has not.