Surfer and climber Jeff Johnson is a not-well-known guy from California who is enthralled by the story of a very-well-known guy, Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, the outdoor apparel company. Chouinard is a legend among rock climbers—he participated in some famous climbs in Yosemite and the Canadian Rockies in the 1960s, and with his blacksmithing know-how (and since he had no money), he made his own climbing tools and gear, which is how he started his business. Johnson unearths some footage of an adventure that Chouinard and his cohort Doug Tomkins took in 1968, involving mountain climbing and surfing to Chilean Patagonia. Johnson decides to re-create their trip. He goes to Mexico to join the crew of a ship headed toward Patagonia, and at some point they lose their mast and have to get it repaired. Johnson meets a woman who lives out in nature and is also a surfer, and presumably he spends a bunch of time banging her (unaddressed by this movie). She joins his adventure. Also, it turns out that Johnson is friends with Chouinard and Tomkins, and Chouinard and Tomkins have spent their lives working to buy up land in Chilean Patagonia and have already conserved an amount of land bigger than Yosemite, and later on in the movie they all go on a climb together.
Johnson’s “adventure” is the “story” that is supposed to make the story of Chouinard and what he has done in Chilean Patagonia come alive, but the adventure really just consists of some breathtaking images of nature and a whole lot of breathtakingly shopworn attempts at meaning. “These people have shown me that if you love a place, you have a duty to protect it. And to love a place, you have to know it first,” someone says, as if it’s never occurred to you that you can’t very deeply love a place you don’t know. Also, seeing a place mined of natural resources makes you think about consumerism (“I’m thinking of my own use of resources”). Also, nature is fragile “and we can no longer take it for granted.” Also, plopping a factory down in the middle of a bunch of wildlife is bad for wildlife. Also, the joy is in the journey. Also, sometimes in life you have to stop, take a 180-degree turn, and walk in the opposite direction (there is quite a long conversation about this).
In closing, two nice things: I enjoyed the music the filmmakers chose even if I didn’t understand its relevance to Chilean Patagonia (lots of Modest Mouse, some M. Ward, some Andrew Bird), and much of the scenery is gorgeous—surfers slicing through high green waves, a rock covered in penguins on a beach in Chile, silhouetted climbers against a silhouetted ridge, hella dolphins. 
This review absolutely cheapens the important message (s) of the film. It is sad that the reviewer is too cynical or arrogant to appreciate them because they are not expressed as academically/intelligently/poetically as he/she would like. Every person in this film truly cares about the full-scale destruction of the planet through gross consumerism and infatuation with so-called modernity. Yes, Johnson sets out perhaps rather naively looking for adventure, but he is tougher and more real than most people you’ll meet sitting in a coffee shop reading the Stranger. He recognizes how superficial his intentions were, and is truly transformed by his experience. He understands the monumental effort of Conservacion Patagonica and SinRepresas, unlike this reviewer. The film is a MUST see.