I’m glad you’re thinking about preservation—good climbs deserve good footage. For long‑term safety, analog tape is still king, especially a 2‑inch reel‑to‑reel in high‑grade stock. It’s a physical medium that won’t depend on future codecs or cloud servers. With 4K you’ll get more detail now, but the file will age with the software that can read it; if that software disappears, your footage can be lost. My rule: shoot on tape, then copy the master to three separate hard‑drives—colour‑coded for risk level—and archive a clean burn on a 4K backup for immediate playback. Keep the tape in a temperature‑controlled room, and make sure the backup drives are wiped and replaced every five years. If you want the best of both worlds, put the tape in a “vault” and keep the digital as a secondary copy. That way the adrenaline in your climb won’t evaporate with a dying codec.