So I’m on a bit of a mountain climbing movie kick now, for whatever weird reason, following on from the Everest Unmasked movie of mid-Oct. This time, it was the recent K2 documentary from 2009. I’ve also decided that I don’t want to watch either ‘movies’ of mountain climbing unless there’s some other aspect of the plot too (e.g James Bond flick or something) – I’d rather just work through the scary-enough truth of these crazy climbs via actual documentaries. Besides these two movies, I’ve seen Touching The Void several years ago not long after it came out.

So once again in watching this film, there were parts of the movie where I wanted to just shut it off – they are up SO high. Plus on K2, unlike others, they do a up-down style so they can survive acclimatizing to the extreme lack of oxygen and climb itself, so they go up to Camp 2, then back down, then up to Camp 3, then back to 2, and so on.

The personalities here are a bit more interesting than the two guys in Everest Unmasked, but R. Messner from that climb went on to become one of the greatest climbers of all time in the decades since (they briefly mention his summit of K2 years ago on what seems to be the most difficult possible way).

Even the drive to get them into the mountains and then long hike to base camp seem far more extreme than Everest by contrast, even though Everest is of course the highest peak on earth (K2 is #2). But they show stats early on about how much tougher and far fewer summits have been done on K2 vs. Everest.

Finally, a great counterpoint in this documentary is the story of the first summit attempt, way back in 1912, by an Italian duke. They intersperse that story with the modern one throughout the movie, makes it even more impressive for both expeditions in the end, in my opinion.

Check it out!

Other perspectives:
Rotten Tomatoes

candybowl

Anyone who knows me knows – I don’t like heights, and never have. Watching this from the comfort of terra firma is STILL wild to consider. This is the story of the first two guys to have climbed Everest without oxygen, way back in 1978. I recently read the Outside article on it, and found the short movie made at the time (Everest Unmasked), linked below.

It’s about 51 minutes, spends about 12 min giving some of the history and the middle portion details the danger, including two major Sherpa accidents that happened. The last half of the movie is the best part, especially in detailing the two climbers’ final success.

here are two more NOVA links on the topic too, including one from a person involved in the first Everest summit by Sir Edmund Hillary back in the 60’s.

Everest Unmasked – Everest without oxygen (1978) by optimari

candybowl