Original subtitles

♪

Who becomes a race car driver?

Who becomes a base jumper?

Who becomes a test pilot?

♪

The will to just try something big,

something dangerous, something extraordinary?

It's part of who we are.

♪

"The name Himalaya denotes no mere chain of mountains,

however high and however long we may imagine it.

It denotes a complex system of ranges,

of intricate valleys and of mighty rivers,

that has no rival upon the face of the Earth.

Some of the greatest glaciers of the world

are contained in the Karakoram Range.

In no part of the Himalaya do we find such a number

of very high peaks in so limited a space.

The basin of the Baltoro Glacier

appears by all accounts to be the most suited

to a mountaineering and exploring expedition."

♪

My name is Fabrizio Zangrilli,

I'm an alpinist from Boulder, Colorado.

I work as a mountain guide,

and I spend a good portion of the year

climbing in Nepal, Tibet, or Pakistan.

When I first heard that I was gonna be

working with Fabrizio, I was a little bit intimidated,

just based on his reputation as, you know,

a climber of very hard routes,

a very serious professional climber.

There are 14 eight-thousand meter peaks in the world.

They're located in Tibet, Nepal, and Pakistan.

Everyone wants the Eight-Thousanders.

They're the big daddies of mountaineering.

In 2009, I went out to Pakistan

for an attempt on K2.

For me, it was a journey onwards and upwards

from Everest, which I climbed in 2005,

when I was 21.

My name is Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner,

I am from Austria.

When I was 16 years old, I went for a slide show.

It was about K2, and from this moment on,

it was my big dream to go there, to the Karakoram,

just to see the very high mountains

and to see K2.

I didn't dream about climbing K2.

It was such a huge mountain, it is still.

Everest and K2 aren't even the same sport.

In comparison to all other 8,000-meter peaks,

K2 is a very special one, for me, the most beautiful one,

but also the most difficult one.

On K2, you have not one easy route.

It's steeper, it has worse weather,

it's right at the top of Pakistan,

so there's always challenges with getting there.

When we arrived in Pakistan

and touched down in Islamabad,

we thought that was pretty mad,

but it was nothing in comparison

to the routes up the mountain, up to Skardu in the north,

as we traveled for two days along the Karakoram highway,

which is this precipitous, very narrow road

along this massive valley and canyon,

where at times, you're only inches

from a very, very large drop.

It's extremely bumpy,

there's boulders the size of your car

sitting in the middle of the road.

(slats creaking)

♪

Well, we've just arrived in Skardu

after another 10-, 11-hour bus journey,

so the whole thing, I think, ended up taking 30 hours,

which was a hell of a lot longer than we were expecting.

♪

So psyched to be here.

So much cooler than Islamabad.

♪

"On May 8th, a stage of 21 miles

brought us to Skardu.

After a long, heavy day of more than 18 hours,

we went to bed tired out,

but glad to have got through the first big stage

of our journey.

We had covered about 225 miles

in 11 days among the chains of the western Himalaya.

There was the usual inspection and sorting of baggage,

porters to pay off and new ones to engage.

At five o'clock, we went to see the polo match,

got up in honor of the Duke.

The polo ground is very large

and lies on a flat natural terrace

to the west of the city,

overlooking the great sandy plain

and the splendid amphitheater of snowy ranges."

(chanting in foreign language)

When you first enter Skardu, you really realize

that you're out of the city and sort of in a village.

We end up buying most of our supplies there--

food, gas, tarps, things like that

to take care of base camp.

Has anybody seen the movie "Vertical Limit,"

if you're on the K2 expedition?

Go, it's gonna blow!

♪

A lot of people thought that that wasn't

an actual documentary.

(laughter)

But today, we need to pick up the explosives.

(laughter)

We hop in the Jeeps with all of our loads

and supplies, and we travel for six or seven hours

to Askole via quite a rough 4x4 road.

Organized chaos, expedition life.

Sometimes they start, sometimes they don't, you know?

As you guys are probably learning here slowly,

it's...we're all, uh, bound by the will of Allah,

and hence the "Insha'Allah" prefix tagged onto

every single statement that's ever said, so...

insha'Allah, we'll arrive in 4 to 16 hours.

If not, well, I guess God didn't allow it.

(chuckling)

♪

"At half past six in the morning,

we left Skardu with 111 porters

and eight saddle ponies to cross the Indus

and penetrate into the Karakoram Ranges."

♪

This right here is the scariest part

of any K2 expedition.

(water roaring)

♪

Holy...holy shit!

Oh, nice!

♪

(speaking in foreign language)

♪

"Few communities are so cut off from the world

as this little population of Askole.

Before them lies an infinite extent of glaciers,

shut in by the most gigantic mountain ramparts

in the whole world.

Behind them, a desert valley

which for eight months in the year

is absolutely blocked by the snows,

the avalanches, and the arctic temperature."

♪

Once you arrive in Askole, it's very refreshing.

You feel like you're finally starting the expedition.

You're camping, usually, in a tent for the first time.

It's the way it's going to be for the next 60 days.

Askole is where the modern expedition sort of ends,

the luxury of Jeeps and planes and motorized transport's over.

And now, it's just like the Duke of Abruzzi did in 1909.

We start walking.

♪

"Now at last, the real journey had begun.

The camp life that brings one into the close communion

with nature, so good for body and mind.

Walking is really the only kind of locomotion

that puts us on equal terms

with the world about us.

Our modern mechanical methods of transportation

tend to make us lose sight of our relative importance."

(water rushing)

♪

All the way from the Duke of Abruzzi

and Sella's expedition in 1909 until the mid-2000s,

everybody had to wade across the river.

And with 150 porters with waist-deep

glacial runoff water, it was quite hectic.

It was kind of this, like, great way

for the expedition to bond with the porters.

The local porters are amazing people,

and a lot of them I've gotten to know quite well.

They're always willing to work.

For them, it's a joy to be in the mountains as well,

they're mountain people at heart.

Without them, these expeditions don't happen.

"The Balti race deserve a high degree

of esteem and goodwill.

Without their excellent qualities as porters,

it would be impossible to organize expeditions

in this region.

Their uncommon strength and powers of resistance,

their temperateness,

their amiable and gentle disposition,

and their capacity for hard work

have already been recognized by all those they have served,

from one end of the Himalaya to the other.

We had now come up out of the stuffy heat of the valleys.

A little further on, all trace of path ceases,

and the great frozen basins of the Karakoram begin.

Sheltered at the foot of the last spur

which divides it from the Baltoro

and protects it from the icy winds,

nestling against the steep right wall of the valley

lies a little island of vegetation,

a strip of earth covered with long grass,

bushes, and little willow and rose trees.

This is the stage known as Paiju.

For the last time, we set up our camp

under the trees."

The walk from Askole takes six to seven days

to base camp.

Paiju is day two or day three.

We oftentimes spend two nights there.

After all the international travel,

the Jeep ride, and then a day or two of trekking,

everyone's ready for a bit of rest.

♪

When you trek out of Paiju,

you approach the snout of the Baltoro Glacier.

The river comes pouring out from underneath it,

and it's quite dramatic, and you realize,

well, we've left sort of the land where people can live,

and we're now actually on a glacier.

Now we're properly immersed in the shale and the rocks

and the moraine and the ice of the Baltoro Glacier,

which is making life pretty interesting.

Very, very slow going.

As you're winding your way through this maze,

a foot or so under your feet

is tens, perhaps even hundreds of meters of solid ice.

And it's incredible to think how these millions

or billions of tons are slowly pushing their way

down through the valley, carving itself out.

And you're wandering around, trying to find a safe,

a secure route, from one camp to the next camp.

♪

(grunting)

-Aha! -Thank you.

♪

Suddenly, you were seeing

some of the most famous mountains in the world,

laid out like some Chinese menu for a climber.

It was, it was spectacular.

♪

"The Baltoro ascends as far as the foot of the Gasherbrum

in an almost straight line with an even, regular slope

and a uniform width of about two miles.

No alpine valley has the elements

of anything even remotely similar

to this vast roadway of ice between its precipitous walls.

It is beyond all comparison.

No description, even with the assistance of photography,

can succeed, I fear, in giving a just conception,

even if a faint one, of this extraordinary region."

♪

So we just reached Concordia camp,

which is the confluence of about four massive glaciers.

Our fifth and final camp before base camp.

Tomorrow, we finally go up that way,

towards that old hill.

Concordia's one of the most amazing places you'll ever go.

It really gives you a sense of how big

the mountains are there, and how small you are.

♪

I've had people on my expeditions

look at the mountain,

and they're going to climb this thing.

They get to Concordia and they say,

"Uh-uh, I'm not doin' this.

To hell with this, I'm goin' home."

I'm like, what are you talkin' about?

We just got in-- are you kidding me?

Look at that thing!

When I came the first time to Concordia,

we turned to the left and saw K2.

Uh, for a moment, my heart stopped beating, really.

It was...wow, just amazing.

"Down at the end, alone,

detached from all the other mountains,

soared up K2,

the indisputable sovereign of the region.

Gigantic and solitary, hidden from human sight

by innumerable ranges.

Jealously defended by a vast throng of vassal peaks,

protected from invasion by miles and miles of glaciers.

Even to get within sight of it

demands so much contrivance, so much marching,

such a sum of labors."

The trek from Concordia to K2 base camp

takes anywhere from five to seven hours.

It's a bit humbling.

If there's good weather and you're looking

straight on at K2, it can really stop

and make you think a little bit.

It's been four years since I summited Everest,

and don't get me wrong, it was very hard work at times,

but I did it, I achieved it.

And so, of course, afterwards,

the most logical question was what next?

Obviously, I can't go any higher than Mount Everest,

but can we do something similar

which is much more technically demanding,

and much more of a challenge?

Our base camp is located on the south side of K2,

and the south face holds some of the more classic routes.

Right in the center is called the Magic Line.

It was named by Reinhold Messner,

one of the greatest Himalayan climbers of all time.

To this day, it's only been climbed

by two expeditions.

Further to the right, you have the Abruzzi Spur,

named after the Duke of Abruzzi, the 1909 expedition.

They arrived at the bottom of the mountain,

and found this spur, the south-southeast spur.

It seemed to be the most viable option

to gaining the summit.

It later went on to become the route

that the first ascent team in 1954 used.

Our route is called the Cesen,

about one-third over from the right-hand side.

It's a mixture of snow, ice, and rock climbing,

averaging about 55 degrees, with a few steeper sections.

And we'll have four camps on the way up the mountain,

and hopefully get ourselves in a good position

to make a summit attempt, insha'Allah.

♪

"K2 towered up immediately above us.

The impression made upon us was so strong, so moving,

that no words can convey it.

Broad Peak is opposite, across the valley.

To the south, there is a spreading view

that ends in the gentle and reposeful outlines

of the Bride Peak.

All the landscape around K2

has the richest variety of design,

the greatest majesty of form,

and an infinite diversity of plane and perspective.

The idea comes into one's mind

of being in a workshop of nature."

So, um, just got into K2 base camp,

and I must admit, I'm not feeling 100 percent.

It is such a relief to finally get to base camp.

Looking forward to see you!

I think some of the best people I've met in my life

are people that I've met in base camps on mountains.

You really do meet fantastic people

that are really at the cutting edge

of what they do.

Thank you--it's Gerlinde, she keeps me training, and--

Ralf, my husband, is very, very important person for me,

not only for during climbing, also in general, of course.

(speaking in foreign language)

Gerlinde and I, David, and Ralf spent a lot of time

in base camp together.

We always tried to coordinate with the other teams,

and mostly, there was the team of Fabrizio.

We always tried to break trail together,

and it was all the time, a very good relationship

on the mountains, and I can say

we are really good friends, and in base camp, especially,

we have always a lot of fun.

I started when I was 23 years old.

Broad Peak was my first 8,000-meter peak expedition.

And when I came down to the base camp,

I was really, I can say, addicted to the high mountains.

And from this moment on, I just dreamed

about the high mountains, and so it became more and more

my big, big passion.

(speaking in foreign language)

We found, at the bottom of the mountain,

that it was very easy to suddenly think,

this is a serious undertaking, this is a massive undertaking.

Are we the people to try and do it?

And I can safely say that without the experience

of those people around me, and of course,

without Fabrizio at the helm,

I think it would have been very easy to feel as though

it was perhaps a step too far.

♪

Pretty heavy day today.

We watched a couple of skiers skiing down the mountain

from camp two, um, down the same ridge

as we're gonna be going up.

Uh, one of them appeared to take a tumble,

fell over some rocks, and was then unmoving.

And we were obviously all standing down here watching

through binoculars and things,

and he stayed unmoving.

The other chap climbed back up to him.

You know, obviously, at this point,

we were hoping that everything was okay

and that, you know, you just help him down,

or maybe he's unconscious, at worst.

Um, then watched the skier

sort of pulling down the other skier.

Of course, at this point, we're realizing that

things were, were pretty bad.

And unfortunately, the chap,

an Italian climber-skier, had been killed in the fall.

The Italian is dead, and the other man

is coming down, and there is no need

for a stretcher, is that correct, over?

Yes, that is right.

That afternoon was, was horrific,

especially after what had happened

the previous year.

Eleven people died over the period of, really, 48 hours.

Now, K2 is well known for having a particularly high

death-to-summit ratio.

Perhaps it would have been naive of me to have thought that,

you know, we would have come here,

and this whole season would have been fine and dandy,

and nothing would have happened.

But I still don't think anyone was expecting

that on day one of arriving at base camp,

for there to be the first death on the mountain.

We managed to get confirmation that a helicopter

was going to be able to fly in,

and then we carried Michele's body

down to the helipad.

We spent a good couple of hours

trying to keep Fredrik entertained,

trying to sort of keep the mood light,

playing silly games.

Eventually, you hear the dull thud

of the helicopters coming up the valley.

(helicopter blades whirring)

♪

They came in to land.

We loaded--we had his body onto one of them.

In some ways, after the initial shock

of what had happened the previous day,

it almost had a very matter of fact quality to it.

We were just getting on with--with a job,

despite, of course, what we were really doing.

♪

And very quickly then we got Fredrik

and his kit onto the other one.

Fredrik I knew quite well.

He was close friends of many friends of mine.

We all decided to come back together the next year.

We had really perfect conditions

around 8,300 meter in the Bottleneck.

We got the last weather forecast from Ralf.

He told us it will become a perfect day,

and it was just

few moments later

when Fredrik fell.

I thought I have to look for him.

Maybe I can help him somehow.

But then Ralf told me by radio

that he fell down till 7,000 meter

and I knew that there is no more help.

♪

We know the risks that we take

when we come into this environment

and we are ultimately very vulnerable.

This is what we do.

We've chosen to accept the consequences.

♪

The sound of the rotor blades got less and less

as the echoes disappear down the valley.

We're all standing around at base camp.

In some ways it felt as though

that episode was very much over.

But of course, it just reiterated the fact

that now it was up to us.

Now we were there and our focus

and our main effort was the mountain itself.

♪

"We then set out to the foot of K2.

The weather was perfect for the first time

since we had set foot on the glacier.

The clear sky, the pure transparent air,

and the splendor of the sunlit snow sing to us

like a welcome to the region,

and filled our minds with the boldest of hopes."

♪

One of the main things that's really important

is acclimatizing properly so that you don't develop

any sort of altitude sickness.

The base camp at K2 is 5,000 meters,

approximately 17,000 feet.

So just getting there,

your body has to adjust to the lack of oxygen.

But then you need to do incremental steps

up and down the mountain.

Go up a little bit, come down.

Rest a few days.

Go up and sleep at Camp 1.

Come down, rest a few days.

Go up, sleep at Camp 1.

Move up to Camp 2, hopefully, come all the way down.

Rest a few days.

It's absolutely fundamental.

Your body needs the time up there

to get used to the environment.

Course all of this yo-yoing

is really only feasible with the fixed rope.

It's entirely necessary because it allows

a very quick and safe passage back down

if storms come in.

♪

Camp 1 on the Cesen Route is a tiny little place.

It's a bird's nest, really.

You can fit three, four two-men tents maximum in the camp.

They're quite exposed

and oftentimes half the tent

is hanging off of a ledge

and you have quite a lot of air

dangling between the nylon and the base camp.

♪

What do you feel like for breakfast?

I don't know, I guess I'll have whatever you're having.

Well, I think today's menu is...

Not that.

Fruity muesli with milk powder.

Uh, I wanted porridge with strawberries.

What about the chicken korma?

We could do chicken korma.

It could be quite good.

That's a man's breakfast, isn't it?

Should we do that?

Let's have it then.

(heavy breathing)

I'm on the snow slope between Camp 1 and Camp 2.

I'm completely exhausted.

I've still got another 100 meters or so to go.

Which doesn't sound far, but, let me tell you.

It's gonna take some time.

But then we'll be into Camp 2.

And I can relax a little bit.

Camp 2, at about 6,450 meters,

is a little bit bigger.

It's a two tier camp,

separated by about 20 feet.

Each ledge can hold maybe four two-man tents.

But there's not a lot of room to walk around.

I think this is gonna be home sweet home.

It's not the widest of ledges.

And, you know, I think we'll be okay.

We'll survive the night,

as soon as we're all tied on securely.

♪

"We had established our camp

and were provisioned for a month,

sufficient for the long siege.

The tents were set up in two rows

on the level stony surface of the moraine.

The Duke had already made a cursory examination

of two thirds of the circumference

of the mountain.

Nowhere had he discovered an easy,

obvious, and safe route to the peak,

and the undertaking assumed a doubtful hue."

When we did finally fix in to Camp 2

after about two weeks of the expedition,

we came across, you know,

what we call "dead tents".

Tents that have been left from the season prior.

Everybody's aware of the events of 2008.

Many people made the summit,

but didn't come back down.

There were a large number of climbers on K2.

They got lucky with a summit day that came

and the day was quite good.

Many people went to the summit.

Unfortunately, the Serac broke loose above the Bottleneck

and it took away the fixed rope.

A lot of the people who were on K2 in 2008, we knew.

We've been there previous years with them.

We've been on other mountains with them.

I've come down today to the Gilkey Memorial,

which is about half an hour's walk from base camp,

and as the name suggests,

this is a memorial to those

who sadly lost their lives on this mountain.

Art Gilkey, he died in 1953 on the American expedition,

high up in the mountain,

it involved a whole team effort

to try and rescue him for several days,

trying to get him down,

and in the end he was swept away in an avalanche.

So in 1953,

the rest of the American expedition set up this memorial.

And ever since then,

it's been used as the K2 memorial.

♪

Bizarre to be sitting here

with all these memorial plaques

to people that I've read about and heard about,

some of the most famous climbers

that have lived and died on K2.

♪

Just in the last half decade,

seven people that I have climbed with on K2

have died.

Not all on K2,

but it's a small tribe of people that go there.

When I think about those people and how we've all,

sort of, sat at the base of the Gilkey Memorial,

it's a stark reminder of

the reality of alpinism.

Nobody goes to the mountains to die.

I don't think anybody--

any of these climbers had a death wish at all.

I certainly don't.

We come here

because this is where we feel most truly alive.

The element of danger in alpinism

is 100 percent part of the game.

As soon as you eliminate the danger,

you have just every other sport.

♪

Pretty shitty conditions up here.

I'm just on my way down from Camp 1.

Hopefully try and get back down safely to base camp.

Very, very windy and all the spindrift.

Pretty awful, as you can imagine.

♪

The weather is so fickle that we're forced,

a lot of the time, to spend,

you know, two weeks at base camp.

When I talk about the weather on K2 being so bad, so often,

it's hard to actually understand how bad it is.

When you're stuck in base camp for four or five days,

maybe sometimes up to ten days,

and all it's doing is snowing or spitting rain,

oftentimes in base camp,

we're wearing down pants and big down jackets

just to be comfortable enough to eat dinner.

"Judging from the experience

of the few explorers who had preceded us,

it was to be feared that the chief hindrance

to mountaineering in the Karakoram

would come from the extreme instability of the weather.

The wind whistled on the high ridges as violently

as on the Alps in the winter.

Storms raged about the summits and the snowy peaks,

and long streamers of fog, tattered and tenuous,

were brought up by the south-west wind."

♪

Is there any climbing involved in these expeditions?

No.

The last decade and a bit, I've gone climbing four days.

Four days?

Yeah.

And 30 expeditions or so.

Yeah.

It's awesome.

You get all this gear, you get all these toys,

and headphones and kinda show up here and you just sit here.

Yeah and fester.

And what you do for 68 days is come up with a list of excuses.

Why you didn't climb.

♪

My first expedition at K2 was in 2000

with a couple of good friends of mine.

It was just one of those things, totally perfect summit day.

Leave the Shoulder,

make very quick time up to the Bottleneck.

We're passed at that point by a group of people on oxygen.

I come across Mohammed Ali slumped in the snow.

He's a well-respected high-altitude porter.

He'd been working for the team that passed us.

I assessed that he'd had a stroke

and the immediate decision was to try and get him down.

I made it to about 8,450 meters.

I can see the summit.

The summit slopes were in front of me.

And I, at that point, realized

I could be on the summit

in an hour and a half or so.

But the greater challenge was to get this guy down.

♪

In 2005 I came back.

We went back to the Abruzzi to acclimatize,

managed to go to the Shoulder.

And my climbing partner and I

went directly up the south face right at The Magic Line.

Unfortunately couldn't continue to the summit.

Winds were about 100 kilometers an hour

and had to repeat the route.

Coming back down through the ice fall,

which is a very, very scary place to be.

Definitely not meant for humans.

♪

In 2007 I came back.

We switched to the Cesen Route to acclimatize.

Once again to the Shoulder.

The idea was, my same partner and I,

finish off the new route on the south face.

The weather never came.

In 2007, it was very special

because we had the idea to do a nonstop drive.

From base camp here on K2

up to the Bottleneck

and back down in 36 hours.

We felt very strong

and the first 15, 20 hours,

we could really move quite quickly.

Really one of the better days in the high mountains

that I've ever had.

Really, really fun.

Great teamwork.

Because we had only one and half days of good weather,

we had to accept that we cannot manage it up to the top,

and come down before the strong winds would come.

After 39 hours of climbing, we reached again the bottom.

And I'm back here, 2009.

By the end of this summer, embarrassingly,

I would've spent a year of my life on this glacier.

Luckily it's a phenomenally beautiful place.

"We heard a thousand voices from the glacier--

continuous dripping, murmur of little streams,

the deadened noise of distant torrents,

the rattle of detritus down icy slopes,

the sharp cracks of opening fissures.

Now and then those lesser sounds would be drowned out

by the roar of an avalanche.

I know no other mountain which has such diverse aspects

when seen from its different sides.

The plates showing it from west,

south, east, and north-east

display its extraordinary variety of form,

and show, too, how all its sides are equally fortified

with the most formidable defense

against the attack of the mountain climber."

♪

Gotta love summit attempts that start off in snowstorms.

♪

(speaking in foreign language)

The forecast for the weekend is not bad,

and, uh, let's see.

♪

I was, from the very beginning,

fascinated from this route

to the bottom of the Cesen Route,

only half an hour and you start climbing,

and it's a very direct,

very clear and beautiful line up to the Shoulder.

♪

Another beautiful day climbing K2.

What do you think, David?

I mean...

♪

(speaking in foreign language)

♪

Good rest day, Fabrizio?

♪

♪

♪

♪

(wind howling)

Almost over.

♪

♪

♪

♪

Camp 4 on the Shoulder,

just about 8,000 meters,

is a massive plateau the size of a football field.

It's not so steep.

It's about 15 degrees,

so it's pretty easy to put tents in there.

Unfortunately, it's extremely windy.

Chris to Fabrizio, do you copy, over?

He sounds so knackered, eh?

Never heard him sound so--

I've never even heard him sound tired before.

You guys gonna go for the summit tonight, over?

♪

Camp 4 out.

♪

Really is a spectacular view.

You see the Gasherbrums on the left.

Broad Peak, panning to the right,

Chogolisa.

Concordia down below.

Masherbrum, McLeod right in front of it.

And the summit of K2,

just in the clouds.

Oh well.

Maybe next week.

♪

I had a very strange feeling,

almost fear to climb through the Bottleneck.

The thick ice Serac very fragile

and we had in our mind the bad accident from 2008.

♪

We tried to climb through the rocky part on the left side,

but we had to accept that it was impossible

for us to climb the very loose rock.

The afternoon at 3:00,

we had to decide to turn back.

♪

"We had a perfectly clear and calm sunset.

The lofty snows of K2 were tinged with yellow.

The most delicate wisp of rose-colored cloud

barely hid the topmost peak,

and a triple shadow flung itself

all across the mighty wall,

growing more and more distinct.

The moon, not yet in sight,

was projecting upon K2

the giant profile of Broad Peak,

while the northern face of the latter

still diffused a tranquil white light

from its snowy surface.

Twilight was always followed

by severe and increasing cold.

Profound silence would brood over the valley,

even weighing down our spirits

with indefinable heaviness.

There can be no other place in the world

where man feels himself so alone, so isolated,

so completely ignored by Nature,

so incapable of entering into communion with her.

The simple fact is that

these are not mountains like other mountains,

and one cannot look at them

without disquiet and foreboding."

♪

I spent a lot of time in high-altitude.

I know how my body does.

I know when I'm pushing too hard.

The morning that they left for the summit,

I knew that it wasn't possible for me.

I could get down just fine,

but I didn't know if I could go up and get down fine.

Of course, we always have to keep in our mind

that we have to come back safely.

This is the highest priority, of course.

And just to feel how far I can go

when I have to withdraw,

this is quite difficult.

These 8,000 meter peaks, they--

They're such a jump

in just physical challenge

and the demands on the human body.

A lot of people really can't cope with them.

I think when you're quite new to this game,

you get so excited when you're,

you know, 600 or 700 meters away from the summit

of an 8,000 meter peak

that regardless of how your toes feel

or your fingers, the moment comes

and if other people are gonna go to the summit,

you don't wanna turn around

and have to go back to your office,

or your wife, or your friends and colleagues,

and say, "Oh yeah, I was unable to."

You come to appreciate that success

is not about standing on the summit.

Success is about coming back

with all your fingers and toes intact,

with all your team together,

and maybe with some good photos and some good stories.

A summit is merely a bonus.

♪

It's a funny time in high-altitude climbing

history, really, there's so many people

that have collected ten or more Eight-Thousanders

that are lookin' to complete all 14.

The interesting thing is, we have a bunch of women now

that are about to finish,

Gerlinde certainly being the strongest.

Gerlinde's out front, breaking trail, leading pitches,

fixing lines, if need be.

To climb without supplemental oxygen

is very important for me.

If you use supplemental oxygen

at around 8,000 meters, it's like you climbed

only six, six and a half thousand meters,

and it's a big, big difference.

I really want to climb with my own energy.

(speaking in foreign language)

This kind of style just isn't being done

by many of the other women that have collected

a high number of the Eight-Thousanders.

I think I'll be really disappointed

if somehow Gerlinde isn't the first.

I never thought about if I'm the first, second,

the third, or fourth woman who reached the top

of all 14 eight-thousand-meter peaks.

For me, it was always important to do in my own style,

without supplemental oxygen and without help

of high-altitude porters.

Lemme just give you a little quick, brief update here

from K2 base camp.

My sources in Prague, Switzerland, Tokyo,

Hong Kong, and Canmore have all confirmed

that Tuesday, the fourth of August, 2009,

is the best summit day for this group.

The weather on K2 is really the determining factor

between utter failure and success.

(speaking foreign language)

So when the weather is declared, you know,

good enough for a summit day,

you take enough supplies for maybe four or five days,

and you move up to Camp 1, Camp 2, Camp 3,

and then eventually, up to your high camp--

on K2, it's Camp 4.

And, you know, these are long days.

Get it in your head, start to mentally prepare.

"I'm gonna go fast.

When it's my-- when I'm second in line,

I am gonna go, I'm gonna put my head down,

I am gonna go, I'm gonna get him that rope,

because it's gonna take me a long time."

When it finally got 'round to our final summit attempt,

I was filled with a mixture of anticipation,

but also, you know, quite daunted

by what the next few days would hold.

Chris, what's your biggest fear in life?

My biggest fear in life.

'Cause I think I know what it is.

-Uh, being hungry? -No.

Your biggest fear in life...

-is vampires. -Vampires!

It's actually in string form, I'm--

It's just gonna go around your neck?

Yeah, it's for summit day.

"The Duke decided to make the attempt

on the southern ridge of the mountain.

It is certainly steeper, but on the other hand,

it has certain advantages.

The slope faced full south and got the sun

from early in the morning.

This is a consideration of the greatest importance

in ascents above 24,000 feet,

as the intense cold can prove not only a difficulty

but a great danger to the explorer.

The Duke was accompanied by three guides.

He crossed the front of the glacier that comes down

from the southern wall of K2 and went up

the Godwin-Austen, to the foot of the southern ridge.

As we approached it, the wall appeared to grow less steep.

On the other hand,

the obstacles became more evident.

The live ice of the gullies,

dominated by overhanging seracs,

the gleam of verglas on the rocks,

the sheer precipices showing everywhere

on the face of the wall.

The mountains looked sinister.

We bid adieu to our leader with good wishes,

which did not succeed in disguising from ourselves

the insecurity we felt as to the outcome

of this bold undertaking."

The statistics on K2 play with you, emotionally.

It's, it's an interesting roller coaster to go through.

Been through a lot of these summit pushes here.

I hope we got this one well-dialed.

When we came down to the base camp,

David told me that he will finish the expedition.

He don't want another attempt,

and it was quite difficult to decide to continue climbing,

but there was still Fabrizio's team,

and so we had another try.

(speaking in foreign language)

The night before we set off for the summit,

you feel a bit like sort of soldiers on the eve of battle,

huddled around their fires, hoping that you had

the training, the experience, that the weather would hold,

that the mountain would look kindly upon you,

and that ultimately, Lady Luck was on your side.

♪

See that fucking big avalanche?

Luckily, we're just gonna get a dusting.

Get ready to get your lungs frozen.

Whoo!

Middle of a snowstorm.

That was quite cool.

I'm glad that we were that far away from it,

and not right in it, that woulda been fucking scary.

Ron, you okay?

Yeah!

Is everyone else okay?

(inaudible)

So the wind's picking up a little bit,

we're huddled in our little tent.

Well, it will be warm when the sun comes out.

We're just gonna sort of overnight here.

Tomorrow morning, push up to Camp 3,

hope to spend the night there, insha'Allah,

and see what we can achieve.

"They climbed for a short distance on hard snow,

then on bare ice, sticking to the left side

in order to utilize the rocky projections

on which they fixed more than 100 yards of rope

for help to those coming after, with the loads.

The peak itself, from the Shoulder up,

looked inaccessible from where we were.

But even if it proved quite impossible

on nearer view, the conquest of the Shoulder

was in itself an undertaking amply worthwhile."

(wind blowing)

♪

Once we got beyond the rock buttresses,

we had this long snow Shoulder,

which led onto the Banana Ridge and then up towards Camp 3.

♪

(labored breathing)

Reaching Camp 3 and setting up the tent there,

the three of us climbed into the tent

and spent a few hours trying to melt

as much snow as possible to make some food

and some drink.

The excitement and the apprehension

of what the next 24 or 36 hours would hold

meant that we had a pretty sleepless night.

♪

♪

As we got up early the next morning,

it was bitterly cold.

Struggling to get into our down suits,

struggling to get into all of our equipment,

to collapse the tents and setting off onwards

to Camp 4, on the Shoulder.

Of course, as we got higher and higher,

the climbing got steeper and steeper,

and with the altitude, it got tougher and tougher.

Every step you took, it felt like

it was gonna be my last.

My legs were burning, my lungs were screaming,

trying to draw in what little oxygen there was in the air,

and my heart was pounding so hard, I thought it was

about to burst out of my chest.

A little voice in the back of my head

was going, "Jake, what on Earth are you doing to yourself?

Are you completely mad?

Are you completely bonkers?

Why are you putting yourself through all this pain

and this misery, ultimately just to stand

on a bit of snow and rock and ice

a little bit higher than lots of other bits

of snow and rock and ice?"

It was at this point I made the very difficult decision

to turn around and abandon my hopes

of summiting K2.

♪

"After having reached the height of certainly 20,000 feet,

they found themselves on a slender crest of rocks

quite broken and crumbling, so as to give no security

to the foot, nor safe hold for the hands.

♪

On one side went down steeply into the valley

the couloir by which they had come up.

On the other, a dizzy steep of ice descended

to the Godwin-Austen, 3,000 feet and more below.

♪

They went on for three hours,

climbing always toward the reddish rock

where the Duke had hoped to set up camp,

and never reaching it, though it seemed constantly

within a few steps of them."

Finally, after many hours of climbing,

you come up to the Shoulder.

It's a very flat place, and then starts

the beginning of the Bottleneck,

and there it is again very, very difficult

and dangerous also.

When you do make it up to Camp 4,

you really wanna be there as early in the day as possible.

And then, you usually start around one or two

in the morning.

It's pitch black, it's freezing cold.

You know, you're a little bit dizzy.

It's quite daunting.

Summit day on the expedition is like,

life compressed.

You experience so many different emotions

throughout the day, you know?

You can wake up feeling absolutely terrible,

and wanna go home, and then you start walking

and you look around you, and you just feel

totally elated and just amazed

by the beauty that's around you and love it,

and then you're like, "That's why I'm doing this!"

♪

Mountains make us feel tiny.

They're just big, I can move fast in them

and I still feel tiny.

♪

You get up here and you get above 7,000 meters and realize

you're just a tiny little speck.

♪

When you're at high altitude,

it's such a bizarre feeling.

You almost consistently have an out-of-body experience.

Your heart starts to really beat.

You can feel it, you can feel how it's laboring.

Um, and...you know, I got a smile on my face

because, you know, I know how I do

in that environment.

I now crave, or love, that sensation

of the pounding of my heart.

I love making my body work that hard.

When we have established our tent maybe

at around 6- or 7- or 8,000 meters,

and maybe there is almost no wind,

beautiful sunset, in these moments, for me,

really a lot of energy comes back from the nature.

And these are the moments which remain in my mind forever.

♪

I like to say it's a walking meditation.

It's such a focused activity

that once you sort of go down that road in life,

it's very hard to come back from.

I think I need it, it's who I am.

♪

If this is in your heart and your mind,

you cannot say, "Okay, now I've finished,

because I don't want any more."

It's inside, and I have to follow this feeling,

maybe until the end of my life.

♪

We had an absolutely beautiful, spectacular day.

The sunrise was perfect.

No, no news as of yet, but as far as I know,

she's pushin' the route through the Bottleneck, over.

(speaking in foreign language)

♪

We could pass the Bottleneck and reach the height

at around 8,300 meters again,

and there, we found a lot, a lot of snow,

until the waist.

♪

"The guides finally came to the reluctant conclusion

that it was useless to proceed further.

It was hopeless to think of bringing so long

and formidable an ascent to successful issue,

when from the very first steps,

they had met with such difficulties

as made the climb barely possible

to guides not hampered by loads.

After weeks of examination, after hours of contemplation

and search for the secret of the mountain,

the Duke was finally obliged to yield

to the conviction that K2 is not to be climbed."

Having been up the higher parts of the mountain so many times,

it became evident to me very quickly,

it wasn't gonna happen that day.

We had to decide to turn back,

and this was also really difficult,

and in these moments, I really trust my gut feeling,

and again, very near the summit,

and we saw, okay, it's impossible.

In the end, nobody made the summit.

Fortunately, everyone came down in one piece,

and all was fine.

I mean, some of the strongest climbers in the world

were up there and couldn't, couldn't make that route go.

That's the way it goes sometimes, you can put in

very hard pushes, come very close,

and, uh, it just doesn't happen.

No big deal.

♪

"The day ended in a sunset of indescribable beauty.

The mountain seemed to throw off its hostility

and become serene once more.

The pale blue sky became softly tinged with rose.

One by one, the light left the surrounding heights,

forsaking last of all the three great summits

of Broad Peak.

Finally, the tranquil moonlight and the profound stillness

and peace reigned over the scene."

♪

After 2010, I went home and I didn't know

if I want to come back to K2.

I felt that I have to get distance to this mountain,

and thought maybe this mountain does not like me,

this was in my mind.

But then one day I felt that I have to go back.

Climbing friends and also my family told me,

"You are really crazy, why you go back?

Why you have to climb this mountain?"

K2 was always in my mind and in my heart,

and I think, one day, K2 will accept

that I can climb to top.

There are lessons to be learned from every trip,

from every wall, from every rope length

that you climb.

You are constantly changing how you do things,

how you see things.

You don't really worry too much about summits.

You want them, you chase them,

but you really better enjoy the day-in, day-out activity

of being there.

You're ever-present in the moment.

If it's that one moment you're chasing,

you're gonna forget about the millions of moments

that come before.

Do I want that one moment? Of course.

Success is fulfilling the dream.

Chasing it.

Sometimes, you dream too big,

sometimes, you don't dream big enough,

and sometimes, you dream just right.

♪

After 2010, I decided it was very important

not to try again Bottleneck.

For me to avoid this part of the mountain

and not to come back to the south side of K2.

On the north side of K2,

we found complete different conditions.

It was like another mountain, but it was still K2.

I could really identify with this side,

it was always a good and warm feeling.

♪

Finally, at 6 p.m. in the evening,

we could do the last steps to the highest point of K2,

and this is very difficult to explain,

what was inside my heart, my mind.

There were so many strong emotions,

all the very beautiful but also the very sad moments

which I had on K2 were very present in this moment.

We had a very beautiful evening, the sunset was just...

so intense, and it was overwhelming.

♪