Climbing the World to End Alzheimer's
Documentary: The First Traverse of Everest
There have been a lot of climbing movies recently: Tenzing, The Last First: Winter K2, Everest: The Other Side and of course, long time favs like Everest, Touching the Void, North Face, Meru, Valley Uprising, The Summit (K2), The Alpinist, Free Solo, The Dawn Wall so I was suprised when writer, director Roger Mellem told me about his short documentary, 20 minutes, The First Traverse of Everest.
Produced by The Mountaineers, the Seattle, Washington nonprofit outdoor organization. It tells the story of Willi Unsoeld and Tom Hornbein’s 1963 climb, the first ascent of the West Ridge and the first traverse of Everest (and of any 8000 m peak), in their own voices: Willi’s from his last Everest lecture, Tom’s from a 2003 talk. Michael Lewis, author of Moneyball and The Big Short, narrates.
Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi’s Everest: The Other Side, which opened October 30 follows Jim Morrison’s first ski descent of the Hornbein Couloir. Mellem told me that he thinks many viewers of that film would also like to learn about the couloir’s first ascent.
Jimmy Chin saw the film and told Mellem, “What a gift to see this moment in American climbing lore brought back to life. Hearing Willi, Tom and Big Jim [Whittaker] in their own voices, with that footage from the mountain — the spirit, the humor, the love these men had for adventure and for wild places all comes through. They set a standard the rest of us are still chasing.”
For my point of view, if you like climbing, Everest and history,. this is a must see.
Climb On!
Memories are Everything
Alan
Memories are Everything
Alan
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A surge of debilitating fatigue overtook me. My shoulders drooped. I stared at my yellow boots, crushed by disappointment. I had trained hard for K2 and tried to anticipate every scenario, but now I was failing, and there was nothing I could do.
Closing my eyes, I was powerless, hopeless, and ready to surrender to the mountain. Everything I wanted—the summit, a safe return, my vow to my mother—was slipping away.
My ice axe dangled from my harness as my grip was weak.
Staring at the small yellowish spot illuminated by my headlamp on the snow, it was over, and, oddly, I didn’t care.
It was 12:30 a.m. on July 27, 2014—my fifty-eighth birthday.
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