UKC

Our Friday Night Video this week takes us to 8611 metres. After the first American expedition to K2 in 1953, George Bell said: 'K2 is a savage mountain that tries to kill you.' Sixty-six years later, we follow mountain guides Adrian Ballinger and Carla Perez as they aim to summit the peak.

Just savoured this accompanied with a mug of tea. What an exploit! Excellent film of gutsy attempt.

Thanks UKC for sharing this one.

A great weekend to all !

j

Great film, I really enjoyed it, but some of the comments on YouTube are suggesting that the film has completely missed out the fact that Nims and his team summitted just hours before these guys did, breaking trail and leaving fixed ropes. Seems a bit dishonest to omit these facts.

I stopped watching when he said some of his team would be using supplemental oxygen. It's a bit of a half way house between what is nowadays a normal expedition and an actual team achievement.

I understand that climbing K2 is really dangerous and difficult and only the fittest and most driven will get to the top....

...but there is something particularly uninspiring about a climbing film that defines climbing as endlessly pulling on fixed ropes. I'm sorry, I just don't get it. Why not spend 6 weeks in a freezer on a stairmaster playing Russian Roulette every second day. And a big telly for the view.

Actually, now I mention it, I think I've just invented Zwift for mountaineers. I'll call it Zlow.

He did say the fixed ropes didn't go ALL the way to the top, he knew when they ended there was still 30m to go!!!

Chris

I must have nodded off.

It was worth watching right to the end just for the belting product placement plug right on top of K2 - outstanding 

Who takes the ropes down again?

I thought this was pretentious rubbish. Doing an effectively guided oxygen-free ascent with oxygen-taking sherpas who lead the climb so it's a fixed rope job and with dratted Eddie Bauer logos plastered over everything ... no doubt it's humunguous hard work but it makes a mockery of other oxygen-free 8,000m peak ascents by Meissner and others. What a piece of drivel!

Great views - but it's hardly ground-breaking mountaineering, is it? I was a bit confused to hear of them referring to themselves as alpinists in the film when they appear to have done nothing like alpinism on their ascent.

There is always someone that has to belittle any achievement. But Everest and K2 in the same season without O2 is pretty good in my book. Others had said this was worth watching and they were right. The use of drones for this kind of photography really opens up a new level for the viewer giving some understanding of the terrain. The reference to some other disaster on a another nearby peak I imagine was the Martin Moran group. I was just blown away by the photography. A very professional job. Likewise with the soundtrack with the music carefully edited for when it served a purpose. High altitude film-making has come a long way in the last 30 years or so. Well done to all involved. It was certainly no walk in the park!

A bit? I can handle 46min of vacuous pro babble (just) but the deliberate editing out of Nima Purjal's Sherpa team and their trail breaking and fixing above C4, through the Bottleneck to the summit is atrocious and bordering on lying-by-omission.

Contrary to the smarmy EddieBauer PR response to this in the YouTube comments, the film does include mention of other teams - when they are failing, going down or giving up - but blatantly omits all reference to others on the summit push. It gives the impression that there was no one else on the upper mountain, that those Sherpas who did all the work don't exist. They're mentioned nowhere but are the ones that made it all happen.

Ballinger is apparently the Director and Producer and should be ashamed of himself for such self-aggrandising, egotistical bullshit.

And UKC might consider better what branded content it chooses to promote. 

Great views and some nice filming. Must have a lot of stamina to jumar up both Everest and K2 without oxygen. In terms of climbing feats I felt it was a real retrograde step, others have climbed both peaks without oxygen and without jumaring the whole way. Compare to the Latok 1 video that shows a multi day alpine style ascent and descent with no fixed ropes, oxygen or support team / mountain Sherpas and also no commercial or self aggrandisement agenda. 

Is K2 fixed with ropes annually like Everest? If nobody else went to the summit that season, presumably they were just trusting old ropes on the upper part.