UKC

This harrowing expedition pushed a group of mountaineers to the mental and physical brink; carving them Down To Nothing. A six-person team from The North Face and National Geographic attempted to summit an obscure peak in Myanmar (Hkakabo Razi) to determine if it is Southeast Asia's highest point.

The expedition members, led by The North Face athlete and Telluride mountaineer Hilaree O'Neill include, videographer Renan Ozturk, climber Emily Harrington, and National Geographic author Mark Jenkins, photographer Cory Richards, and basecamp manager Taylor Rees."

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In reply to UKC News:

I love a good productive trip. It's always good to read about an expediition with a real purpose rather than a thinly disguised climbing holiday.

The ability to say which peak is slightly higher completely counteracts any so called "arguments" from bleeding heart idealists who spouts gibberish about the legitimacy of military dictatorships. Bravo!

In any case if they are OK with the fine chaps at BAE system then they are OK by me!

In reply to UKC News:

How deep would you like the sugar coating and gloss on that?

In reply to JJL:

Hush!

Anyone who tells you that it is quite possible to determine the altitude of hills from orbit without climbing them is a dirty rotten stinking liar!

In reply to UKC News:

Beautifully filmed, as you'd expect from National Geographic, but this trip comes across as a self-regarding and imperialistic venture. We see lots of seductive imagery of people and places encountered on the way to the mountain but we hear nothing about or from these people and places. The burmese people who help the westerners by transporting and carrying their stuff over difficult terrain, interpreting for them and helping them navigate state bureaucracy are given no credit during the film - and indeed are criticized at various points. There is no acknowledgement that the expedition is taking place in a country that is emerging from decades of political oppression, which explains many of the difficulties. We get no sense that the climbers understand that the obstacles they encounter are those faced every day by people who have to live there: "there is literally no food here!" , "it's remote!", "the transportation is terrible!" And why, in a country with millions living below the poverty line and little formal employment, was it so hard for the team to recruit enough porters to carry their stuff? What is the story of the villagers' lack of interest in helping?

I'm not judging the expedition members as individuals - I'm willing to believe they are sensitive and aware, had great working relationships with the people they met and were hugely grateful for the help they did get in a difficult context. However if they want us to care about their story, the film-makers could have put this visit by privileged adventurers to a poor country into some kind of perspective. Without this, complaints about food theft, intransigent bureaucracy, uncooperative natives and inadequate local infrastructure make the climbers sound self-regarding. There is no need to turn a climbing/expedition film into a social documentary but surely it is not too hard to include a quick comment from one of the climbers showing some understanding of the people who accompanied them and/or thwarted them on their recreational adventure? Or perhaps even a comment from a Burmese person on what they thought of the whole thing? Instead we hear only the climbers' complaints. The first positive thing said in the film is that the view from one of the high camps was nice.

Is it too much to ask that films of this type either stay focused on the mountain climbing part of the adventure, or, if they decide the difficult approach and country-context is an integral part of the story, then at least tell that story in a 21st century way? Intrepid westerners battling heroically to achieve noble and lofty aims under primitive conditions feels like a trope that has had its day. It is disappointing that National Geographic continues to portray the world in these terms. Myanmar/Burma looks amazing, though.

Eddie

In reply to EddieA:

In reply to everyone who has commented so far....
We all know that climbing is a completely self-indulgent and pointless activity. With some notable exceptions, most climbers, whether they are on Froggatt or Everest, don't spend a lot of time worrying about the locals - it is the climbing and associated problems which interest and motivate them the most. Yes, I would love to see a film about the social and political changes underway in the country. But this is a climbing film. What it does show is a highly adventurous climbing trip to a very inaccessible area (and the difficulty of getting there is an inseparable part of it). I agree that the storyline is a bit old-school, and the whole piece rather too prettified for my taste, but that's what you get when you sell your soul to North Face and National Geographic. The film may deserve the criticisms you all make (and let's remember that the editors are very likely the most responsible here), but let's recognise the achievement as well.

In reply to Derek Ryden:

I agree that it is the editors/producers/National Geographic etc that are responsible for how the story came across. I hope I was careful to give the climbers the benefit of the doubt. I respect the climbers' determination and single-mindedness - but what was their achievement and why should I admire it? They didn't summit, didn't settle the geographical question, and they struggled logistically to get to their objective. It's hard work to walk 125 miles of jungle trail, but there are people there and elsewhere in mountain and jungle Asia and Africa who walk that every week, carrying stuff, for a living. Someone made those paths this expedition used, and it wasn't climbers and trekkers. So, tough walk-in? Sure. Unique and praiseworthy? Not so sure. Japanese writer and anthropologist Toshihiro Yoshida has spent years living and traveling in the jungles and mountains of Northern Myanmar, since the late 1970s, so other outsiders have certainly made their way there without being elite sponsored 'athletes'.

I hope I was also clear that I didn't expect a social or political documentary in a climbing film but if the film had told me that the Kashin people who live in this area have been fighting the Myanmar government in an on-going insurgency, I'd have understood why they couldn't get any porters and had to ditch some of their climbing gear, which compromised the success of their trip. This context helps me to decide if their achievement was praiseworthy or if their judgement in going there was questionable. Maybe that was why they left it out.

Perhaps most climbers don't care about anything other than the climbing in films like this, as Derek suggests. I hope not - it would make us like the supporters of sports tours to apartheid South Africa in the 1970s and 80s - "we don't care about the politics, we just want to see great cricket and rugby". If everybody thought like that then nothing would have changed. If we don't call out neo-imperialist bullshit in Nat Geo films, then their editors and writers will continue to reflect the world in that way. I'd rather they didn't and I believe they have a responsibility not to because of their global reach.

As I said, it is a gorgeous film and no doubt a great adventure for the people involved in it. The criticisms are just my opinion and I respect that others will have different ones. Perhaps the film will win praise and prizes at mountain film festivals and prove my opinion to be a minority one in the climbing community. Let's see.

Unlike Derek, I don't see climbing as pointless or self-indulgent: every human needs recreation and challenge and we find it though climbing - there are many more damaging ways to entertain yourself. Climbing films inspire, educate and entertain both climbers and non-climbers which is why some people are able to make a living doing it and filming it. So it matters how expeditions like these are put across to the wider public.


Eddie

In reply to EddieA:

Yep, exactly. At least two of the climbing team were lacking in relevant expedition experience and in general, despite the presence of Jenkins, were woefully ill-prepared.


Yep again. Unflattering context is regularly left out of expedition accounts.


Exactly. They've done it with Everest too, even recently, so hopefully that will change.



No, I agree with, you and thank you for your thoughtful and articulate posts.

In reply to UKC News:

The NG article has a bit more in it. Not as glossy as the TNF adventurmercial, but still NG.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/09/hkakabo-razi-climb/jenkins-text

In reply to UKC News:

To me, it felt like the film was too short. I understand that we didn't get a full picture of the local political environment and context of some of the statements but also I felt I didn't get to know the members of the expedition - their relative strengths, goals, experience and how they individually coped with the situation. Some amazing photography but I think an hour edit would of been better.

In reply to ben.phillips:

They have to sell these things for viewing by folk watching TV with small attention spans: short, sexed up and beautiful filming works.

In reply to UKC News:

Maybe I'm the odd one out but I thought it was a beautifully made short with fantastic editing and a good story throughout.

In reply to beefheart:

Thanks for the link, I found it very interesting reading after watching and greatly enjoying the film.

I thought that at 24 minutes the film was already quite long for the type that gets released free on the internet like this. I wonder if Renan Ozturk has/is making a longer version for the film festival circuit and the like. I think the amount and quality of filming was very impressive considering obviously the conditions they were climbing in. Having read the article, its even more impressive how he kept rolling - I wonder if he filmed the argument? That gets glossed over for perhaps understandable reasons in the film.

I'm by no means an expert but I do try to read a bit about the politics of Burma and they are fiendishly complicated - as any country's are when you start looking into it. Teaching citizenship in schools over the last year, I've noticed that Aung San Suu Kyi is now very often used as an example to kids of a human rights defender and, to some degree, martyr like MLK or Gandhi. But of course now she and the NLD have real political power in Burma we can see she is a more complicated figure as all politicians really are (I'm thinking of her position - or rather non-position - on the pogroms against the Rohingas in particular). The ongoing insurgencies in the north of Burma (with all the political, ethnic, and drug production dimensions that seem to be part of them) just make understanding what is happening in Burma even more complex. I'm not sure if a film about trying to climb a mountain really could or even should capture that. When we see a nice film about hard French dudes climbing super-routes above Chamonix I don't think anyone ever says, "I really liked the climbing sequences, but it is a shame the film maker couldn't also reflect the situation in the banlieues of Lyon right now and why see so few French mountain guides of North African heritage". Films about climbing in Nepal never deal with the human rights abuses of the government or the legacy of the Maoist rebellion. So should we expect more of this film? Or is it because Burma is a country that is still under semi-military and authoritarian rule? But then, so is Tibet.

Anyway, even if you don't like the politics, it is still a really impressive bit of filming and climbing.

In reply to beefheart:

Regardless of the politics/ human rights issues, that article is a fine bit of writing. Once it got down to the climbing, it sounds quite harrowing.
I particularly liked
"All serious mountaineers have big egos. You cannot take on the risks and constant suffering of big mountains without one. We may talk like Buddhists, but don’t be fooled, we’re actually hard-driving narcissists."

It's hard to tell, but from Google Earth, the East ridge looks far more feasible. Still a harrowing approach, possibly even more harrowing and even non-feasible

In reply to TobyA:

Renan has been producing beautiful imagary in difficult places for a while now... I'm not surprised he is pulling rabbits out of hats here.

On the 'politics' front they cant have it both ways, either they contextualise and recognise efforts or we havent come very far from the likes of Annupurna: no one expexts a treatise on contemporary Burmese issues, just clear recognition of the help from local people and where problems occur that they may resonably have their own priorities. I think Eddie makes some good points relating to these specific issues with the film and you (unusally) have rather gone off at a tangent.

In reply to Offwidth:

Eddie clearly knows the area well but I still think that putting even what he wrote in his post into a film like that in a way that makes much sense would be hard. From what I remember watching the film they didn't seem at all angry that they couldn't hire porters easily, just surprised. They don't even seem particularly pissed off that people are pinching their food - I guess that is understandable too, in an area of poverty and marginalisation.