Hacker Cinema
Meru
2015 · Film · documentary · 89 min
Directed by Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi
Meru is the electrifying story of three elite American climbers—Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin, and Renan Ozturk—bent on achieving the impossible.
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12 comments on Hacker News
A little bit on why this peak is so hard. First off highly recommend watching Meru(mentioned on the NYtimes article) as the conditions look very similar on both mountains(Meru - being 21k feet), with Jammu being 4k feet higher in elevation.
Judging from the pictures of the climb you have very steep walls which are not entirely ice/snow or all rock, but a mixture of both which means you need strong skills in both rock climbing routes 5.9+(grading for rock climbing, this being very difficult) and dealing with snowy alpine conditions and using ice climbing axes as well as crampons. My guess is they switched footwear from boots with crampons to rock climbing shoes based on the conditions of the wall.
So you have all the skills above and now you have to deal with extreme cold and weather conditions that are positively artic(-30 to -40f at nights). In addition you are at a zone where if someone makes a mistake and gets seriously hurt that person most likely is dead and it could lead to the others in the party also dying, its why picking your partner is really really important.
Lastly the biggest elephant in the room - elevation. Despite how fit you are and well trained this can be a complete blocker, some people just get altitude sickness above a certain height and have to turn around to lower elevations.
So you are doing a route like climbing el capitan but at 20,000+ feet, and unlike el capitan you have ice and snow as well as weather which is never seen in yosemite, so hope this illustrates how difficult this summit was. Hats off to all three climbers and hope that frostbitten finger makes a recovery.
Some other great climbing documentaries:
- Touching The Void (It's an older movie but maybe the most harrowing survival story I've ever heard).
- Meru
- Free Solo
- The Alpinist
- Valley Uprising
I love documentaries, and these are my favourites. All very worth a watch.
- The Crash Reel
- McConkey
- Buck
- Apollo 11
- Carts of Darkness
- The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia
- Samsara
- Baraka
- Brooklyn Castle
- Spellbound
- Drew: The Man Behind the Poster
- Crumb
- The Jinx
- The Art of Flight
- King of Kong
- Indie Game: The Movie
- Capturing the Friedmans
- OJ: Made in America
- The Barkley Marathons
- The Seven Five
- Murderball
- Unbranded
- Gringo: The Dangerous Life of John McAfee
- Big River Man
- Hoop Dreams
- Word Wars
- Free Solo
- Long Shot
- Meru
- Being Elmo
- All This Mayhem
- Jiro Dreams of Sushi
- The Cove
- Project Nim
- Alone in the Wilderness
- Behind the Curve
- The Dawn Wall
- Grizzly Man
- 13th
- Winnebago Man
- Man vs Snake: The Long and Twisted Tale of Nibbler
- Get Me Roger Stone
- Icarus
- 13th
- Koyaanisqatsi
- The Thin Blue Line
- An Inconvenient Truth
- Oklahoma City
- Virunga
- The Staircase
- Evil Genius
- Undefeated
- Betting on zero
For similar tales in other "discipline" try Meru documentary as well.
Meru is a lot better and interesting documentary in my opinion. Not Hannold, but same circle of people and ice climbing
For people interested in the topic of Himalayan big wall climbing, do checkout the movie Meru - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2545428/ it's excellent!
If you have seen and enjoyed Free Solo, I can also recommend the Reel Rock series & Meru.
If you haven't seen Free Solo (because you're not interested in climbing, or whatever) it's still worth a watch.
https://www.redbull.com/int-en/tv/show/AP-1MD65N6X92111/reel-rock
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2545428/
Jimmy Chin* was the primary contracted photographer (through NatGeo, I think). He has been involved in numerous amazing projects as both a photographer and an athlete: he (Mr Chin) was one of the 3 climbers in Meru, which is also an amazing mountaineering movie.
* http://www.jimmychin.com/
Another favorite Himalayan documentary is "Meru (2015)" [0]. One of the climbers ended up marrying the producer/director.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meru_(film)
Seconded! Valley Uprising is worth watching (and available on Netflix in loads of countries, not just the US)
I just finished Alex Honnold's book (Alone on the Wall) and it's a fun read. Gives you a bit of backstory to the media frenzy that surrounds him at times.
In terms of videos, the Reel Rock film tour is amazing. They cover some really awesome climbs. And "Meru" is on Amazon Prime Video in a lot of countries (a short version was in Reel Rock one or two years ago).
I would also highly recommend the movie Meru, which is briefly mentioned in this article. It's a great documentary that shows the crazy shit he (more than willingly) goes through to get some of his shots.
I am going to do something different from the other comments here and I'm going to agree with you. The reason why most people will disagree with you is because most people are terrified of suffering. They can't see suffering as the thing that makes life interesting, for them everything good comes from pleasure which is a mute point. They expand the definition of pleasure until the point where no argument could be had.
But indeed suffering makes life interesting. I just saw Meru, a documentary of a group of Alpinists trying to climb a very difficult mountain. Most hedonist would explain their behaviour with some bullshit like: "They do it because they feel pleasure from it" Which is total nonsense, specially when you are aware of all the pain and suffering involved in climbing a big fucking mountain.
It wouldn't be much of a challenge without suffering, there wouldn't be a grand obstacle to overcome. You can get more pleasure to stay in your couch smoking weed, but climbing Meru makes life more interesting.