GASHERBRUM, THE LUMINOUS MOUNTAIN
In June 1984, the mountaineer Reinhold Messner organized...
...an expedition in the mountains of the Karakorum.
Hans Kammerlander, on the right of the picture, was with him.
Their objective: Two summits in the chain of the Gasherbrums
all two at few more of 8000 meters of altitude.
Here is the Gasherbrum 1.
Gasherbrum means "THE LUMINOUS MOUNTAIN."
Their idea was to climb the two mountains,
one after the other, without stopping, without stationary camp
and without oxygen, without anything other than a backpack.
Messner already climbed them separately.
Here is the Gasherbrum 2.
I don't have a true profession. I didn't learn anything particular.
I made a lot of things who take the liberty to live.
It is everything I need.
I finance my expeditions thanks to mountaineering equipment.
I don't need anything else.
I am very happy not to have a profession.
I think that otherwise one renounces to all creative activity.
I grew up on a farm in mountain in the South Tyrol.
I helped my father on our small farm.
My mother died when I was very young.
My father was not of good health.
Then I worked as a bricklayer for 5 years
I also had to take care of housework.
What was the housework?
The usual works of a farm, I took care of everything.
I continue again when me follow home
Now, I work as mountain guide in the summer
and as a skiing professor in the winter.
And I have a lot of time in the spring and the fall
to climb and to participate in expeditions.
Our idea was not to to achieve a movie on mountaineering
What we wanted to discover it was what happens...
in the head of the mountaineers when they rush in...
...of the enterprises as extreme.
What fascination drives them to these summits.
These mountains and these summits do they not exist at the bottom,
in the soul of each of us?
Here we are in Skardu in the north of Pakistan
the last accessible city by car or by plane.
We buy some supplies with Rozi Ali, carrier and cook
a friend of Reinhold Messner for numerous expeditions.
The selection of the carriers takes place the following morning.
Many have participated in the previous ascensions of Messner.
Most are the Baltises, of the mountains of north Pakistan.
Just after Skardu, the road stops.
The provisions are brought by Jeep until Dasso.
From there until the base camp there are 150 kilometers on foot.
The last 60 kilometers take place on a glacier.
The camp is going to be set up at an altitude of about 5000 m.
After 5 days we find a place to stop.
It is a source of water hot sulfurous,
the last real bath for a long time.
That doesn't look worse that our other expeditions.
Of course we don't know if we will have the strength
the staying and even the nerves that we will need.
Since it has never been attempted, we lack reference.
I climbed the 8000 before,
but two 8000 have never been climbed at one time
We are some sorts of guinea pigs. We leave...
without knowing if we won't be exhausted.
We may become mad not holding more standing.
In this case we would be obligated to come down.
Maybe the fact we have climbed the first summit,
the desire to win our bet, will give us
enough strength and power to climb the second summit.
If we have a lot of luck and if we are in shape,
if the conditions of are ideal,
if we are in shape physically and emotionally,
we can succeed.
For soccer players, the friendship forgets itself on the field.
You train a team as the other.
Is it necessary to be friends?
Could speak yourselves to this aspect?
How long have you known each other?
5 or 6 years,
since I worked as a mountain guide
in his mountaineering school
We've went on expeditions together for 3 years.
Are you close friends?
I would not say it, we know each other very well
...and I chose Hans for this expedition
among all the mountaineers that I know personally.
Hans is one of the only ones I think that is capable of it.
I've participated in about 30 expeditions
and I still choose my partners in the same way.
Without being necessarily friends, I always have 100% confidence
in the cleverness of the climbers,
...their intuitive knowledge of the atmospheric conditions,
and of the strengths of nature like the avalanches, the storms.
I know that they have as much of that trust in me.
Otherwise sooner or later we would have failed.
One of us would be responsible for the death of the other.
Each of us assumes one personal responsibility.
There is not an alternative.
I cannot bring myself to ask someone...
to join me without being sure thathet has it in head.
We join the glacier to one altitude of about 4000 m.
The carriers have already collected...
...the last pieces of wood for fire.
All have fear of what is going to arrive.
After 10 days of walking through the throats and the glacier,
the massages like this one makes are good.
Ibrahim is a carrier worker
and although most of the others have already left us,
he wanted to remain with me a while longer.
He massaged each of us during the walk of approach
and now then before we go begin the ascension,
he takes it very seriously.
Now he pulls my fingers one by one.
If I understood right, he uses his father's technique.
We are relatively secure here to the base camp.
Yes, we are secure. It is a real pleasure.
But higher, the dangers are numerous.
Just to the over the base camp...
...there are the hundreds of crevasses.
A few has one farther stiff enough partition
and then, naturally, there are the storms close to the summit.
At the time of my lone ascension in the Nanga Parbat, in 1978,
I had an incredible luck.
Now he pulls my the ears.
I climbed all day, relatively quickly
and I bivouaced on a sérac...
to an altitude of about 6500 m in a well sheltered place.
The following morning at 5 o'clock, I folded the camp,
there was a light tremor. I immediately noticed it.
That instant an incredible avalanche fell.
Just below, an enormous block of sérac...
...of the size of one pâté of houses...
detached itself and flew down into the valley.
My base camp that I saw...
...yesterday as one red point,
...was covered with snow.
Then the friends at the base camp told to me that snow...
...had fallen for one half-hour.
I had luck to be awake.
If it had arrived the eve
I would have flown off with the avalanche.
A "classic expedition" that would like to climb these mountains
would have to resort to carriers to transport 1 or 2 tons
of material and provisions.
They would have numerous people with camps at different altitudes.
The climbers would make of the displacements
of a tent to the other, of a camp to the other, like a pyramid.
The strongest being able to then to reach the summit.
We practice, on the contrary, an alpine style...
We have a small tent and only these clothes.
If we are too hot, we put them in our bags
A fine rope, two picks,
a special pick that can stretch out,
and a pick made of titanium very light.
And this strange rope?
It is not a real rope.
We use it in duplicate when we insure.
But we won't use it much.
Each of us is responsible for himself.
For the essential us let's climb without cording.
Can we see the camera what you carry with you up high?
We carry a camera with us, a small Bell & Howell
in order to shoot the summit and as testimony of the expedition.
How many toes have you lost, Hans?
I have all mine thanks to God.
Me n' lost some again none because of the frost.
I have four on one foot, I lost the other.
Will be you in radio contact with the camp?
No, not a radio, it would be too heavy
anyway no one here could not come to rescue us.
It is our risk and if one doesn't arrive there, it is like that.
There remains only two carriers in the camp.
Rozi Ali, the cook prepares of the chapati from the flat breads.
On my 1st expédition himalayenne in 1970 in the Nanga Parbat.
Of the four participants, I am the only one still alive.
A German, Peter Scholz and Felix Krün, an Austrian,
perished several years after.
My brother died during the expedition in the Nanga Parbat.
Later, in 1972, I was in the Manaslu, to Nepal...
a member of the expedition died of cold weather just under the summit
and another became mad and also perished.
During all these years, I met some mountaineers,
I learned two or three years later than they had died
...in big expeditions.
I think that the fact we want to climb mountains...
...is a sign of cerebral degeneration.
So many people that must to work hard to live,
to cultivate small fields as mountain people,
they don't think about climbing on mountains.
They are afraid of the mountains, of the avalanches, of the storms,
and especially of the torrents that destroy all.
My neighbors, in Villnöss, continue to tell me that I am mad,
that it doesn't make sense to climb the mountains,
that I could use my energy for something else
and they don't have it completely wrong.
And you, what do you think?
You think that you are not quite sound of mind?
I think that all artists, the creative people, are mad,
even the art and the creativeness are shapes of degeneration.
The fascination animated me for so long.
The fascination for the altitude.
In the beginning, it was only curiosity.
To what that resembles when the zone is some death higher?
That one feels before a partition of 5000 meters?
But I cannot answer the question to know...
...why I make it
not more that to the one of to know why I live
and I never asked the question when I climbed.
The question doesn't exist because my whole being is the answer.
When I am lengthened in my tent I sometimes think
Reason is that that do I make it?
Reason is that that I don't remain here, below?
My ambition is already relatively satisfied.
But in spite of it all, two or three times per year...
...I need to measure myself.
If I climb a 3000 m mountain in the Alps
...I don't have the opportunity for it.
I don't know how go turn this expedition
...toward the two Gasherbrums,
what will be my inferior relation with her.
The very solitude if we are two...
...pass the one that one can to feel in an empty piece
or in anonymity of a big city.
You achieve to what point you are small, vulnerable.
Sometimes I think that I don't have anymore need for it
but after several months, the desire comes back
like one who's hooked and cannot stop.
Maybe the climbing is a morbid obsession.
Is what it means and it is a sensitive question,
that this type of climbing understands also a research of the death?
I believe that one interprets as a research of the death
for a lot of activities that go to the limits.
I never wanted to kill myself while climbing.
If it has ever happened to me to have similar thoughts,
it is in completely different situations
but never while climbing a mountain.
I am persuaded that someone who is on a mountain...
...cannot think of death while he climbs it.
Two Spanish of an expedition toward the Gasherbrum 2 appear.
After weeks of struggle and of snow storms
they should have quit right below the summit.
They were exhausted and cautioned us of deep snow
and of the avalanches that raged higher up.
You think that because of your closeness with your brother,
this one could be dead to your place?
You would have an attitude different before his death?
I had a different attitude before the death in general
because I am mountaineer and maybe because of his death
even though I sometimes have the impression is is alive again.
When I see the mountains that we climbed together.
I made the most difficult climbings with him.
on the Heiligkreuzkofel in the Dolomites,
we lived through some extreme situations for both of us.
Each was was responsible in the event the other tomb
and this relation was so intense
that we would not be able to to have separated again.
When I see these partitions today,
I are not able to more climb them without my toes
I have the impression of him always in life.
I don't have the feeling that he died to my place
I have the impression that it is myself that died
during the expedition.
During the whole coming down, I told myself:
"All is finished, we are not able to not to go farther."
Before abrupt partitions, we didn't have a rope.
What was necessary to make?
II had there of the dozens of moments in the coming down...
...where I was sure that all was finished.
And back in the valley after his disappearance
after having looked for him all night long
and to have waited in vain until the following day
I didn't worry anymore whether I was going to die.
During the rest of the journey, I didn't think anymore
I didn't feel the pain.
I was barefoot.
My swollen feet didn't go back in my shoes.
Then I fainted and when I awakened later
I was stunned to see that I was living.
And, on the return back home,
I had the feeling that my life had toppled with this tragedy.
How did you announce the news to your mother?
My mother understood it better that anyone
and yet it was very hard.
We are going to leave now and if the weather improves
as the weather report announced it with one monsoon in the southeast
we should be back in about one week
so all happens well.
If we don't appear at the end of 10 days
you will be able to make come the carriers and to leave.
You have money for the carriers Rozi Ali knows everything of them.
Money for the journey is to Rawalpindi to the Miss Davis Hotel.
You will find money for the case of a mission by helicopter.
All is organized and arranged so that from the moment...
...where you will take the responsibility of the expedition...
...you can receive the government's money.
If we don't come back from here two weeks, it will mean
that we finished under an avalanche or are dead of weariness.
Don't search for us, no one will ever find us.
Hans, what should we do with your personal belongings
...in the tent? The photos and...
There is not much to say some,
the best thing would be to throw it all in a crevasse.
The morning, according to them, they were 6 kilometers from us
or one thousand meters over the camp.
They arrived to the summit of the Gasherbrum 2
...two and a half days later.
Then the weather changed.
The summit disappeared in a storm of snow.
They arrive to the summit of the Gasherbrum 1.
After 7 and a half days of waiting anxiously, they emerged from the glacier.
Rozi Ali had spent the last foru nights praying.
Reinhold, how did it happen?
The last two days were... We succeeded!
Could you remove your glasses?
That is himself he passes these last two days?
We reached the summit yesterday, in spite of the storm.
We found it in the middle of the storm.
It was the hardest part.
We underwent winds of 80 to 100 km/h all day
and we hurt to recover the tent.
The only reason for which we came down again yesterday
it is because we wanted to descend by a precise bone.
Yesterday, midway, it was rotted...
and today also because it was too hot.
We had indeed the worst conditions...
...meteorologically conceivable.
If we had not had as much luck in the beginning,
we would never have succeeded.
Hans, how was that for you?
I think that if you do that kind of thing often enough,
the best thing to make, it is to write your will.
We really had a lot of luck
these last two days, it was the madness...
I think that no one will repeat it in this decade.
A hole of water in the glacier of hundred meter thick.
The temperature is close to the frost.
The risk is that the water that springs disappears in ice.
If one slips, they would be irreparably lost.
Reinhold, whereas you sit down naked and vulnerable before us.
I would like to ask a simple question:
What was the goal of it all?
I don't know. I never wounder why I do it.
It is thus for the other madness that I committed.
I would not like to know the answer.
I have the feeling that I can write on these enormous partitions
...of 3000 or 4000 meter high,
as a professor writes on a blackboard with a chalk.
But I don't only make that to write these lines
...of the imaginary lines, I live these lines.
I also have the impression that after, these lines remain there
even though I am the only one that can feel them, see them
that I live them and nobody else will ever be able to see them
but they are there and them will remain forever there.
You can think of more to climb?
To make quite something else?
Sometimes, I want to stop the mountain climbing.
and I imagine that I walk... for years
Maybe forever, with the yaks, some carriers
from a Himalayan valley to another.
To deserts, the forests, without going nowhere
without watching behind, without watching ahead
while continuing to walk until the tip of the world.
It is strange, I have precisely the same dream.
I would like to have a dog, a husky with two leather bags
and just to walk until I went everywhere.
Yes, it is passionate
and I imagine that, more and more in the next years
sooner or later in my life, I won't look behind.
And I won't go anywhere in particular, without destination.
I will walk until the tip of the world.
I don't know if it is round or flat
for me the world never finishes
to a certain moment, him... stop.
It is then, probably, when my life will stop,
the world will make in the same way.
We would be able to each follow the traces of the other.
I am delighted with advance.
The climbing of the mountains is not anymore important for me.
Especially the climbing.
The important thing is to walk, to walk, to walk...