180° South Page #4

compared with taking

an explorative approach.

If we make some errors,

they're gonna be rather small,

you know, I'm sure we're making errors,

the thing is to minimize those errors.

I think it leaves open possibilities

for future generations.

It doesn't seem to be worth wasting a lot

of energy on attempting to rewrite the past,

I just realized, at least, what I was doing

was making a lot of stuff that nobody needed

and pushing our consumer society,

so I went to do something else.

We were really, really different,

we had a same viewpoint

of the world and where it's gone,

but a different approach to it.

He's more bothered probably about

the end of society and mankind that I am

because he's the one that do something about it,

and I'm just kind of a laid back

Zen Buddhist

and just say :
"Well, I'll do what I can

and so be it."

Well... You tell my buddy Yvon the good Buddhist

he has to take his Bodhisattva vows

which means that before self-enlightenment,

one has to end the suffering in the world.

I never knew about Douglas before,

and many people told me that he was a bad man

because he bought all these lands from the Chileans,

he's taking all the lands for him,

that's what people said, like now,

because they don't know him,

they don't know what he's doing.

And for me, to get to see that,

he's an example

that many people should follow.

The solution, I think, it's in all of us,

and I learned that

in the South with Douglas.

In a way, I saw the future of Rapa Nui too.

Here we are, you know, we're germinating

from seeds of different species.

First of all, we're just doing general

restoration work and reforestation.

Here we have "Alerce", they are from

Lago Negro, and have different places.

Since you can't find these species

in regular nurseries in any numbers,

we realized that we had

to start our own tree nursery.

During the Pinochet era,

Chile awarded the rights, the water rights,

to the majority of their rivers

to private enterprises.

Something that you would find

in almost no other country.

And the result of that is that the

Spanish energy company Endesa,

they have been rather methodically going through

and establishing energy projects in the form

of dams on rivers throughout Chile.

I saw what Kris was talking about

up north on the Bio-Bio river.

This was once a fully functioning ecosystem where

the river, forests and people depended on one another.

Juan Pablo says these dam projects are a symptom,

but he also says the true cause of the problem

is the development model.

I'm thinking of those looming

high-rises in Santiago, all lit up.

I am thinking of Ramon and his talk

about the price tag of progress.

I read that the American video game habit

annually consumes as much power

as the entire city of San Diego.

So I'm also thinking about all those little things

that add-up to keep us comfortable or just amused.

And I'm beginning to see the real consequences.

Better late than never,

Timmy O'Neill always comes through and today,

2 days before we set-off to Corcovado,

he has arrived fresh from another long stand

of ice climbing in running rivers.

All in here, you know, there are

big mountains, beaches and so forth.

I'd say not as much up in here,

and especially there, is where you get the most exposed

and there's kind of the open ocean out of there,

and you get this swells that are kind of

unimpeded, they're coming in there

and they hit right in this area here.

And if you got a boat, you can,

depending on what kind of weather you have,

hopefully, you get some kind of storm,

you get some storm swells.

You've ever been in this area in here ?

Yeah ! You wanna just trickle on here,

and you go comparatively fast up the gully

and then you'll get slow down as it starts into the...

Doug is the only person

who's ever stood on top of Corcovado.

In the early 1990s, he and a friend

set off to do the first ascent,

it took him 3 long days just to get to the base.

When they reached the top of the glacier,

below the steep summit pitches,

his climbing partner decided to turn back,

so Doug climbed the rest of it alone,

solo in the last few hundred feet

of technical ice without a rope.

I must say, that's pretty wild what he did,

you know, you got to think about not only getting up

but you got to think about getting down.

There's no anchors to rappel or anything like that,

he had to down climb a lot of that.

That was a great climb,

it has never been repeated !

I love this soaked son of a b*tch !

You know where I want to be right now ?

It's right here !

Nowhere else, not in the future, not in the past.

Look at that.

Look at that fat guy !

Oh my god ! Don't lose the juice !

This is what I've worked for, all my life.

I'm going to be 70 next November

and it's been a good life,

I tell you, I have no regrets.

It's a...

Just live for the moment.

We're making our final passes to Corcovado

and this morning, Yvon surprises us

all by hopping on the boat.

He's been a climber for over 50 years,

he just couldn't help it.

Who knows ?

This could be his last big climb.

We're 2 days out and the clouds

are finally lifted from the mountain.

After 5 months at travel,

I'm finally here.

It's hard for me to believe that in only a few days,

we'll be up there, standing on the summit.

I think you're gonna like climbing.

- Have you climbed with women before ?

- Oh, they're great climbers !

- Really ?

- Yeah, I think so.

Do you think I'll be a great climber ?

Yeah.

So, you always want the ice axe on the uphill,

that's the position of balance, ok ?

This is not a balance,

because it's easy to fall off, right ?

Keith has figured out that the Corcovado coast is more

sheltered form swell than we had originally thought.

It turns out this place needs a really

specific swell direction from the South,

but Keith got a report of

some movement off Cape Horn,

so he's up to just stay back and discover the coast

for waves while the rest of us head up the river.

Now that we follow the river to its source,

we have to cross the forest along 4 glacier lakes until

we have a clear shot of the summit form the North-East side.

We really underestimated this thing.

I think higher was the call.

Well I think, even just a little higher,

you get more valleys

but you get less jungle because it's thicker

as you get towards the river, you know ?

- Oh yeah.

- I wouldn't even think about going back.

- Oh god !

Mileage ? I don't know, maybe 3 miles.

But hours ? Seemingly endless !

This is the worst.

This isn't climbing, this is...

But, you know, you could take a helicopter right

to the snow line and climb it, but that's cheating.

I guess this is what makes the climb, this crap.

We've rock copped and bushwhacked

10 hours a day for the last few days.

Sometimes, we've been forced to backtrack

and start all over again.

We've been in this section of

the new park for 3 days now.

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