The Summit

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I think people are

interested in trying to know

what actually happened

to our minds.

8,000 meter,

you're in the death zone.

There is a struggle.

There is a fight

in every breath,

in every thought.

Everything hurts.

Every limb,

every cell is screaming,

"Oxygen, oxygen, oxygen."

You don't feel the cold anymore.

Time seems to stand still.

There's so many reasons

to turn around

and only a couple of reasons

to continue.

In one hand,

people question us

climbing a mountain like K2.

In the other hand,

they're upset

why people don't go up

and rescue people

in this dreadful environment.

Where you likely will be killed

by doing so.

There will be things

we never will know,

but the question

you should ask yourself.

"What would you do?"

Mind you, K2 climbers, huh?

This is unbelievable.

There's Nanga.

K2?

Nanga. Nanga.

Nanga Parbat.

- Yeah.

- Oh, my God.

And then we'll show you K2,

your destination, okay?

We're on our way in.

- Up there.

- Yeah?

Whoop!

You're gonna have to run this bit

'cause there's rockfall.

Really?

Yeah, they've been running it.

Go. Go. Go.

Sh*t.

It's good to be back here,

and it's nice to wake up

to this sight this morning.

It's my belief that everybody

has the love of climbing.

You know, the first thing

a child Wants to do

is climb something.

The art of rock climbing

is relearning

what you knew intuitively

as a child.

You get such a big respect

for this mountain

and all the climbers

who did it before you.

If you want to have a nice story

on the birthday parties,

you know, you climb Everest,

but K2 is really, I think,

for the real mountaineers.

- Hello!

- Hello.

How are you?

Good.

Pretty good view, I reckon.

I think it's pretty hard

to beat, actually.

There is quite different

between people from Himalaya

and from Western world.

It's quite different,

because the Western people,

they are more adventurer.

They love more adventure.

Our people also like adventure,

but they love climbing.

Where are we?

Oh, we are now climbing K2.

All right.

Yes.

The first man to climb K2

was from my valley,

Achille Compagnoni.

So K2 is our mountain.

Everything is raw.

It's glaciers.

It's black mountains.

It fills you with respect.

K2 is absolutely the king.

The higher it gets,

the more interesting it gets.

So when it comes to climbing

8,000-meter peaks,

you want to do it,

but at the same time,

you have this fear.

This is serious.

This is for real.

If you make one step wrong,

you're history.

Finally here.

Such a relief.

Fantastic job.

Good job.

Let's get the tents up,

the stoves going,

and prepare for tonight.

Good?

Yes.

For three months,

we were on this expedition,

so when we reached Camp Four,

it was already a magic moment.

The whole Earth is beside you.

And then you look behind you.

You see another mountain.

And that's K2.

It's a mountain on a mountain.

Ger was coming.

I was filming.

I was asking Ger,

"How are you feeling?"

And, you know,

he was almost crying.

Ah, so happy to be here,

I could almost cry.

'06, we failed to get here.

Here we are now,

and it's wonderful.

You could hear his voice, you know.

"It's something what we

already achieved," you know?

"It's already something."

That's what he said.

We had a brilliant night.

There were no clouds.

There was nothing.

And then we went to the summit.

- Are you afraid?

- No.

- No?

- I am.

- No.

- I'm scared to death.

It felt, overall, like...

like this was our day.

So we moved up

along the slopes above Four.

Fred and I started out

a little more slowly.

Both of us felt really strong,

very positive.

There were perfect conditions.

I mean, we're talking about

a day in a million.

There wasn't a day like this

that I can remember,

because it was warm.

Starting to get light enough

to see the route up ahead.

And I'm looking up,

seeing a tightly spaced group

of climbers

moving extremely slowly.

They're not moving.

What are they doing?

We are way back in time.

We are really late.

I don't know what the f***

we're gonna do.

Very disappointing.

I was so devastated.

You put in so much effort

for months,

and then you just realize

that there is no way

that we're gonna be able

to summit

and come back down in daylight.

We just went down.

It was simple as that.

Everybody thinks that

coming down is the easy bit.

It makes sense,

but don't believe it

for one minute.

I went up in '54 for my country,

for Italy.

At the time,

it seems like suicide.

No one knew what would happen

to a human body or mind

at that altitude.

They tested us

in a ridiculous manner

for months.

I didn't care.

Of the 11 climbers

chosen for the K2 expedition,

I, Walter Bonatti,

was the youngest.

I should have died on K2.

But the thing that was

to affect me most profoundly

was after the climb.

It was the story.

Many of the other climbers

there had been on Everest

or other...

other 8,000-ers before K2.

I hadn't been higher than 6,200.

I just wanted to come along

to see how high I could get.

When we finally got

to the bottleneck,

there's actually a-

a traffic jam.

The serac was the main danger.

It's probably

almost 100 meters high,

slightly overhanging.

And it could crack any time.

This very, very delicate place

is notorious.

Ice can drop at any time.

It's a Russian roulette.

That's what it is.

The main tactic to avoid

the dangers of the serac

is to be fast,

to minimize the time

when you're exposed to it.

It was not with a good feeling,

waiting there.

We had a lot of respect

for the serac, yeah.

We knew that that was a...

A little monster up there.

I put the ice screws in...

You've got a lot of people

coming behind

with all the weight

that's on the rope,

that's pulling on the screws.

Well, that was a worry.

Above 8,000,

you can only trust yourself.

We wanted to traverse

out to the right

to have a rest

outside of the fixed ropes.

It's exhausting

to be in a queue to wait.

You can't climb

in your own pace.

Several others

also wanted to wait there

until people had passed.

The bigger the chain,

the bigger the chance

that there is somebody

in this chain

who is, you know,

making a mistake.

Dren, he unclipped his rope

and tried to pass me.

Aah!

We were all shocked

when he fell,

but when he stopped,

he stood up and waved.

So we thought he was fine.

He's standing up.

He's okay.

But then we saw him

falling again

and sliding further down.

Yeah, right there at the edge.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- What's happening?

- What do you see?

Yeah, Chhiring,

this is Eric, Camp Four, over.

I picked up my camera,

and I zoomed in,

trying to find him, locate him.

How can someone fall

at this perfect day?

No wind. It's bright.

It's great.

How is it possible?

Chhiring, I understood

that you and Pemba are climbing.

Are you in the lead,

and has there been an accident?

Over.

Is he in the rock?

He's here.

There is the rock.

- Yeah.

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