Imagine facing the ultimate test of human endurance, battling nature's fury on the world's most treacherous peak. That's precisely what 'The Last First: Winter K2' captures – a story of ambition, rivalry, and heartbreaking loss on the unforgiving slopes of K2. But here's where it gets controversial: was it a heroic quest, or a reckless pursuit of glory that cost lives?
Before 2005, seasoned mountaineers had conquered all fourteen of the world's towering peaks exceeding 8,000 meters, each a formidable challenge in its own right, during the perilous winter season. Only one giant remained unconquered: K2, a colossal mountain nestled within the majestic Himalayas of Pakistan. Its winter ascent was the ultimate mountaineering challenge.
The allure of being the first to summit K2 in winter held immense prestige. It was "the last first," a historic achievement waiting to be claimed. In 2020, John Snorri, an Icelandic mountaineer, embarked on this audacious mission, partnering with experienced Pakistani climber Ali Sadpara. Little did they know, their quest would soon be complicated by other climbers vying for the same prize, setting the stage for a dramatic and ultimately tragic clash of ambitions.
'The Last First: Winter K2,' a documentary premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, meticulously chronicles this ill-fated attempt and unravels the events that led to disaster on the unforgiving slopes of K2. You can find more information about the film and the festival at https://deadline.com/tag/the-last-first-winter-k2/ and https://deadline.com/tag/sundance/.
The film's synopsis paints a stark picture: "What began as a quest for alpine glory rapidly descended into a chaotic free-for-all." The stakes were incredibly high. By the time the K2 base camp was deserted, one team had etched its name in history, but at a devastating cost – five climbers had perished.
Amir Bar-Lev (https://deadline.com/tag/amir-bar-lev/), the award-winning director behind acclaimed documentaries like 'The Tillman Story' and 'Long Strange Trip,' masterfully helms this harrowing account.
Bar-Lev shared his initial reaction to the project with Deadline: "The film was brought to me by the producers whom I’ve worked with before. And I think I said ‘yes’ in the first five minutes of reading the material because it felt to me like it had all the excitement and danger of a great survival story." He elaborated on the unique challenges and deeper themes explored in the film. "[K2] is a harsh and alien landscape, probably the harshest landscape you could find on the planet. This story is, for me anyway, about a lot of things we find here in civilization. It’s about self-regard and this moment in time when everything is filmed and we keep cameras around us at every moment. It’s about a racial reckoning… And it’s also about our feeling of being cosseted by the ease that we find ourselves in life and the hunger for taking risks." The film suggests that the climbers' actions were motivated by something deeper than just a desire to climb a mountain.
Attempting to scale K2 is inherently fraught with peril. Like the other 13 highest peaks, K2 lies within the "death zone," an altitude where the atmosphere is so thin that human life can only be sustained for a limited time. But K2 is considered even more dangerous than Mount Everest. And this is the part most people miss: Everest is higher, but K2 presents more technical climbing challenges. As Bar-Lev explains, "the routes [upward] are much more technical and dangerous." Winter conditions amplify these dangers exponentially.
"What I’ve been made to understand is that it’s in the path of one of the jet streams, so the weather can change very quickly and very dangerously," Bar-Lev explains. "There’s less snow on the mountain [in winter] because it’s blown off. And what that does is it creates a fusillade of rocks coming down constantly. And the shape of K2 is such that when things fall down, they fall straight down. So, it’s almost like being caught in a crossfire."
Snorri and Sadpara were joined by others, including Sadpara's 21-year-old son, Sajid, renowned Chilean climber Juan Pablo Mohr Prieto, and a dedicated filmmaking team. After establishing a base camp, they meticulously secured routes toward the summit. However, their efforts were soon complicated by the arrival of a Nepali team led by Nirmal "Nims" Purja, a Nepali-British climber, followed by a separate group of less experienced climbers who had booked their expedition through Seven Summit Treks, a company billing itself as "the leading Himalayan expedition experts."
The director emphasizes the heightened risks resulting from the increased number of climbers: "It amplified the danger by an order of magnitude, because now you not only had the danger of the mountain, but you also had the danger of a crowd of people all trying to do the same thing at the same time and in competition with one another and with varying degrees of expertise."
Initially, Snorri and Sadpara agreed to collaborate with the Nepali team, believing it would be a joint expedition. However, Nims harbored a secret ambition: to be the first to summit, bringing glory to Nepal. He covertly plotted to outmaneuver Snorri, Sadpara, and their team.
"There is a perspective in which one could see what the Nepalese did as treachery. And in fact, some people do see it that way," Bar-Lev observes. "Another perspective is that there’s a kind of a gentleman’s code in mountaineering, which has no set rules, and yet has winners, losers, world records, a comparing between different teams. That gentleman’s code had historically relegated the Nepalese to a minor role — they had been relegated to kind of handmaidens to the glory of mostly white Western climbers… You could alternatively say that [Nims and team] decided not to follow that gentleman’s code, and instead to treat it as a sport, and to not be forthcoming about their exact plans, and to try to beat everybody to the top."
Bar-Lev describes this moral ambiguity as a compelling "interesting gray area," precisely the kind of terrain he seeks to explore in his documentaries. He's interested in the complex motivations behind their actions.
"I’ve always felt drawn to stories when I don’t have easy answers, when I don’t see a clear hero and a clear villain and when they fall into that great aphorism, ‘the opposite of the truth is a lie, but the opposite of a great truth is another great truth,'" he explains. "This was one of those stories, and we were blessed to have essentially a dozen different perspectives, none of which were commensurate with one another, some of which were absolutely opposing one another."
He further notes, "It was one of those stories in which the job of the filmmaker is to let everybody put their best foot forward and let the audience decide who they feel sympathetic with and why, and to what degree. And I can say for myself, in the course of making the film for two years, I’ve flip-flopped a number of times about that very issue because there is no very clear answer."
Numerous factors contributed to the complications of the attempted summit, including national pride, the presence of the Pakistani military, the pressure of social media engagement, and the demands of the filmmakers documenting the events. Ultimately, timing and fate would determine which climbers achieved success and which would meet their end on the frigid slopes of K2.
'The Last First: Winter K2' is a collaborative production by Propagate, Ventureland, and Object, presented by West Buttermilk. Cinetic is managing sales at the festival. "We were independently financed and so we’re going to Sundance to find distribution," Bar-Lev states.
The filmmakers can draw inspiration from the success of other critically acclaimed documentaries that have captured breathtaking ascents, such as 'Free Solo' (https://deadline.com/2019/06/free-solo-directors-chai-vasarhelyi-jimmy-chin-national-geographic-interview-1202632872/), 'Meru' (https://www.nonfictionfilm.com/news/life-or-death-at-20000-feet-new-doc-on-supremely-perilous-climb), '14 Peaks,' 'Touching the Void,' and 'The Alpinist.' 'The Last First: Winter K2' promises to deliver a compelling and suspenseful narrative.
"There’s so much drama that unfolds in this story," Bar-Lev tells Deadline. "I think we’re all scared of death and when people either cheat death or appear to not be as terrified of death as we are, we want to tell stories about them. We’re interested in them."
What do you think drove these climbers to risk everything on K2? Was it pure ambition, national pride, or something else entirely? And do you believe Nims Purja's actions were justified, given the historical context of Nepalese climbers in the mountaineering world? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
