K2: siren of the Himalayas

K2: siren of the Himalayas

        Directed by: Dave Ohlson     
    rating: *****

         K2: siren of the Himalayas is a documentry about a group of Alpine climber climbing K2. K2 is the hardest summit in the world to climb although smaller the Mount Everest K2 is steeper, less stable, and the weather is worse. throughout the documentary all the climbers who are some of the best in the world are put to the test. The expedition lasted 60 days and in the end the climbers did not make it to the summit. The film also cut back to footage of the Duke of Abruzzi’s expedition in 1909 while the narrator reads a journal from one of the men on the expedition.

        Before watching this documentary I understood Alpine climbing was hard and took a long time but I had no idea it took this long. the Alpine climbers walk up and down the mountain part by part dozens of times just to get their bodies used to the altitude. plus all the times they were forced to go back because of bad weather. I also had no idea it was so dangerous were Mount Everest only has a 5% fatality rate, k2 has a 25% fatality raised which is 5 times higher than Everest you begin to understand what kind of danger these climbers are in. On the first day in Basecamp a skier not with the group but much of the group knew him. fell and down the mountain and died the documentary tells us the his partner had died the next year doing the same thing. although the two skiers died and the group didn't make it to the summit you can see how amazing it is up there and why they risk so much to do it.

Dane Clemenhagen
June 3rd 2015