There are few challenges left to conquer in extreme mountaineering. The Last Great Climb: K2 in Winter, by Amir Bar-Lev (available on Apple from October 2), reconstructs, through testimonies and real recordings, one of the final challenges that remained for climbers: to scale the world’s second-highest peak, the Savage Mountain, in the harshest months, in winter.
The Icelandic John Snorri Sigurjónsson and the Pakistanis Ali and Sajid Sadpara, father and son, set out to achieve it in 2021. They invested money, months of preparation, and a great deal of hope. When they arrived at base camp they believed they were the only ones with that plan that year, but it didn’t take long to see themselves joined by independent climbers, by an organized expedition, and by the one led by the controversial Nirmal Puja, ‘Nims’, Nepali, a former soldier and one of the sport’s best-known names for his peculiar and always spectacular methods which, unfortunately, died this summer trying to reach the summit of the Broad Peak.
Also many things went wrong that winter of 2021 on K2. Nims and his team of sherpas managed to achieve the challenge before anyone else, but that didn’t dampen the others’ eagerness. John Snorri Sigurjónsson and Ali Sadpara, accompanied at the last moment by the Chilean Juan Mohr, set out for the summit after several attempts and a series of setbacks… Despite signals not being good and the window to accomplish it being short, they ascended… and on February 5 they disappeared. On February 18 the search was halted and in June of that year their bodies were found.
Three years after that tragedy the filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev joined the project to tell its story, gathering the pieces to try to discover why it happened, how it happened, compiling the testimonies and recordings of those who stayed at that base camp, many of whom managed to summit the Savage Mountain as well as those who decided not to continue attempting it in that fateful winter.
