There are 3 hugely exciting stories. Each one by itself could easily be a book, and surely are it's just that most of them are not on audiobook so I can't read them all. These documentaries tell you very short stories that deserve way more time and that's a huge issue. The doc is fun for 50 minutes and will introduce very exciting stories, but they leave you hungry for more info and details.
One of the first K2 climbing attempt was a huge disaster. An American expedition badly prepared with fools trying to do something they shouldn't be trying. While the best climbers were at the top the leader in a high up base camp got tired of waiting and decided to take the sleeping bags from the tents and go down making it impossible for the team at the top to climb down, rest, and climb up again. Sherpas emptied the tents for everything else. Food was thrown into the snow as the Sherpas, for some reason, figured everyone above them were dead. This forced the German climber, Fritz Wiessner, to go ALL the way down without food and rest, alone. An Englishman, Dudley Wolfe, stayed on the very top as the German promised to return back to help him down, but now Wiessner was completely wasted and couldn't climb anything. Sherpas went after the Englishman. They found him waiting in the tent not even going outside to do his business. He said he would go down the next day. 3 Sherpas went after him the day after but none of them were found again. Again, one has to wonder why they didn't force him down or leave him to die. Why do the extremely dangerous climb again with fewer people? Stupid again.
Next decade new people decide to create a team of very likeable people to not suffer the same disaster. But this time they are maybe missing a few more experts? They are caught in a storm. One can't climb down so they try to drag him down - which is of course impossible, luckily for them he somehow falls off the mountain saving the rest of the team from certain death trying to drag him down. But before this one of the climbers saved the rest of the climbers by holding the rope while everyone else slides down. Hero.
The last expedition is Italian in 1954, just a year after the failed attempt. The documentary just mentions it. We don't know what happened there, but they reached the top because they were extremely well-prepared, well-selected and just had a ton of equipment for safety measures. Very smart! Because they were that much smarter than everyone else I guess it made for a boring expedition with no deaths so documentaries don't care about it. But in reality plenty of happened up there and several people nearly died because of hybris.
Overall a great short doc. But it's very short and often you don't understand what actually happened. There are no 3D graphics or maps. No animation of what happened.
