I have often said that my favorite genre of entertainment reading is "men in bad weather". It was the Museum of Natural History's famous exhibition of the famous Shackleton expedition to Antarctica which ended with the Endurance crushed in the ice and months spent on an ice floe before a harrowing escape to the granite Elephant Island - the last possible landing spot. They were rescued by Ernest Shackleton's 500 mile small boat journey to South Georgia Island, a Norwegian whaling station. He returned to Elephant Island, failed, came back in a second ship and plucked every man from the rocks. Then he went to New Zealand, chartered a ship and retrieved the supply ship waiting for him on the far side of the continent.
That obsession was followed by Southern Ocean storms, Arctic expeditions, explorers and athletes racing sailboats across oceans. But mountain climbing has rarely reached me - except for Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air - a first person chronicle of a high fatality season on Everest.
Recently I have followed Colin O'Brady on Instagram with a feeling of unease about his self promotion. I am not alone. Krakauer is among his critics in a National Geographic article.
O'Brady pitched his K2 winter attempt - cooperating with Seven Summits Treks @sevensummittreks - as an upcoming individual triumph. But instead he wisely retreated from the highest base camp. As did two others - O'Brady's friend Jon Kedrowski and Bulgarian Atanas Skatov, who fell to his death. Similarly Boston critical care physician Alex Goldfarb fell on another mountain in the range.
The honors for first to summit fell to the Nepali Sherpa team of ten who summitted together. Teamwork is the key to their success. But even their triumph was not theirs alone. Icelander John Snorri and Pakistani Ali Sadpara had set ropes the season before. Tragically Snorri, Sadpara, and Chilean Juan Pablo Prieto tried to follow in the footsteps of the Nepali team...and were lost on the mountain.
Where does this leave me? Valuing teamwork above all, while asking whether this sort of thing should be undertaken at all.
Below are two videos that will give you the chance to decide where you stand on the nature of the beauty and the effort. The first introduces you to the Nepali team which accomplished the first winter climb of K2. The second is a 46 minute film about an Eddie Bauer sponsored summer K2 expedition.
