#Ice climber review archive#

This is a film about climbers, and the best footage is of Tom Ballard doing what he did best. He doesnвЂ™t explore the grim commercialisation of Everest, or the colonial history. Terrill doesnвЂ™t touch on the media frenzy that followed HargreavesвЂ™ death when she instantly went from national hero to reckless mother who chose to abandon her children: a backlash no male mountaineer ever had to endure. There are as many ways to tell this story as there are routes up a mountain. вЂњBut everyone has the right to choose where they kill themselves.вЂќ

вЂњItвЂ™s best not to go to that place,вЂќ says veteran mountaineer Reinhold Messner, whose brother died on the Mummery Spur in 1970. ItвЂ™s sensitively suggested that Nardi may have got inside TomвЂ™s head because attempting a climb this treacherous was out of character for him. Nardi, we learn, was obsessed with reaching the summit via a never-completed route plagued by serac (falling blocks of glacial ice) and up to five avalanches a day in winter, known as the Mummery Spur. We are permitted to see the moment when Jim takes the call from Kate telling him a rescue helicopter has spotted the bodies of Tom and his climbing partner, Daniele Nardi. The film is intimate but never heavy-handed. As soon as they see each other they burst into tears. In one of the most moving moments, she is reunited en route with вЂњBig IbrahimвЂќ, the porter who carried her on his back 25 years ago and will now accompany her to Nanga ParbatвЂ™s base camp. To walk where Tom walked, see what he saw, and be close to where he died. Six months later, Terrill films Kate, also a climber, as she makes another trip to Pakistan, this time to pay her respects to her brother. So there are two documentaries embedded in TerrillвЂ™s beautiful film, two journeys, and two last mountains. Footage from it, such as the heartbreaking moment when Tom sees a wisp of cloud caressing K2вЂ™s tip and asks his dad вЂњis that Mummy?вЂќ, reappears here.Д®xcept this time the subject is the life and death of that very boy, Tom Ballard, who became a climber as gifted and committed as his mother and died at almost the same age as she did on a mountain, Nanga Parbat, 100 miles from where her body lies forever encased in ice. Their grief-stricken expedition to K2вЂ™s base camp formed the backbone of TerrillвЂ™s first documentary about this extraordinary family of adventurers. Unbelievably they did, and Terrill went with them. Jim recalls 25 years later that Kate вЂњcried and shoutedвЂќ, and Tom asked if he could go and see вЂњMumвЂ™s last mountainвЂќ. Back home in Fort William, her husband, Jim Ballard, had to tell their children, then four and six. Hours later, she and five others died when they were engulfed by a storm. Three months later, Hargreaves did it again, reaching the summit of K2 on 13 August. Or Googling the Mummery Spur on Nanga Parbat, also known as Killer Mountain. I havenвЂ™t stopped thinking about The Last Mountain since I watched it. However you feel about the brief, vexed history of the human (mostly male, western, white) obsession with conquering the worldвЂ™s apexes, itвЂ™s astonishing to witness.

#Ice climber review archive#

We see archive footage of the moment on, when Alison Hargreaves became the first woman to reach the top of the 8,849m (29,031ft) mountain without bottled oxygen or Sherpas carrying her gear. This is how Chris TerrillвЂ™s haunting feature-length documentary The Last Mountain (BBC Two) opens.

Over,вЂќ the figure announces breathlessly as she approaches the top of the world. вЂњThis is the most fantastic day of my life. Clouds roll like giant tumbleweeds over the peaks. ThereвЂ™s the elemental clamour of winds buffeting a range stretching across 1,500 miles and five countries. A figure in green walks towards the summit of Mount Everest.