Tonight is the premiere of the documentary that details the events that lead to one of the greatest mountaineering disasters in recent history. I'm not going to go into details, but through certain events 11 climbers died high on K2 last August. Gerard McDonnell (Ger) the Irishmen & Alaskan was one of them.
Last November my friend Matt Szundy's climbing guide company, The Ascending Path LLC was hired by Discovery channel film makers to produce the climbing re-enactment scenes. It was tremendously bittersweet, while amazing work, most of us involved personally knew Ger through the mountain community. I was cast with the role of Ger, mostly due to the beard. The experience was pretty heady to say the least - going through the motions on camera that eventually lead the death of someone that I knew.
Its on the Discovery channel tonight, 9:00 pm Alaska time.
I have not seen any of the footage yet so will be looking foreword to it. The film makers made extensive efforts to get the facts right and tell the story rather than create the sensationalism that is so typical on TV these days.
2 comments:
9:00 PM Alaska time
Thanks....
I thought that person looked familiar. I remember reading about it and stumbled across the discovery special. Very intense and emotional, can't even fathom that kind of mountaineering much less that kind of tragedy.
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