Original subtitles

[chalk scratching on chalkboard]

[dog barking]

[gentle whooshing]

[small bell chiming]

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[faint chatter]

Subtitles by explosiveskull

[piano note struck repeatedly]

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[multiple notes struck for tuning]

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[faint chatter, orchestra tuning instruments]

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[man] Okay, here we go.

Yeah. No, I'll be good with this.

Okay. I'm ready.

[woman on radio] Alright. Thank you.

[instruments being tuned]

♪ [faint, gentle orchestral music] ♪

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[narrator] To those who are enthralled by mountains,

their wonder is beyond all dispute.

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To those who are not,

their allure is a kind of madness.

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What is this strange force that draws us upwards?

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This siren song of the summit?

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Only three centuries ago,

setting out to climb a mountain

would have been considered an act of lunacy.

The idea scarcely existed

that wild landscapes might hold

any sort of attraction.

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Mountains were places of peril, not beauty.

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An upper world to be shunned,

not sought out.

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How then have mountains now

come to hold us spellbound,

drawing us into their dominion...

often at the cost of our lives?

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♪ [man sings in foreign language] ♪

[narrator] Because the mountains we climb

are not made only of rock and ice,

but also of dreams

and desire.

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The mountains we climb

are mountains of the mind.

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To humans, high mountains

were once considered the home

of either the holy

or the hostile.

There was nothing in between.

A realm to be revered from below,

but never entered.

Go around mountains if necessary,

along their flanks, but not up them...

for only gods and monsters

dwelled at height.

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The upper world was a sacred landscape

to which we directed our devotion

and our rituals of awe...

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...but always from a safe distance.

[faint chanting]

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Daily life brought ample hardship and danger.

There was no need to seek out more.

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[bell chiming faintly]

[door opens, running footsteps]

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Gradually, though,

the dragons and divinities were put to flight,

and our feelings toward mountains

underwent an astonishing change.

Fascination replaced trepidation.

Adventure replaced reverence.

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As cities grew

and we insulated ourselves away from nature,

the mountains called us back.

The magic of mountains strengthened:

their fierce beauty,

their power to enchant,

their challenge.

We went in search of places that were intimidating

and uncontrollable,

that inspired in us the heady blend

of pleasure and terror,

which we came to call the sublime.

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This search for the sublime

drew us outwards and upwards.

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The great peaks of the world

began to exert a force upon the imagination.

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A siren song

that was easy to hear,

hard to resist...

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and sometimes

fatal.

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But legends of death in high places

spread the spell of the mountains

wider still.

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Slowly,

the blank spaces on the maps were filled in.

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The imperial aim was to grid,

girdle, and name the upper world.

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To bring it and its peoples

within the realm of the known

and the owned.

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To replace mystery with mastery.

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And the greatest mystery of them all?

Everest.

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And so began the campaign to vanquish it.

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Everest was placed under siege.

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Until, at last, it succumbed.

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This was the moment

that mountaineering as adventure

entered the popular imagination.

Our fascination became an obsession.

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Now our need for mountains runs deep and wide,

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for most of us exist for most of the time

in environments that are humanly arranged

and controlled.

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But mountains are wild and ungovernable.

This is the source of their danger

and also the source of their allure.

[metal rattling]

And so, a longing for the unknown

beckons us onwards.

Like Echo's Cave,

the unknown will answer back

with whatever you call into it.

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To travel to the high peaks is to cross a threshold

into a space where time warps

and bends,

and sensations are thrillingly amplified.

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Stone and ice, though,

are far less gentle to the hand's touch

than to the mind's eye.

The mountains of the Earth

have often turned out to be more resistant,

more fatally real,

than the mountains we imagine.

[wind whistling]

These are matters

of hard sharp rock

and driving ice...

[distant deep rumbling]

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...of bone-deep cold...

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Less than ideal.

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Ahh! Ahh!

[narrator] ...injury and nausea...

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...fizzing fear...

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Ahh!

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[narrator] ...of stomach-turning vertigo...

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Oh God, take me home.

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[narrator] But

they are also places of unspeakable beauty.

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And so the peaks summon us still,

sharpening our sense of being,

setting life on a knife-edge.

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For danger can hold terrible joys...

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...dreadful splendors.

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Today, mountains are considered

among nature's most exquisite features.

No longer do their chaotic forms

upset the spirit level of our minds.

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Now, we migrate to them

in our millions each year,

pursuing our strange pilgrimages.

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A very modern mountain worship has taken hold...

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...a worship that requires

the modification of the mountains...

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[explosion, rumbling]

...and the management of their risks.

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[explosion, rumbling]

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And in doing so,

we have come to forget something of their power.

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What odd devotions we undertake!

What curious performances we put on,

with the mountains as our theatre!

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To certain people,

the call to adventure

is irresistible.

As everyday life has become

safer and more comfortable for some,

we have begun to seek out danger elsewhere.

We court danger.

We pay for it.

[faint, echoing thumps]

Risk has become its own reward.

At height,

you can be taken right to the brink...

...for you never feel so alive,

knowing that, at any minute,

you could die.

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So up to the mountains we go,

in headlong pursuit of peril...

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...or a testing ground

on which the self can best be illuminated.

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Today's adventurers are driven by the lust

to reach somewhere no one has reached before...

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...and to do something no one has done before.

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Our wish to be first

induces in us forms of insanity...

...and forms of grace.

[female singer] ♪ I saw ♪

♪ That you went ♪

♪ The time that went ♪

♪ The feel, the pain ♪

♪ The time that went ♪

♪ The feel, the pain ♪

♪ I watched ♪

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♪ I saw ♪

♪ That you went ♪

♪ The time that went ♪

♪ The feel, the pain ♪

♪ The time that went ♪

♪ The feel, the pain ♪

♪ The time that went ♪

♪ The feel, the pain ♪

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♪ I soar ♪

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♪ I soar ♪

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[narrator] Adventurers sometimes liken fear to a rat.

When you take risks, you feed the rat with fear.

But each time you feed it that fear,

it grows fatter.

So then you must feed it more fear

to sate it,

and yet more again, and then still more...

until a madness bites.

♪ [fast-paced strings music] ♪

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How has it come to this?

The mountains as a stage set

for a pumped-up poker game

of high stakes and high returns,

all driven by big brands and online views.

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♪ [woman singing in foreign language] ♪

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[narrator] Many who travel to mountain tops

are half in love with themselves

and half in love with oblivion.

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♪ [faint, slow piano music] ♪

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Today's mountain mania

culminates on Everest,

where the wish to test one's limits

or to battle one's demons

draws thousands of people to the peak each year.

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♪ [rhythmic drumming and gentle strings] ♪

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Attempting Everest

offers a way for the ordinary person

to be briefly extraordinary.

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But the nature of the challenge

has, in many ways, changed.

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This isn't climbing anymore.

It's queuing.

This isn't exploration.

It's crowd-control.

This is the modern industry of ascent,

in which the risks are often taken most

by those who have least.

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[strong wind, rumbling]

[drumming resumes]

[drumming fades away]

But mountains exceed our command.

They slip our grip.

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And there is no glory

for those who are left behind.

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[wind whistling faintly]

Mountains are so much more than a challenge

or an adversary to be overcome...

...for mountains humble the human instant

and reveal our insignificance.

They live in deep time

in a way that we do not.

Behind and beyond the mountains

stretch aeons too vast for us to comprehend.

They were here long before we were even dreamed of.

They watched us arrive.

They will watch us leave.

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Born of fire,

born of force,

mountains move.

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Over epochs, they rise and fall.

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This is the symphony of the earth...

...a rhythm of uplift and erosion

that makes not waves of water,

but waves of stone.

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And from these waves of stone flows life.

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Being in the mountains can ignite our astonishment

at the simplest transactions of the living world.

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Anyone who has been among mountains

knows their indifference,

has felt a brief, blazing sense

of the world's disinterest in us.

In small measures, this feeling exhilarates.

In full form, it annihilates.

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Coming back to Earth from the high peaks,

you can feel like a stranger,

bearing experiences that are beyond expression

and beyond price.

Time has flown over you,

but left its shadow behind.

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Mountains don't seek our love

or seek our deaths.

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They want nothing from us.

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And yet, they shift the way we see ourselves.

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They weather our spirits...

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...challenge our arrogance...

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...restore our wonder.

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More than ever,

we need their wildness.

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Subtitles by explosiveskull