Original subtitles

(upbeat music)

- [Narrator] 8,000 miles from the sun and surf

of California, far away at the southern end of Argentina,

lies a wild land called Patagonia.

From California by car, by boat, on foot,

four men came to climb a mountain

that had been climbed only twice before.

Four men.

Yvon Chouinard, internationally known climber.

Doug Tompkins, climber, skier, surfer.

Dick Dorworth, champion skier, novice climber.

And a young English climber, Chris Jones.

The mountain is an 11,000 foot pile of glacier and granite.

It's got sheer walls, cliffs of ice,

wild wind, and bitter cold.

It's called Fitz Roy and their objective, the summit.

(wind blowing)

(hammering)

Six months out of the year, Yvon Chouinard is a blacksmith.

He makes mountain-climbing gear, much of it by hand,

some of the best there is.

The other half of the year, he climbs.

He's got an international reputation and it's growing.

(hammering)

The shop's about to close

because Yvon and his friends Doug Tompkins

and Dick Dorworth have an appointment

with a mountain called Fitz Roy, far south in Argentina.

It'll take months in a second-hand van just getting there.

Along the way, there will be surfing and skiing.

Well, let's go.

♪ Running, run, run, run, run, run, run ♪

♪ Running, don't know why ♪

♪ Looking for a place to go ♪

♪ Always reaching high ♪

♪ I remember thinking last time that I was home to stay ♪

♪ Now I have to leave that home life ♪

♪ But I'll be back someday ♪

- [Narrator] The Pan-American highway is strung

like a necklace over the hemisphere.

Yvon, Dick, and Doug follow it through Mexico

and they'll stay on it for thousands of miles

till it peters out in the jungle.

And then, any way they can,

they'll get down to Chile

where they'll pick up a young Englishman named Chris Jones.

He's down there on an expedition of his own

and that's good because as it is there isn't room in the van

to scratch your head.

And then on southward, always southward.

♪ Watching the road through dusty windows ♪

♪ Riding the waves in (mumbles) ♪

♪ Me and my van (mumbles) ♪

♪ Racing away ♪

(upbeat music)

- [Narrator] Once out of North America,

the cities and towns are as bright and loud as jungle birds.

Guatemala City, where pineapples are a penny each.

San Salvador, Managua, Nicaragua, San Jose in Costa Rica.

Dick Dorworth's only begun to climb this year.

He's listened to Doug Tompkins and Yvon talk

about the Argentine expedition

that recently climbed Fitz Roy

and he's impatient to get on with it.

But South America demands patience.

Down here, the clocks don't run, they walk.

South of Panama City, the highway loses itself in jungle

so for two weeks they kill time waiting for a boat

to take the van across the Caribbean to Colombia,

where the road starts again.

A haircut can save trouble at South American borders

and there are a lot of them to cross

before they get to Fitz Roy.

In the marketplace, Doug Tompkins has his fortune told

by a brightly colored little bird

who chooses a message just for him.

(speaking in foreign language)

Your family is thinking of you.

(calm music)

- [Doug] It's really pretty hard to say sometimes

why you'd get in a truck and drive 18,000 miles

to climb some mountain.

You never really thought about the motives.

You never really sat down

and analyzed just why you were gonna do that.

It probably would scare you.

- [Narrator] From Colon in Panama,

the boat crosses to Cartagena in Colombia.

The highway picks up again and unwinds

through Colombia and Ecuador and then down into Peru.

Doug and Yvon keep an eye on the Pacific surf,

looking for a chance to unstrap the boards they've brought

and at Chicama in northern Peru they find it.

Waves a mile long and smooth as glass.

Yvon's a fine surfer.

Doug's pretty good at it,

as he is that almost everything he tries.

Dick Dorworth's no surfer

but he wipes out with a good grace.

♪ We wanted to ride the waves ♪

♪ Just to ride a mile of ocean blast ♪

♪ It's a hot, windy summer day ♪

♪ And it won't be long till we're standing tall ♪

♪ Cutting through an ocean full of shifting walls ♪

♪ Reaching out to listen as the seagulls call ♪

♪ You begin to realize that you're just that small ♪

♪ Knowing that the seagull doesn't care at all ♪

♪ Gonna ride another wave ♪

♪ Don't fall, don't tumble ♪

♪ You're on your own ♪

♪ Yeah ♪

(waves rushing)

- [Narrator] Peruvian surfers they talk to sent them down

to the little fishing village of Cerro Azul.

(seagulls cawing)

Across the bay, seabirds watched as Doug and Yvon decided

to see what would happen if you went with the wave

under that long pier.

Maybe you'd come out the other side still standing up.

(upbeat music)

They'll sell their surfboards in Lima.

The money is getting low as the road gets long.

(pouring)

South America can be hard on a van

that was showing her age when she left California.

10 or 15 flat tires later

and even after a complete engine overhaul,

she still needs some encouragement from Yvon.

It's funny traveling down the length of the world,

the seasons turn around on you.

You start out in the summer and pretty soon you've gone

in the back door into spring.

♪ We're on our way down the road, miles to go ♪

♪ Through the seasons ♪

♪ We're on our way to the desert again ♪

♪ It's a rocky road ♪

♪ We're on our way down the road, miles to go ♪

♪ Through the seasons ♪

♪ We're on our way ♪

- [Narrator] "You North Americans," the Peruvian said,

"are gluttons for fun."

So they offered Dick, Doug, and Yvon

a spine cracking 70 mile an hour ride

on something that used to be a jeep

out over the sand dunes.

Boys passed on that but they did join them on the dunes

to do a little skiing.

The Peruvians tried to show them how

but Dick Dorworth is an expert skier, a champion,

and he started teaching them.

Instead of just scooting down the dune,

try some of these link turns.

Snow skiers have been doing them for years.

They tried them out but what they really liked best

was just speeding straight down as fast as they could.

And Dick could understand that because it was down here

that he once set a world speed record on skis.

It was in Portillo, Chile.

A team out to break the world speed record has prepared

the slope of ice themselves.

On the team, Dick Dorworth.

After months of training,

he's ready for a ride of a few flashing seconds

down the slope to the transition point,

where his speed will be measured.

- [Dick] The main thing to do is to keep your body very low

and keep very far forward, you know, or like an egg.

You must maintain balance at all costs.

When you start at Portillo,

it's a commitment that there's no retreat from.

The mountain is 80% steepness so in 50 yards,

you're going to be going 80 or 90 miles an hour.

(fast paced music)

- [Narrator] That's it.

106 miles an hour to set the record.

- [Dick] I haven't run for speed for quite a while now

but because of it, it has enhanced my pleasure skein.

I have much more fun skiing now

than I ever had then.

- [Narrator] Then try this, Dick.

Mount Llaima in Chile.

A live volcano, its smooth lava slopes, neatly snow packed.

Maybe the longest ski run in the world,

it's like five ski slopes one on top of another.

From the little lodge at its base,

it's an eight hour walk to the top.

Yes, a walk.

No lifts, not even a rope tow.

This is skiing as it was in the beginning

when you climbed as high as you could,

skied as far as you'd climbed, and then went home.

Yvon the climber, the surfer, the mountaineer

is a duffer on skis,

about as capable as Dick Dorworth on a surfboard.

Dick's watched him fluff and fall

but says Yvon's a natural skier.

Yvon's willing to ski Mount Llaima but at his own pace.

Near the top, the sulfur fumes are thick,

the rocks are warm,

and the volcano is breathing quietly in its sleep.

Doug?

- [Doug] The wind was blowing hard from the north,

would blow the sulfur fumes away from us

so we could get right to the very edge.

I mean, right to the absolute edge

and stick our ski pole right off into the smoke

of the steamy volcano.

I'd never been that close before.

- [Narrator] It's the slope that skiers go down endlessly

in their dreams.

♪ Like a wind blown rose ♪

♪ I'm falling like a wind blown rose ♪

♪ I'm falling like a wind blown rose ♪

♪ I'm falling like a wind blown rose ♪

(upbeat music)

- [Narrator] And here comes Yvon.

- [Yvon] All the way down the mountain

is just one fall after another

and finally I just gave up trying to ski it

and I'd just make a traverse

and then kick a turn and then make another traverse

and I kept doing that for 5,000 feet.

- [Narrator] It feels good to be up on a mountain.

The cold air in your lungs, the snow under your feet.

There's another reason for the skiing though.

Their summer softened bodies are toughening up

for the snows of Fitz Roy.

It's September, spring in the Chilean lake countries

south of Mount Llaima.

The skis have been sold

and the last leg of the journey takes them

past white Mount Osorno.

The further they go, the less road there is to go on.

(splashing)

Here the Andes step up and out of Chile

and down again into the Patagonian desert in Argentina.

The only way over the mountains is by hopscotching

from lake to lake on little ferries.

(calm music)

There's been a change of plans though.

It looks like there will only be three against Fitz Roy.

The young Englishman Chris Jones didn't show up

at the meeting place and after a few days wait,

they decided to go on without him.

- [Chris] When I realized I wasn't going to make it

and that I was going to miss my friends in Chile,

I said to myself if they think they're going

to climb Fitz Roy without me,

they've got another thought coming.

There's only one road from the north

across the Patagonian desert that takes you to Fitz Roy

so I decided to hitch a lift

to a point I knew they'd have to pass.

And I was prepared to sit there all week if necessary,

waiting for them.

They were rather surprised to see me

but it wasn't until I got in the van

that I realized how lucky I'd been to catch them.

What if I had fallen asleep

or it had been night or something

and they'd simply driven straight past me?

Then where would I have been?

Not on my way to Fitz Roy, that's for sure.

- [Narrator] It was in 1834 that a young English naturalist

looked out on Patagonia with something like horror

at its wild sterility.

He and the captain of His Majesty's Ship Beagle

found the South American ostrich,

the wild llama, horses left by the Spaniards,

and little else but wasteland.

The naturalist's name was Charles Darwin.

The captain's name was Robert FitzRoy.

From 60 miles off, you first see it.

Blue with distance but harsh,

defiant as a clenched fist.

This is what you've come for

and from here it doesn't look difficult to climb,

it looks impossible.

- [Man] But first there's some 60 miles

of Patagonia to cover.

The Rio de las Vueltas, the River of Turns to cross

and then the road gives up for good.

Carrying all our gear in the van was easy

but the van had to be left here.

Pack horses are the only way to get to the mountain

and then our own two legs.

So we thought very carefully

about what we would really need.

- [Narrator] The Argentine army lends a soldier

along with the horses to get you to the camp

at the base of the mountain.

As far as anyone can remember,

it was Doug who first said "Let's do it,

"let's climb Fitz Roy."

He's in its shadow now, a happy man.

The weather in Patagonia is as strange and harsh

as the land.

The horses and men enjoy bright sun all morning

but by afternoon it's raining

and by evening the rain's turned to snow.

♪ No, no, no, no, don't mind the falling rain ♪

♪ It feels so cool ♪

- [Narrator] This campsite was established by the French

in 1952 and used again by the Argentine expedition

some years later.

They hurry to set up some shelter,

wrestling bags and gear in the wet cold.

A little taste of what's to come.

But by the next day, Patagonia has changed its mind.

The weather is fine again.

Doug and Yvon will scout the first part of the route,

comparing their charts with the reality,

while Dick and Chris finish setting up camp.

Despite the warm sun,

they can feel a chill wind off the glacier.

Up there, Doug and Yvon are striking the first blow

against Fitz Roy.

- [Man] Fitz Roy is 11,289 feet high.

Not the highest mountain we could find

but as every climber knows,

the challenge of the Patagonia Mountains

isn't necessarily height,

it's the technical climbing difficulties and the weather.

(wind blowing)

- [Narrator] The charts and maps don't show the storms

that brew just 50 miles away on the Pacific

or the winds made down on the continental ice cap

that comes screaming across Fitz Roy's glacier.

Doug and Yvon scout their planned route

and it looks possible

if the wind and weather will let them take it.

By late afternoon, they've surveyed as far as a place

for a first camp on the mountain.

(calm music)

From base camp to camp one with equipment and supplies.

Each of them carries an 80 pound load.

No one knows how much time Fitz Roy will demand of them,

so day after day they haul and carry like pack animals,

making kick steps up the steep snow fields,

sunburnt, bone aching, exhausted.

♪ The mountains are peaceful when the morning comes ♪

♪ And the wind will cover our tracks again ♪

♪ As we lift our eyes to a fiery sun ♪

♪ That sparkles on fingers of ice and stone ♪

♪ Far above where the eagle flies ♪

♪ There's a place where you can reach out and touch the sky ♪

♪ And all your troubles just disappear ♪

♪ When the wind is strong and the air is clear ♪

♪ I say, far above where the eagle flies ♪

♪ Is a place where you can reach out and touch the sky ♪

♪ And all your troubles just disappear ♪

♪ When the wind is strong and the air is clear ♪

- [Narrator] On Fitz Roy, tents are useless.

The wind would snatch them away like rags.

The only security is in a cave dug into the ice.

Inside, it's wet, cramped, dark, and cold

but it's quiet out of the wind

and at night it's a lot cozier

than anything you could find outside.

In fact, camp one is positively luxurious.

A rock outcropping with a view where you can sit

and dry your ice-soaked clothes in the sun.

A visitor, an Andean condor,

soaring on its 10 foot wingspread.

This huge bird is really a vulture

and you wonder if you're being filed for future reference.

In 1952, a Frenchman, Lionel Terray, led the expedition

that climbed Fitz Roy for the first time.

He was one of the most famous climbers of his day

and he called Fitz Roy his greatest achievement.

But the time is now and beyond these snow fields,

there will be the first real climbing.

The mountain's in a good mood, dazzling sun,

calm air all day.

If this weather holds,

they could be on the summit within days.

The first vertical pitch.

Yvon is in the lead.

The rope around his waist is belayed by the man below him

who will hold him in case of a slip.

This is aid climbing,

where there are no hand or footholds

and you ascend on aid slings,

foot straps that are a kind of movable ladder.

Climbing is the kind of mathematics of danger.

Each problem is an equation of rock and muscle

and a wrong answer could mean a fall.

Yvon searches without strain for solutions

while the man belaying him waits, watching every move.

(hammering)

The lead climber's life depends

on the pitons he hammers in the cracks.

The rope that will catch him if he falls

is threaded through carabiners hung around the pitons.

(upbeat music)

Alpine type climbing is a whole mountain full

of different problems.

Rock walls are one, snow is another.

No pitons here.

You drive the shaft of your ice ax into the snow

and use it for balance while you make kick steps.

For traction, you wear spikes on your boots called crampons.

If the snow is rotten, it can give way under your weight.

After Yvon is fixed to rope,

Dick Dorworth, the junior climber,

uses a mechanical ascender called a jumar

to climb the rock face.

A gear allows the jumar to move up the rope but not down.

(calm music)

Late afternoon and another camp has to be made.

Camp two.

They tunnel down into a snow filled crevasse.

A natural hollow in the wall of the crevasse

makes a fine cave when the loose snow is dug out of it.

Only the snow in the crevasse keeps settling

and opening a crack in their tunnel floor

that has to be continually packed with more snow.

Fitz Roy's mood is changing.

Storm clouds are moving in fast.

The winds are mounting, the temperature is dropping,

and by the next day you're buried in snow.

There will be no climbing today or tomorrow

or the next day or the next day.

In here, four men sit in the murky half light

and look at each other

and the floor keeps opening up.

Outside, the mountain's wrapped in storm,

the wind's at gale force,

and the temperature's way below freezing.

Dick?

- [Dick] Each day became the same, day after day.

You can read so long

and you can talk about things so long

and you can think by yourself so long.

You learn your own rhythm of doing things.

(calm music)

(wind blowing)

- [Narrator] After days of being bottled up in the cave,

any let up in the weather is an excuse to get out

and at least look around,

to prove to yourself no movement is possible.

Against 100 mile an hour winds,

Doug and Chris try to make it to a cull

where they can see if the storm is letting up.

No good.

Not far from camp, they're beaten by wind,

blind with snow, frozen to the bone,

and within a few minutes they're back inside.

(calm music)

You lose track of the days.

One said it was 15 days they were nestled in the mountain,

another said 18, another 20.

It's always twilight inside

and the only time that counts is meal time.

♪ I'm alone to think about all the faces that I've known ♪

♪ I wanna go home ♪

- [Narrator] They drink soup that gets thinner and thinner

and they tell tales.

The oldest escape of men trapped together.

Yvon tells about California and being warm,

the ocean, about girls, and you listen

between sleeping and waking.

It seems sometimes that you're dreaming of being trapped

in a cave of ice in Patagonia

and that all the time you're home.

♪ To think about California in my (mumbles) ♪

♪ I wanna go home ♪

♪ I wanna go home ♪

♪ I wanna go home ♪

♪ I wanna go home ♪

♪ Wanna go home ♪

(wind blowing)

- [Narrator] When the food's finally gone,

they retreat from camp two.

If it had been any storm but a Patagonian storm,

Yvon might have suggested going on with the climb.

- [Yvon] Whether we climbers want to admit it or not,

90% of the times that we retreat from storms

we could have gone on and just climbed right on through.

Most storms in the mountains are merely uncomfortable,

they won't kill you,

but on Fitz Roy these storms are a different story

and you knew you had to get out of there.

- [Narrator] After weeks of being caged in ice,

even going down seems like progress.

In the face of the storm,

they rappel down the walls they climbed up foot by foot,

all the way back down to base camp.

Back in base camp, the foul weather keeps up.

Chill rain, snow, high winds.

For nearly a month, there's nothing to do but scavenge

and try to keep warm and kill time.

(calm music)

Yvon ekes out their supplies by learning to bake bread

in the oven thoughtfully left behind

by the French expedition so many years before.

And then suddenly one evening the clouds have shattered,

the sky is red, and as every climber knows,

red sky at evening means fine weather in the morning.

(upbeat music)

♪ Cold morning ♪

♪ Such a windy mountain morning ♪

♪ They are ready today ♪

♪ They were ready a long time ago ♪

♪ Oh, a brave man with a primal sense of danger ♪

♪ Climbing for the kingdom above the clouds ♪

- [Narrator] Down here at the end of the world

when good weather comes, it comes from the south,

riding on winds from the Antarctic.

Up on Fitz Roy, day comes wrapped in clear inhuman cold,

cold that split stone.

The glacier moves an inch.

The wind screams.

Nothing lives.

All the way back up to where camp two used to be,

doing it all again against an old enemy, the wild wind.

- [Man] It took us over an hour to find camp two.

It was buried under at least 20 feet of new snow.

We had neglected to mark the entrance to our ice cave.

From here, we can see tomorrow's climb.

We can plot an imaginary line up 2,000 feet

of frozen granite.

If the weather holds,

we'll see if that line can really take us to the summit.

- [Narrator] 2:30 a.m.

Yvon leads the first pitch.

- [Yvon] Mountains are very silent and ominous

this early in the morning.

You have a lot of fear

because fear of the dark for one thing

and fear of sticking your neck out.

Anyway, early in the morning,

there's just no brave men early in the morning.

- [Narrator] The pre-dawn cold is intense

but fingerless gloves are necessary.

Bare fingertips can find a hole where gloves would slip.

You try to rub some life into frozen fingers

while you plan the next move.

(calm music)

6:00 a.m.

Yvon the careful problem solver has exchanged lead

with Doug the risk taker, the charger.

Their scouting led them to believe

that by this time the climbing should be getting easier.

It's not.

Above each crest, they find new walls.

But the granite is good, rough surfaced, and cracked

and they move fast for a rope of four.

Doug and Yvon are the climbing team.

Chris Jones and Dick Dorworth are the hauling team.

Between the four of them,

even when the hand holes turned to finger holes

and the foot holes become almost non-existent,

one way or another they keep going up.

10:00 a.m.

Far back, Dick Dorworth struggles

with the mountain on his own.

- [Dick] Most of the climb, I was the last man.

I was always hustling to get up to them

so they'd have more ropes to use.

Usually by the time I would get to the top of a rope,

the rest the guys would have gone on

and left another rope for me.

So very often I was just alone.

I'd get to the top of a pitch

and I'd have to coil the rope I just jumared up

and get on the next rope and go up that.

A lot of times, I would get behind everyone else

and I would find myself alone on the side of Fitz Roy.

Sometimes it started to get to me

but I never dwelled on it.

I just got on my jumars and jumared up the rope,

got on the next rope, and jumared up that.

- [Narrator] 2:00 p.m.

The way is blocked by a series of towers.

The only way up the first tower is a difficult crack.

Doug's willing to let Yvon have first go at it.

Yvon the graceful,

the climber who never seemed to show strain

even at the most difficult points.

In the end, fingers numb, boots frozen hard as iron,

all his expertise depends on the strength of his arms

and his legs and his will.

3:00 p.m.

There's an unknown number of pitches left to do

and not much daylight left to do them in.

On this side of the mountain,

oncoming weather can't be seen before it hits

and if it hits, it'll hit hard.

Doug struggles up snow plastered rock

while Yvon belays him.

This close to the summit,

the wind cuts through the cracks and chimneys,

knife-edged and bitter cold.

A chimney is a crack wide enough to get into.

This one's fairly easy climbing for a while.

Then toward the top, it narrows sharply

and it's Doug's turn to feel the squeeze.

(upbeat music)

When a crack's wide enough for your hand

but offers no lip to take hold of, you jam,

force your hand in, make a fist, and pull yourself up.

5:00 p.m.

A traversing pitch takes Yvon around the corner

of the last tower.

Beyond him, he can see the snow field

that leads to the summit.

That snow field has to be reached before the light fails.

To be caught up here at night in the storm

that could come at any hour would be death.

6:00 p.m.

There are still an unknown number of pitches left to do

as Doug takes over the lead again.

That's it.

(upbeat music)

Off to the west, they can see another storm gathering.

That means they've got more hours

of climbing yet to do tonight to get down to camp two.

They ought to turn back right now

and get as far as they can from this exposed place

but they won't turn back till they've stood on the summit,

just for a moment, just to taste their victory.

♪ We have lived with the mountains ♪

♪ We have shared many days ♪

♪ Now we're free, it's such a long road ♪

♪ To the kingdom in the clouds ♪

♪ Run, run, run, run, run, run, run ♪

♪ Running, don't know why ♪

♪ Looking for a place to go ♪

♪ Always reaching high ♪

♪ I remember thinking last time that I was home to stay ♪

♪ Now I have to leave that home life ♪

♪ But I'll be back someday ♪

♪ Cause my love is strong as the wind that blows ♪

♪ Down from the northern snow ♪

♪ It's time to get on the road with some friends of mine ♪

♪ Freedom, freedom is another life that we share ♪

♪ South to the border, stopping where we may ♪

♪ No one cares how we spend our days ♪

♪ Watching the road through dusty windows ♪

♪ Riding the waves in (mumbles) ♪

♪ My and my van (mumbles) ♪

♪ Racing away down icy mountains ♪

♪ Watching the road through dusty windows ♪