Jimmy Chin · 2015 · survival

Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi's 2015 documentary. Three climbers attempt the Shark's Fin on Meru Peak in the Garhwal Himalaya, a line that had turned back more than twenty expeditions. They carry everything themselves, sleep on a platform hung off the wall, and fail in 2008 a hundred metres below the top - then go back in 2011.

1. 1
   Delhi

   Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin and Renan Ozturk assemble in India for a self-funded expedition with no sponsors, no Sherpas and no fixed ropes - everything they need for twenty days on a wall carried up on their own backs.

2. 2
   Gangotri

   The road ends at Gangotri, the pilgrim town at the head of the Ganges, and the walk in begins - up through the sacred country from which the mountain takes its name, into the ice peaks of the Garhwal.

3. 3
   Tapovan

   From the meadow at Tapovan below the glacier, the Shark's Fin stands overhead - fourteen hundred metres of steep ice, fluted snow and overhanging granite, and a route that has defeated everybody who has tried it.

4. 4
   The Shark's Fin

   In 2008 a storm pins them on the portaledge for days and they turn back a hundred metres short. In 2011, one of them five months out of a near-fatal head injury, the three go up again and finish it.