The Greatest Climb

Climbing Gold

Duct Tape Then Beer

Sports, Wilderness

4.8 • 849 Ratings

🗓️ 23 June 2023

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Is reaching a summit the true measure of success or is there something deeper? In 1978 a dream team of alpinists – Jim Donini, Jeff Lowe, George Lowe, and Michael Kennedy – spent 26 days tackling the North Ridge of Latok 1 in the Karakoram range and came up just short of the summit after illness struck. Their attempt became legend and a testament to the power of friendship. The North Ridge suddenly became the most coveted alpine climb on the planet, rebuffing new generations of climbers for the next 40 years. Thanks to our sponsors The North Face Momentous Athletic Greens

Transcript

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0:00.0	My name is Michael Kennedy. I've been climbing since about 1969.
0:07.0	I can't believe you've been climbing since 1969.
0:10.0	Well, I'm an old fucker, so what do you expect?
0:14.0	Yeah, exactly.
0:19.0	Michael Kennedy was a great alpinist in the U.S., who mostly climbed from the 70s until early 2000s, let's say.
0:27.9	But maybe more importantly, he also ran Climbing Magazine for almost 20 years.
0:32.2	So he's had an outsized impact on the climbing world.
0:36.3	I'm George Lowe, and I live above Golden, Colorado, at about 2,300 meters or so.
0:43.3	In sort of out in the countryside, I've been climbing 60 years at this point, and I'm still climbing.
0:51.3	George Lowe is a legendary alpinist who has put up new routes all over the world.
0:55.0	In fact, he has a named buttress, a buttress named after him on Mount Everest, on the East
1:00.2	face, on a route that he put up.
1:02.5	I feel like in some ways that's a good, like if someone has a part of Mount Everest named after
1:06.3	them, you know that they did some climbing.
1:09.0	Yeah.
1:10.0	Jim Donini, and I live in Uray, Colorado, and it's starting to snow.
1:17.8	Well, Jim Donini has, in some ways, outgrown his original climbing accomplishments.
1:23.4	Like, I don't even know what Jim Danini has climbed climbed over the years because he's just a legend at this point.
1:28.8	You know, it's like, I mean, he's an 80-year-old who's been contributing to the climbing world for the last 60 years, 55 years or something.
1:36.6	So, I mean, I don't know.
1:37.2	He's put up roots all over the world.
1:38.5	He's been motivated.
	...

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