SummitPost.org

Watching the TV show 'Life'. Episode centers around two friends who climb K2. The climbers, 'tethered together' fall at 12,000 ft. That's not even near base camp, much less high enough to be climbing, no? Also, both climbers have Buddist flags from the trip. Pakistan is a predominantly Muslim country no?

ROFL: maybe they fell into a deep hole

Do you have a link to something about the show? The two I could find were about a cop and a wildlife documentary. The one with the cop had a Zen theme running through it apparently, Buddhist link there.

Life, season 2, episode 13 'Re-Entry': http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1185950/

The show is a mystery, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in bacon. Its delightful.

I thought, for a horrible minute, that you were talking about a news or current affairs program.

Mind you, nothing would surprise me these days. Just the other day there was a TV news item on Sydney TV channel 7 which introduced an interviewee as just having become the first woman to summit Everest without oxygen! I didn't catch her name because I was a bit taken aback by the intro. She didn't correct it, but to be fair, as she was being interviewed by video link, it's possible that she didn't hear the claim made in the intro.

ExcitableBoy wrote:... both climbers have Buddist flags from the trip. Pakistan is a predominantly Muslim country no?

Now then, we've been through this. Climbers take Tibetan prayer flags all over the world and leave them behind on summits. It shows they're 'spiritual' and enlightened and not your average white bread yankee christian. They're cool, brah, so stop the hatin'. They may or may not be the same flags strung from their home balconies etc to show everyone that they've been to a souvenir shop in Asia. Or Boulder. Using other cultures' religious icons for your own personal expression of individuality and cool is way cool, brah.

And anyway, if Buddha is truly compassionate surely he'd protect your ass on that nasty terroristy K2, not just nice smiley Nepalese, Tibetan and Indian mountains, right?

K2 is also a sub-peak in Colorado. Maybe they fell off that one. People sometimes leave prayer flags on Colorado summits.

When someone ask about my climbing resume, I can always say that I've climbed K2 and Devils Thumb. Just don't tell anyone that they are the Colorado ones.

K2:



(Kiefer's photo). No SP page since it's a sub-peak.

Devils Thumb:

http://www.summitpost.org/devils-thumb/154398

In general, I've found that television fiction shows are extremely accurate. I'm shocked that you find errors in this one.

MoapaPk wrote:In general, I've found that television fiction shows are extremely accurate. I'm shocked that you find errors in this one.

I agree. In fact, everything I know about the Las Vegas area I have gleaned from watching episodes of CSI-Las Vegas. For example, I know that Las Vegas and surrounding lands look shockingly similar to Lake Castaic and the Newhall areas north of Los Angeles.

To the gent who has climbed K2, but not the Pakistani K2, I am with you, man. You may also consider climbing Orizaba, the island highpoint of Catalina Island off of the L.A. coast. Me, I have climbed the highest point of McKinley ... County, New Mexico.

Why, I bet we could find littler, easier peaks with the same names as their more famous brethren. We could call it the "Weenie 7 Summits". Thirteen year old kids who do them would be called heros.

Lastly, watching one of those real-life crime re-enactment shows recently about a Phoenix-area housewife killed by her husband in Puerto Penasco, Mexico, they needed some stock footage of "Mexico" for the show. They accomplished this by quick, blurry road shots around Scottsdale and the Papago Buttes in Tempe. So now I know what Mexico probably looks like.

3Deserts wrote:

surgent wrote:To the gent who has climbed K2, but not the Pakistani K2, I am with you, man. You may also consider climbing Orizaba, the island highpoint of Catalina Island off of the L.A. coast. Me, I have climbed the highest point of McKinley ... County, New Mexico.

Impressive!

But I've bettered you by naming a small outcrop of rock on my hill behind my house Everest. And I have climbed it.

Many, many, many times.

But have you done it without oxygen?

My wife and I were just talking about this last night. I happen to be both climber and firearms "enthusiast" (for simplicity), and pretty much can't enjoy any action flick. The complaint in question was the intro to Mission Impossible II, which somebody had posted here the other day.... I said, "Climbing is already freaken badass and crazy impressive to most people to begin with- why do they feel the need to exaggerate physical possibilities like that?" To which she replied, "climbing actually ISN'T impressive to most people- not the current generation, who's seen it all a thousand times on TV and isn't impressed by anything."

Think she's right?

I think people may find it more "interesting" than "impressive" these days.