[TV static drones]
[bright tone]
- [breathing heavily]
Come on, Emily, that knot's good.
It's good.
Come on.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
[whispering] Now move to your left.
[panting]
Fucking stop panicking.
[panting]
I don't feel safe.
[dramatic music]
- Doing something that nobody's ever done before,
there's no guarantee that your plan's gonna work.
- [groans]
- Once you commit,
there is no turning around.
[rushing water]
- We're entirely removed from civilization.
- Look at this one.
- We know once we get there, we're on our own.
- Climbing!
We've chosen to live a life that does have risk.
- Oh, my God. - [crying]
- One mistake and you're dead.
- Come on, now.
- If you harness that fear
you can do something that you never thought possible.
- Whoo! Yeah!
- Is the pursuit worth the risk?
[rocks clattering]
[tense music]
[wind whistling softly]
- Kyrgyzstan is one
of the most mountainous countries on the planet.
[bird screeches]
It is an alpine playground.
♪ ♪
- I think what makes it unique is
the quality of the climbing in such a remote place.
It's like putting El Capitan in the middle of nowhere
in this valley in Kyrgyzstan.
I like feeling on that edge of uncertainty.
It's an adventure.
Perfect.
[soft music]
We started our expedition in Reno
and traveled all the way across the world
to Bishkek, capital city of Kyrgyzstan.
Kyrgyzstan is one of those places
that no one can really find on a map.
Fly to Osh, which is sort of like
the gateway to the mountains.
- From there, I think it's, like,
a 10-or-so-hour Jeep ride to a trailhead
in a town called Uzgurush.
- And then that's when you start
three days of walking to get to the Ak-Suu Valley
where we'll eventually set up base camp
and try to climb Pik Slesova.
♪ ♪
- The goal of this trip is to free climb
this 3,000-foot rock route
up the northwest face of Pik Slesova.
It's a high-level free route
that's only seen one team ascent.
Different people freed different pitches.
No one person freed every pitch.
That left this unique opportunity
for one or both of us to be the first person
to free every pitch on the line to the summit.
♪ ♪
- When Kyrgyzstan was still part of the Soviet Union,
Russians would come here,
and it was a training ground
before they went to the Himalaya.
It is a testament to how remote
and out there this place is.
You know, we're sort of coming together
to combine our--our skills and our strengths
on this one objective.
- I think we're kind of unique
in that we're both professional climbers,
but we're on almost opposite ends
of the spectrum of the sport.
I'm known for walking up big hills really slowly.
And she's known for, like,
the highest-end gymnastic rock climbing.
Big wall rock climbing
is kind of where they start to come together.
- It's the adventure
and the expedition side of climbing,
combined with a really hard big-wall free climb.
It's definitely gonna be a test of our relationship.
But every time we do a trip like this,
it's a test of our relationship.
[chuckles]
♪ ♪
We landed in Bishkek and spent two days there.
Bishkek really does feel like this sort of melting pot.
[exciting music]
It's a very modern city,
and it has a lot of former Soviet
and Russian influence.
But at the same time,
it feels like a very young city
that's kind of, like, just coming into its own.
♪ ♪
The success or failure of an expedition
really hinges on the group of people there.
The team is really what it all comes down to.
It's having the proper people with the proper experience
to kind of embark on a journey that's pretty full-on
in almost every way. - Hi. I'm Adrian.
- Dimitri. - Emily.
- Good to meet you, Dimitri. - Nice to meet you.
- I am Topo. Nice to meet you, Dimitri.
- How are you? - We are so excited
to finally be here. [laughter]
- I think the first question is
yesterday we heard that there was some--
there were some conflicts--
- The border. - You know, yeah.
- On the border. - The border.
- What's-- what's your opinion?
- To the west.
- Okay.
- No, you're doing great.
- Better than our Kyrgyz or Russian.
- [speaking non-English language]
- This region does have instability.
It was first on my radar
when Beth Rodden and Tommy Caldwell
were kidnapped here in the year 2000.
- Caldwell and three others,
including his girlfriend, were climbing here
in the Pamir-Alay mountain range of Kyrgyzstan.
They were sleeping on a ledge 1,000 feet up
when their ordeal began.
- Three people on the ground started shooting at us.
And we were taken hostage at gunpoint by two men.
- They were rebels from Uzbekistan.
And they were sort of, like, battling in that area
with the Kyrg Army.
- We were seriously fearing for our lives.
We did not know what was gonna happen to us.
And escape was always on the top of our minds.
- Tommy kind of saved all of them
by pushing one of these rebels off a cliff.
And then they ran
and eventually found a military base.
- It is so hard to think of that now
and to say it aloud,
but we were afraid that we would not survive.
[helicopter rotors thrumming]
- There is still an ongoing border disagreement.
So there are local groups
continuing to fight in this area.
We definitely don't want to make the situation worse
in these areas.
- I think I personally really trust
the people who we've hired
to sort of give us the go ahead
that it's Okay and that it's safe.
- But your recommendation or comfort
is the plan we already have.
- Yeah. - No problems.
both: No problems. both: Okay.
- Great. - Cool.
You know, but at the same time,
you don't know what's going to happen.
- To go to your camp here.
- You got it? - Yeah.
- You said you wanted to, right?
[chuckles]
Emily and I have been together for 9 1/2 years.
We met on Mount Everest at 21,500 feet.
In this case, having her as a teammate,
she's obviously
an unbelievably talented rock climber.
This maestro of just knowing
what to do with her body on the rock.
- I discovered climbing when I was 10 years old.
It went from me not even knowing what climbing was
to, "Oh, this is what I'm gonna do
for the rest of my life."
Around age 16, I started doing world cups.
I didn't even have, like, a team jersey.
I had to make my own and, like,
sew a little American flag on there.
[cheers and applause]
I was sort of in that first wave of people
who learned how to train for rock climbing
instead of just going rock climbing.
It was very regimented. It was very serious.
And in my later teenage years,
I struggled with an eating disorder.
A lot of young climbers do.
In order to perform well,
one of the easiest and fastest ways to do that
is to cut weight.
I remember, like, feeling exceptionally tired
all the time, really kind of falling out of love
with climbing and with what I was doing.
That was sort of, like, the turning point.
I just couldn't live that way anymore.
My love for climbing has just sort of changed
and evolved as I've changed and evolved as a person.
Competition climbing was
very much a part of my childhood.
I didn't really explore the adventure side of climbing
until a little bit later.
♪ ♪
- She was determined to conquer El Capitan
in less than 24 hours.
- Emily Harrington has reached the peak of success.
- I hate to compare, but it looks
like Emily is in a slightly more precarious situation
than you are. [laughter]
- There's still, you know, sometimes
a tendency in our culture
to think, you know, in athletic pursuits
there's a different level of capability.
And Emily is out there and pushing
at the very highest level of the sport,
just showing what's possible,
man or woman.
- [vocalizing]
♪ ♪
- Right as we landed,
there was the call to prayer.
♪ ♪
Really kind of, like, grounds you in a place.
♪ ♪
- Today's day one of two days driving
to the trailhead in Uzgurush.
- Pik Slesova is by far
the most remote big wall I've ever attempted,
hands down.
It's not like Yosemite.
You don't just drive up, park your car,
walk 20 minutes, start climbing--
which is why it's so unique.
- Getting to just pick our own fruit,
this is not gonna happen anymore in the mountains.
- No, we're not gonna get this stuff.
- We should take advantage of it.
[laughter]
- Batken definitely felt
like this transition point.
We didn't really have any worries or concerns
up until that point.
- Vorukh.
- It's-- - Oh, Vorukh is Tajikistan.
- Yeah, Vorukh is Tajikistan.
That's where the fighting was last month.
- Vorukh. - It's a surrounded enclave.
- Yeah.
- The contested border that we were passing
really close to after Batken,
the last flare-up we had really heard about was in May.
- More than 11,500 people have been evacuated
following a flare-up in violence
along its border with Tajikistan,
leaving at least 31 Kyrgyzstani citizens dead
and more than 100 others injured.
- Part of the border conflict here
has to do with management of this lake
and the drought this part of the country
has been going through.
- 2020 was the worst drought in 25 years in this region.
Seeing a place that is threatened by climate change,
it makes it that much more real,
that it's not about threatening
our adventures or our recreation.
It's about threatening people's livelihoods
and people's lives.
[tense music]
- Wars are gonna be fought about water.
And that's happening here now.
♪ ♪
- You know, it's--
♪ ♪
- Some of our crew got detained,
and so we're outside a little military zone
waiting for them.
- Welcome back.
- Yeah, after a couple hours.
The area we're going is super close
to the strongest part of the conflict.
The local police were pretty concerned about our security.
Yeah, from here I think we probably--
we just want to be, like, in and out.
You know, like... both: Low-profile.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- We knew that it was going to be difficult
to travel to this place, right? - Yup.
- So now we just need to adapt, just heads up.
If you see something weird, you know,
everybody will be just full-on alarm mode.
- [laughs] - Yeah.
- You're getting these little tidbits
and, trying to, like, read through them all
and figure out what the, like, through line is
and whether it's safe.
We've heard if you're on the road after 5:00 p.m.,
they like to shoot at cars.
A couple of days ago,
there was another situation with two soldiers wounded.
♪ ♪
- [speaking non-English language]
- Ah, for-- - Customs.
- Oh. - Customs is this way?
Then Uzgurush.
We just went through a final military stop,
and it's just feels completely different.
- It's much more rural and--
- Surrounded by huge peaks.
I'm starting to think it's gonna be
a really hard hike tomorrow.
- Had a few hiccups along the way,
but we've arrived in Uzgurush.
And we're in the mountains, and it feels amazing.
- End of the road, beginning of the trail,
and organizing all of our loads for the next few weeks.
[indistinct chatter]
- Adrian is a high-altitude climber
and a mountain guide,
one of the best in the world.
- I've summited 8,000-meter peaks 17 times,
and I've summited Mount Everest eight times,
including once without supplemental oxygen.
Man, I can't believe I did it.
I'm just so gripped right now.
I was born in Cheltenham, England.
My family wasn't an outdoorsy family.
When we moved to America,
I think my parents thought they needed to do things
like camping and fishing. [chuckles]
And we weren't very good at it.
Just learned to get comfortable
in, like, cold, wet New England winter.
♪ ♪
There's nowhere where I feel the focus
towards a single goal.
You are not thinking about anything else
except not getting killed on that mountain.
Today we begin our approach to the mountain.
We have 15 miles to cover
and 7,000 feet of vertical ascent
as we go up and down these passes.
That's just day one.
We still have two more full days
with that much or more to get to base camp.
I've planned for so long and think I know so much about
from maps and photos and Google Earth.
This is the moment where reality sets in.
We're on our own.
♪ ♪
- We are trying to get over this pass
before we get struck by lightning.
- [chuckles] And it seems to be
coming in fast, but we think
the safest thing is up and over.
So we're gonna find out if we're right.
[thunder rumbling]
[tense music]
- The difference between the lightning and thunder
was not even a second.
You could feel the static electricity in the air.
♪ ♪
Still going a little bit, but it moved on.
It was a little scary, though. - It was definitely legit.
- A little freaked out.
- Kind of the first reminder that we're in the mountains.
We have to anticipate those storms are gonna come
every day we're on the wall.
They're gonna be a significant challenge
of how to deal with them safely.
Mountain experience is
they can be so beautiful and so powerful
because of that risk-reward equation.
It's also something that I struggle with.
I was guiding with a Sherpa partner
named Nima Sherpa,
that I'd worked with since my first trips to Nepal.
And he caught one crampon on the pant leg of his other leg
and fell off the ledge, like, exactly in front of me--
what I would estimate to be
a, you know, 800-foot cliff.
And it was very real.
He had a six-year-old son and a family.
This brought the whole reality of this thing
that I was having so much fun doing
into very stark, like, different terms.
[solemn music]
Whether it's worth it, why I do it,
why we're doing it--
like, it was so clearly not worth it
to Nima's family.
My risk tolerance today is incredibly different.
And this was the beginning of that change.
♪ ♪
- I like my pack.
- I have full cold. My nose is clogged.
My ear's, like, doing the popping thing.
- It's mainly just around my eyes and not in my nose.
- In your nose yet, or in your throat?
- No, nothing.
- It's definitely not normal to me.
- We say high and angled, like, that way.
- Pass number four or five of the trip.
I can't even keep count.
[exhales] That was hard for me today.
Wow, crazy. We came from back there.
I don't think I've felt that weak
on a day hiking in decades.
All the way through that hike, I was telling myself
that, like, it felt hard because we had been traveling
for a week and I was still jetlagged.
I know my body, and something is not right.
[bird calling]
- Okay.
- Yeah, it's definitely positive.
- It's definitely positive?
It came out within three minutes.
No question.
- Like, Emily needs to take one.
Let's see what it says.
But you should definitely take another one.
- Pretty sure.
I'm so sorry, Ems. - It's okay.
I mean, it's no one's fault, right?
We were all negative a few days ago, right?
- Yeah.
- Well, let's hope it's a false positive.
- You took another one? - Yeah.
- You're still looking negative, Em.
Yeah, I'm already positive-- instantly.
Fuck.
[groans]
I've taken a lot of these tests.
I never thought I'd see that.
- We're all testing. We're all vaccinated.
Like, it's just so unlikely-feeling, but...
I think we're all in a little bit of disbelief.
Like, how could this possibly happen?
We took COVID tests before leaving,
while we were in Bishkek, while we were in Osh.
And then here we were on the track,
getting further and further from hospitals,
from medical care, from all these things.
And now we had one person who was COVID-positive.
It all just comes crashing down.
I think the first part of the puzzle
is making sure the local staff doesn't get COVID.
- For sure.
Like, yeah, I feel really strongly.
We have to ensure their safety.
- Yeah, this is fucking out here.
- It's kind of my worst nightmare
to negatively affect a local community.
If my case got worse,
or if other cases happened in the group,
we might not be able to get them to medical care quickly.
We've both worked for almost two years
to get ready for this trip.
- It took so much effort,
but it's just the way the world is right now.
And it's just a stupid climbing expedition.
It's, like, not that big of a deal.
But it is to me.
It just felt so close.
♪ ♪
- Uh, yeah, maybe a little bit better.
But sore throat, difficult to swallow,
a little cough, congestion.
My oxygen saturation had actually dropped
into the low 80s.
That's about the same as in the tent.
At home, if you're saturations were less than 90%,
you'd be in the hospital on oxygen.
What was yours? - 92 to 94.
It's pretty normal for this altitude, I think.
- We made the decision that the only safe option
was to go back to the road head
and then see if we can piece together the logistics
to still make an attempt.
But right now, an attempt feels really far away.
That meant three days of walking back
over all the passes we had crossed on the way in,
and then taking a 10-hour drive to Osh,
where we knew there was medical resources
if one of us got even sicker.
It's gonna be okay.
- I know, but this is just such a nightmare.
I've sort of let go of climbing at this point.
Just one step at a time. [chuckles]
- I have officially lost my sense of taste--
just in case the two positive COVID tests
and the saturations in the 80s
didn't tell us anything.
♪ ♪
But I was just so disappointed.
What did I do wrong?
And did I ruin this dream trip for so many people
by being careless somewhere?
- Adrian tested positive for COVID,
and then I tested positive, like, two or three days ago.
- Good news. None of our local staff
has shown any symptoms,
which is what we were mostly afraid of,
since they're unvaccinated.
So that feels really good.
I think we have three or four more days in isolation.
Thank you. See you later on.
It actually took a surprisingly long time
for Emily and I to test negative.
We kind of came to the realization
there was no way time-wise that we could hike back in
and still have an opportunity to climb the mountain.
- We already tried that.
We had a bad experience with COVID.
We're repeating the same behavior that we did before.
So we started looking at helicopter options.
And the helicopter options in Kyrgyzstan
turned out to be really, really complicated.
Just waiting for word
whether we can take the Kyrgyzstan helicopter in.
We got a tiny glimmer of hope, so...
- Just hoping for good news tonight.
- I know you've been getting bits and pieces
of updates from Topo's team
just as this continues to unfold.
Situation right now, we basically don't have
a viable helicopter option
to get everybody back up into camp.
Just essentially put an end to this expedition.
What we're gonna start doing,
kind of planning the exit strategy.
My plan is to have that
kind of detailed out for everybody
by the time you guys all wake up tomorrow--
tomorrow morning.
[somber music]
♪ ♪
- We were packing our bags into the truck
when our local guide, Yusef, came to us and said,
"We can make the heli work. We can do it."
It doesn't seem like we're gonna go home anymore.
- Doesn't seem like we're gonna go home anymore.
- But we were gonna go home, like, a half an hour ago.
[chuckles]
- Yeah, it's the restart to our expedition.
[laughter]
[exciting music]
♪ ♪
Yeah, one step closer. One step closer.
Yeah, I like that sound.
♪ ♪
We've spent years dreaming about this trip.
And then we spent pretty much a month
trying to get to the objective.
It was exciting.
It was more exciting than it would have been
if everything had gone as planned.
[sweeping music]
It really was unlike anything I'd ever seen before.
♪ ♪
You know, as a climber it's sort of, like,
this idyllic-looking challenge.
Look at that. [laughs]
- We were surrounded
by, like, some of the most beautiful granite towers
I've ever seen in my life.
- And that was gonna be our home
for the next two weeks.
It was, like, really hot.
- We spent the morning setting up.
And then me and Em have just been, like,
you know, caged up for so long, we were like,
"We gotta go and at least find the base of the wall."
- [panting]
You see it? - Oh, holy shit.
- It's really intimidating, actually.
I think we should move up a little bit,
and then we can look at a map. - Yep.
The way you ascend a big wall is,
you climb one rope length, and you stop.
And then oftentimes you swap.
And your belayer climbs one rope length and stops.
And then you keep going up like that.
- In order to, like, do a clean ascent,
each one of those rope lengths
she has to climb
without falling.
If she falls, she has to go back down
to the beginning of that pitch
and do it again until she doesn't fall.
- And a lot of times, that is how you fail.
You get stuck at a pitch and you can't complete it.
You know, sometimes you continue, and then you say,
"Well, I freed every pitch except this one pitch."
But that wasn't my goal.
So in my ideal world, we could free climb
the route in its entirety.
And you don't return to the ground
until you've reached the top.
So we're going straight underneath that wet streak.
And then it-- you're definitely gonna trend
over into that corner system right there.
And that's where that...
I had a lot of doubts on pitch two,
because it was this really long pitch.
And there were lots of difficult sections.
- I've only climbed probably
three or four pitches of that difficulty,
and they've all taken me weeks of working on them.
So you see these big corners? - Uh-huh.
- Then it goes-- - And then it goes left.
I see the Kyrg Monster.
For me, the Kyrg Monster
was one of the hardest parts of the climb.
It's named after this famous pitch
on El Capitan in Yosemite called the Monster Offwidth.
It's this type of climbing called wide climbing.
It's something that I've always struggled with.
You're literally having to wedge your body
inside of it and inch your way up.
And it's so, so uncomfortable.
I've spent 2 1/2 hours
on the Monster Offwidth on El Cap.
It's a necessary evil
when it comes to big-wall climbing.
Oh my God, it feels so fucking good to climb!
- So I think it's probably a mix of being so psyched
to be on the rock after all this.
But also, it doesn't feel quite as natural as it usually does.
- Not 100% sure where to go.
- This 3,000 feet or so of climbing above us,
we're playing on the first hundred feet.
♪ ♪
- This style of climbing is called free climbing,
which means using our hands and feet to ascend,
and the rope only in case of a fall.
And so that's not to be confused
with free soloing, which is free climbing,
but without a rope.
[screams]
- You all right? - Yeah.
There is a risk of bad falls.
And the consequence can be pretty high.
- You're on belay. We'll just start romping.
- Okay, we'll hopefully romp.
I don't like the first pitch, at least...
- Well, I love it, so... - You do?
- Between the two of us, we're balanced.
Yeah, it's like one of my favorite pitches actually.
- Really?
- So injury to the left elbow, injury to the left leg.
- I can wiggle my feet. I can feel everything.
- So I just got, like, this text message.
"Emily fell. It's not okay."
It was one of the hardest, scariest moments of my life.
And like, I didn't know
my brain could think that much in 30 minutes.
She slipped and took a 50-foot fall,
and hit a ledge before the rope caught her fall.
No broken bones. - No broken bones.
We don't think--no.
- I think you got a massive rope burn
around your neck.
It was the most serious accident
I'd ever had in climbing.
But I walked away. I got really lucky.
It's still in my head.
But at the same time, it was my mistake.
You know, a lot of times, things aren't in your control,
like rock fall.
You can be pretty traumatized from that
because you don't know when it's gonna happen again.
- What the fuck? - What's that noise?
- Oh, my God.
[boulders tumbling]
- Rock! - Oh!
- Rockfall, or loose rock
on a big vertical wall like this,
like, it's one of the ways that I've come closest
to getting myself killed in the mountains.
When anything comes down
from, like, baseball-sized or bigger,
if it hits you it will kill you.
- Oh, there it is. Look at it.
I just don't think this rain is
the kind that's gonna go away.
- Topo, Tico, if you copy,
we're gonna begin moving downwards, Emza.
Wisely done leading today.
- You kind of have to just keep forging ahead.
There are a lot of factors that are out of our control.
- I really don't think it's rope draggy.
And then remind me-- went pretty far right.
[man shouting]
[together] Rock!
[boulders tumbling and crashing]
- I've spent the last 25 years of my life
trying to avoid uncontrollable risk.
There's no escape if we're in the middle of that slope
when something falls out of that gully.
- It's the process of analyzing the risk
and making decisions around that risk.
If everything was perfectly safe and comfortable and easy,
all of these things would lose their allure.
♪ ♪
- Me and Emily ultimately decided we were willing
to go through the rockfall potential
one more time.
It was worth it for the goal
that we had worked so hard for.
We're gonna take that risk,
but it doesn't mean it goes away
in your brain or your heart.
- I'm just gonna lay like this.
I feel fine when I lay down.
I woke up with this really weird, like, vertigo.
I just am really dizzy if I move too fast
or move my head too fast.
And I can't get rid of it.
I'm leaning towards still going,
just 'cause we only have this short weather window.
It's taken a lot of time and energy
just to get to this point.
- I guess we got good news and bad news.
The good news is, for the first morning in six weeks,
there's not a cloud in the sky.
Bad news? - I don't feel good.
- Em's still having some dizziness...
- I feel really dizzy. - Stuff going on.
- I'm trying to fight it and pretend it's not there.
Just have to start walking, maybe.
- Yeah, let's do it.
- Okay.
- Fine with it.
- It was nerves, and it was stress.
It was really just my body and brain freaking out.
You know, not trusting myself, wanting to succeed too badly.
♪ ♪
We were planning on--
hoping to have five days on the wall.
We wanted to spend one night on a ledge at pitch eight,
and then set up camp on the bare ledge up higher.
- Double back through both. Just back through.
Wow, fuck, it's been so long to get here.
I feel like I might puke. - I know, It's like nerves.
Yes, Adrian! Perfect!
Stand up! So good!
Now you step right.
Nicely done, Adrian. - Fuck, yeah.
- Good job. - One down!
- I followed and was actually super stressed and nervous.
Got through it just fine and arrived at the belay
and was like, "Oh my God, this is gonna be
"a long climb,
'cause I am just not feeling on."
Just takes so much mental energy.
And I'm like, I don't know if I have it.
[exhales heavily] Okay.
Pitch two is a 45-meter face climb,
so there's no cracks.
The holds are all really, really tiny.
- All right now. Nice and confident.
- [whispering] Fucking stop panicking.
It's really intricate climbing.
Put your feet in the right place
at exactly the right time in the right order.
Everything has to be pretty perfect.
I'm nervous.
♪ ♪
[panting]
♪ ♪
[whispering] Come on, Emily.
Now move to your left.
Relax, you can do it.
♪ ♪
- Yeah! - Oh, my God.
That's fucked up. - Good work, Em.
- I made it through The Crux,
and there was this relief.
I think I can do this.
Off belay!
- Fuck yes. - Oh, man. That was a fight.
Holy shit. [exhales heavily]
And then, you know, the fear and anxiety sets in,
because you look up, and you're like, "Oh, wow.
You know, I have another 2,800 feet of climbing left."
- I knew that pitch was gonna be
very difficult for me to ascend,
which I kind of knew coming in,
but you never know until you really get on it.
[groans]
God. [groaning]
It was too hard for me.
There was no way we were gonna risk
missing this weather window.
The only way Em was gonna have a shot
was if I backed off and sacrificed
a little bit of my time.
We've got a big mountain to climb.
I don't even know if I can do it from there.
- I don't think you should be that bummed.
I thought it was fucking hard.
I wanted every pitch still.
But if I didn't send a pitch,
I was willing to let it go to make sure
the team could keep moving.
- In a way, he was doing what he does best,
which is helping other people
be successful in the mountains.
- Oh, I'm so happy for you.
That was amazing. - Thank you.
- So proud of you.
- I was in a mode at that point.
I was moving well, I was climbing well.
I was still very much trying to not get ahead of myself.
- Do it. Do it.
- The pitches are just so long.
If I'm feeling tired
or if I'm starting to feel doubt creep in,
I try to block everything out except for one word,
and that word is "yes."
I say that word in my head.
♪ ♪
It helps me, like, hold on tighter.
I don't know how else to describe that,
but I've been doing it since I was 12 years old.
I just call it "the yes factor."
♪ ♪
[grunts]
♪ ♪
[exhales]
♪ ♪
[whimpers] I'm scared.
Okay. Looks like we're done.
And then the final pitch of that day
was pitch seven, the Kyrg Monster.
All right, you're climbing.
I had been thinking about that pitch for days.
♪ ♪
- Take?
Is that what you said? - Yeah.
- Gotcha.
I think I got 15 feet
before I was completely exhausted
and like, "This isn't working."
Can you lower?
- You don't want to think about it?
- I just couldn't climb it.
- You were climbing it.
- No, I was barely moving.
Like, you see how far I got? - Yeah, no, of course I did.
- It's one of those moments
where the doubt starts to creep in.
What if I am not gonna get through it?
It's still so hard.
And it's not gonna get any easier.
So I just needed to grit my teeth and do it.
[panting]
- Come on.
Come on.
- I don't feel safe. - You're safe. I promise.
You're safe.
Do what you do.
Get it back and clip or place your stake,
whichever one feels easier.
- Either one. - Come on, Em.
♪ ♪
- I got through that section
and became really scared that I was gonna fall.
And I didn't know if I had the energy
or strength to repeat it.
♪ ♪
- Come on, Em. Come on, come on.
You got it.
- I was really afraid
that I was gonna blow it on the final, final move
of this pitch that I'd spent so much energy on.
But I couldn't really reach the ending hold.
♪ ♪
[wind rushing]
- Emily, trust yourself!
- [screaming]
Fuck yeah!
Whoo!
- Fuck yeah! - Please don't break.
I'm so psyched. I tried so hard.
Oh, my God.
And I knew that I didn't have another try in me.
[chuckles] Oh, my God.
Oh, that was insane.
Jesus.
You know, that could have resulted in a failure
on free climbing the entire wall.
And having that under my belt gave me a lot of confidence.
[uplifting music]
♪ ♪
- You good? - Yeah.
We're gonna set up camp right here.
I'm tired and hungry and cold.
We've got a lot of work to do,
but it's kind of just part of it.
♪ ♪
Whoa.
♪ ♪
There's a really unique kind of fear that you have
when you realize that you're capable of something--
- I might not move again. - It's pretty nice.
- You should try it.
You haven't laid down here. - I haven't.
I am laying down. - Oh.
- The desire to achieve it is that much stronger.
♪ ♪
I slept really good in the ledges.
Maybe the best night of sleep we've had so far.
- In five weeks or six weeks. - Which is awesome.
Today, we're just hoping to make it
up two pitches with all our stuff
to establish kind of our final camp.
[tense music]
- Once you're getting that high off the ground,
you're also adding all these risks.
It has rockfall, it has weather,
it has all these additional facets.
♪ ♪
- Rock! - Ugh.
Let me know if you move much further left.
- Okay.
- Think I'm in a good position.
- Ropes don't get cut very often,
but that's--pretty much the only way
is through rockfall.
I lost a friend last year.
He was, like, standing on a ledge clipped into a bolt,
and the ledge gave out and cut his rope.
There was literally nothing
that could have been done differently.
[somber music]
And there are things that happen
that take people away from us,
and that could happen to us.
And it's part of the life that we choose to live.
We've all come to accept that in some way.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- So we're at pitch 11 ledge.
I'd say we're now officially halfway up.
- We set up camp.
We got here with plenty of time to kind of organize
and make it feel like home.
That said, it still does drop off significantly
all the way to the ground. I'm staying tied in.
[chuckles] - Just to be clear.
Everything's going as planned, which is weird.
I mean, every day we've been here,
except the days we were on the wall,
it's rained every day.
And so we feel pretty lucky.
♪ ♪
The ledge that we were sleeping on
basically was just sitting under these teetering blocks
that was this next pitch.
- Good work, Emily!
- Fuck. I'm right under it.
I was definitely, like, knocking on things,
listening for hollow noises,
making sure that it was in solid rock
and not the loose rock.
[bird calls]
So a lot of times in free climbing,
in order to find a passage up the wall,
it entails having to climb down.
♪ ♪
You're climbing down, and your feet feel the holds
before your hands feel the holds.
It's just a different movement,
and it's a different kind of trust.
- Another route Emily had done,
called Golden Gate in Yosemite,
we spent two days stuck on the down climb
while she tried to work it out.
♪ ♪
[cheering] - Whoo!
Ha!
Oh, I'm psyched.
After the down climb,
the route changes character dramatically.
You feel so high up.
Come on, Emily. That knot's good.
It's good.
♪ ♪
The rock climbing is so good,
kind of what you want in a granite pitch.
And it just so happened to be
2,500 feet off the ground in Kyrgyzstan.
♪ ♪
We are four pitches from the summit right now.
But it's a little late.
We're gonna go down and spend one more night.
We had this really big, nice ledge
that we'd set up camp at.
We repelled back down and spent that night
and then were able to go back up to our high point
the next day.
I'm really excited to see the summit.
I feel like we've been dreaming
about climbing this wall for a while now.
And so being on the top is gonna be pretty special.
- Summit day.
Here on this corner, on this arête, you just look out
and we can see base camp all the way down there.
[soft music]
♪ ♪
- We were at the high point yesterday,
and it's my turn this morning.
- Go get it.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- And we were just cruising.
But at the same time,
the clouds were building up the valley.
And they were building fast.
There is no doubt this weather is coming in,
and it's gonna be an issue for us.
Hey, Em. - What?
We're getting pretty late.
You're gonna climb through.
Hopefully, Emily can make up a little bit of time,
since she's obviously a stronger climber.
♪ ♪
- I was getting a little bit stressed,
feeling like we were gonna get rained out and snowed on.
It hasn't looked this way the last four days.
So we're definitely keeping a heads up
and trying to move relatively quickly.
Emily actually had been sitting
in that belay thinking,
"Adrian's gonna say it's too dangerous
and we have to go down."
I get up there. I'm like, "Okay, I'm going."
And she just burst out crying.
"What if we can't summit?"
I'm like, "We're going to the summit!"
♪ ♪
- His calm nature is very much a part
of his background as a mountain guide.
That's, again, where our partnership shines in a way.
♪ ♪
- Holy shit. - [chuckles]
- Oh, my God. [both laugh]
- Dude! - Whoo!
- Yeah! Ha-ha!
Holy shit!
I'm so proud of you.
[chuckles]
[ethereal music]
♪ ♪
You're the first human being
to free every pitch of that route.
How does that feel?
- I don't know.
I'll be-- ask me when I'm down.
♪ ♪
- My favorite moment is
when everyone's safe in base camp.
And it's so close now.
And like, I can feel it. Wow.
- Oof.
Okay, let's get out of here.
[chuckles] - Yeah.
Just to actually get
to celebrate this, like, wild accomplishment
for Emily and for all the team.
Yeah! [claps]
Ha-ha!
- Whoo! - Hi, guys.
I am truly happiest when I've gone and done something
that feels full,
and sort of took me to all the spectrums of emotion,
where I've been scared, elated, uncomfortable,
or felt like I'm gonna fail.
Had to try really hard.
Whoo!
Honestly, it just feels that much more rewarding.
♪ ♪
I hope that that mentality of exploration and curiosity
and adventure inspires other people
to kind of find their own--
find their own form of that.
[bird calls]
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[bright tone]