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Why climb a mountain? Really, there’s only one answer: to prove that you can – to yourself, to other people, to the world at large. Is that a good enough reason? Not always, as demonstrated by this thought-provoking but ultimately not particularly revealing documentary about Norwegian mountaineer Kristin Harila.
From the off, we know this won’t be a straightforwardly inspiring tale of an ordinary person performing incredible feats against all the odds. That, despite Harila being relatively ordinary – a competitive cross-country skier in her youth, she was working for a furniture company when she took up mountain climbing – and her indisputably incredible achievements. In 2023, she obliterated the speed record for reaching the world’s 14 highest peaks; the previous fastest time was just over six months; Harila did it in 92 days. The glory, however, was short-lived. In retrospect, the experience was “hell and a nightmare”, she says. Not so much because of the climbs themselves – although the mountainside footage suggests hellish and nightmarish to be broadly accurate descriptors – but because of something that happened during the final ascent, which cast a particularly bleak shadow over all of Harila’s efforts.
Savage Mountain begins at the start of Harila’s expedition. Having already spent half a million dollars on a previous attempt, which was scuppered by permit issues, she sells her flat to raise funds while trying and mostly failing to get corporate sponsorship. Logistical nightmares abound; Harila and the expedition company she hired to provide logistical support, Seven Summit Treks, are at the mercy of seasonal constraints, unpredictable conditions and yet more bureaucratic red tape. Eventually, a schedule is drawn up and Sherpas employed – and when Harila’s money does run out, Seven Summit Treks covers the costs.
Trailed by various cameramen, Savage Mountain shows just what it takes to climb these peaks. It is extremely difficult – the slightest misjudgment can result in death for the entire team, while exhaustion must be overcome by sheer force of will (at one point we see Harila scale a mountain while suffering from food poisoning, stopping repeatedly to spew orange vomit into the snow). But it is also, in a way, very simple. For Harila, this paradox seems to be the appeal: climbing reduces life to the intense, all-consuming but also uncomplicated act of putting one foot in front of the other.
Off the mountain, however, things do get complicated, as multiple narratives swirl around Harila’s accomplishments. She proffers a couple herself: her feats are proof that women are just as strong as men, while her insistence that the same Sherpa accompany her on all her ascents – and therefore share her record – will rectify history’s disregard for these Nepali mountain guides, who have frequently perished assisting westerners. Admirable in theory, but undoubtedly riskier for the Sherpa, a shy father of two, Tenjen “Lama” Sherpa.
Then there’s the unexpected tragedy that ends up tainting everything. While climbing the final peak, K2, Harila and her team find a man – Mohammad Hassan, a porter employed by another expedition company (although the documentary doesn’t make this very clear) – hanging upside down from a rope. Although some climbers try to save him, they don’t succeed. By the time they descend, Hassan has died.
Initially, Harila does not mention this event to the media, so when it is reported weeks later, people are horrified. It is horrifying, but this documentary implies there is nothing Harila could or should have done differently, bar having told the story herself from the outset and therefore commandeered the narrative. Regardless, she is inundated with horrendous abuse online and sponsors desert her, leaving her in $700,000 (£520,000) of debt.
But worse is to come. Lama, now a treasured friend, has acquired a reputation as a Sherpa who can help break records. In October 2023, he is killed by an avalanche while assisting a mountaineer who was racing to become the first American woman to summit the same 14 peaks as Harila.
Harila is floored by this news, and sets up a foundation in his memory. We are left with the sense that competitive mountain climbing can be a toxic pursuit, especially when climbers try to attract sponsors by performing “extraordinary” feats, as Harila puts it. In fact, she seems so disillusioned that I was surprised to discover what happened after filming finished: she went back to her record-breaking ways, and this year became the first woman to complete the Everest “triple crown”.
These records seem pretty hollow in light of the human cost, but those who pursue them clearly feel they’re worth the risk. Savage Mountain does lightly psychoanalyse Harila, tracing back her steeliness and self-sufficiency to her childhood, but it also has an almost hagiographic cosiness with its subject that means it never asks the difficult questions required to elicit proper insight. Harila is certainly no villain, but you may be left unconvinced that her expensive and extremely dangerous hobby makes her much of a hero either.
