Nanga Parbat
Record of the 1934 German expedition to Nanga Parbat, led by Willy Merkl and with the full backing of the new Nazi government. Peter Aschenbrenner and Erwin Schneider reached an estimated height of 7,895m on July 6, but were forced to return because of worsening weather. On July 7 they and 14 others were trapped by a ferocious storm at 7,480m. During the desperate retreat that followed, three famous German mountaineers, Uli Wieland, Willo Welzenbach and Merkl himself, and six Sherpas died of exhaustion, exposure and altitude sickness, and several more suffered severe frostbite.
Ski Flight
Shortened version of the film 'Snow flight' distributed by Warner Bros. The film was produced by Jerome Hill as 'a document of skiing according to the principles of Hannes Schneider.' It features Otto Lang, director of the Mt Rainier and Mt Baker ski schools. As the film opens, Otto emerges from a cabin beneath Table Mountain at the Mt Baker ski area with his canine friend. He applies wax-on climbing skins to his skis. Then he steps into his bindings and climbs to a scenic ridge. The narrator describes each technique in detail as Otto demonstrates again. Several of the maneuvers are done in slow motion on a slope meticulously packed by side-stepping.
Pas à Pas
Déneigeurs
White Majesty
The mountain guide Jakob is a controversial figure. His supposed father dies and leaves behind a great heritage to the people. In the town they consider Jakob a bastard, because his parents were not married, which means that without a testament, the lands in which he lives do not belong to him. But the testament indicates that the inheritance corresponds him under a single condition, he must be the first person to climb the east face of Monte Verità. There is a French version of the film, titled 'Un de la montagne', shot the year after with the same script but with different actors and by a different director.
Mountaineers in the Allgäu Alps
A rock climbing in the Bavarian Allgäu Alps in Germany. The camera follows two mountaineers on a climb. We see all stages of the ascent, from the screes at the foot of the mountain up to the difficult ledges that require the use of pitons and belay ropes. The mountaineers ascend from Einödsbach to the Waltenberger Haus. After they have surmounted a chimney, the mountaineers eventually reach the summit. From there, they descend with ropes.
Rêve éternel
The legend says that the summit of Mont Blanc is covered in gold. This ancestral belief has obsessed Jacques Balmat, a mountain guide, from his childhood. Now only he believes in the legend, and is the laughingstock of the villagers. Determined to prove that he is right, he takes advantage of the interest of the Swiss naturalist and physicist Horace Benedict de Saussure, who promises a reward of a thousand pieces of gold for the first who reaches the summit. The determination of Jacques Balmat will overcome the numerous obstacles that will arise during the ascent. French version of the film 'Der Konig vom Mont Blanc', in which the second-tier actors are different.
Three on a Rope
This short looks at the sport of rock climbing. A team of three men ascend a rock wall on Southern California's Tahquitz Rock (also known as Lily Rock) above Idyllwild. The various climbing techniques are explained, as well as the dangers one encounters in this sport. We also see the team rappel from the summit. A second team, used for comic relief, has nothing but problems.
Premières de cordée
Ceux d'en haut
With the Camera to Nanga Parbat
Record of the 1937 German Expedition to Nanga Parbat, led by Karl Wien. This was the third German expedition to the mountain, and the team followed the same route than the 1932 and 1934 expeditions, led by Willy Merkl by the Rakhiot Face. During the ascent, progress was made, but more slowly than previous expeditions due to heavy snowfalls. Sometime between 14 and 16 June, Wien was camped with other six German climbers and nine Sherpas at Camp IV, below Rakhiot Peak, when it was overwhelmed by a massive avalanche. All sixteen men were killed in what remains as the worst single disaster ever to occur on an eight thousand meter peak. Uli Luft, Carl Troll and Dawa Thondup, who stood at the base camp, were the only survivors of the German and Sherpa teams respectively. The film shows images of the members of the rescue team, led by Paul Bauer, that arrived one month later.
Bergeller Kletterbissen
Three rock climbing ascents in Val Bregaglia, Italy by Karl Freimann and Philipp Wieland, who made the first ascent of Fiamma in 1936. The film starts with valley scenes. Wieland and Freimann climb up the waterfall to the old Albigna hut. Then they start the heavy climbing work on the extremely exposed needle of Fiamma in a repetition of their first ascent two years before. The team also climbs the needle of Ago di Sciora and Monte Sissone. A film by Werner Stauffacher and Swiss mountain photographer Andreas Pedrett.
Liesels schönste Kletterfahrt
The film is presented as a climbing film from Tirol's mountain world based on an idea by Kurt Maix, and it's a touristical film of the series 'Bilder aus Österreich' (Pictures of Austria). A man and a woman leave the city to go to the mountains of the Austrian Tirol to make some rock climbing. They spend one night at a mountain hut and next morning they walk up to the base of the wall and start climbing. The couple, with the man always leading, overcome a series of difficult passages and reach the summit. There they sign in the book of ascents with the names of Peter Martin and Lial, and start the descent doing several rappels.
Conquest of Nanda Kot
Record of the Japanese expedition to Nanda Kot (6861m) in Himalaya in 1936. The expedition was organized by the Mountaineering Club of the Rikkyo University and included Sakuta Takebushi, who had represented Japan at the Olympic Games. They were the first to climb the mountain and carried a camera to the summit. Six party members made it all the way to the top, using all-Japanese gear. The party, without previous Himalayan experience, had been training in in the Japanese Alps in winter conditions.