It’s a popular drawing by French artist Samivel published in his collection Sous l’oeil des choucas in 1937. The first box of the strip shows two mountaineers climbing a small, debonair peak in bright sunshine, one of them with his hands in his pockets. In the second and last box, the same two climbers are grappling with a tapering pinnacle under a threatening sky. Subtitle: Their First Ascent : How they do it… and how they tell it. Or how to make fun of the boastful mountaineers who populate mountain huts, cafes – and today’s internet.
The story here is a different, because the two climbers – Josh Warton and Vince Anderson – are not boasters, and more importantly, they did indeed make an important first ascent of Jirishanca, Peru, completing a route previously attempted by another rope party and then by themselves. Their sponsor has made a film of it, with absolutely spectacular aerial images.
The problem is that the American team is seen alone at the summit, while on the same day, and at the same time, a Canadian team, Alik Berg and Quentin Roberts, also reached the summit. They climbed another new route, which earned them a Piolet d’Or in 2023.
As we explained, it seems strange that the drone shot of the summit does not include the Canadian team, nor does the film mention their presence, despite the fact that this summit had not been reached for…nineteen years. Has the video sequence been edited? What’s certain is that the Canadians are neither shown nor mentioned in the film. Of course, each team climbed separately, but what’s to be thought of this “omission”?
Photo check : Alik Berg, one of the Canadians, joins the Americans at the summit of Jirishanca. © Smith / Patagonia
Video Capture : the two Americans at the top. Where’s the Canadian? © Smith / Patagonia
Reached by phone, Quentin Roberts, one of the two Canadian climbers, wondered, he tells us, if anyone would notice that Alik Berg, his climbing companion, had been deleted from the footage.
Without wanting to add fuel to the fire, Quentin Roberts says that “it’s very important to be completely fair about the story [filmed here, ed. note] of an ascent.” And he wonders why the Americans didn’t say no. “So much of climbing is about trust and honesty,” he says. But clearly, the film’s director(s) have no such qualms. In reality, how far does the omission go? And when does the falsification begin?
So much of climbing is about trust and honesty. Quentin Roberts
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Jirishanca, the film, is not an isolated case. This year, an expedition’s team sent us a set of photos, one of which had clearly been altered to add salt to the adventure, albeit completely invented (the photo, not the expedition).
How far should we go, against the supposed values of mountaineering, to validate or not a performance, a summit? Or simply know the circumstances ? Require raw photos (and videos)? Check all GPX segments or tracks? Surely as hackable as a video sequence. Achieving a first, a feat, is beautiful. Telling it honestly is better.
Update November 27:
Quentin Roberts’ fellow climber, Alik Berg, wrote a post on instagram.
“The producers had to make some tough decisions when editing the otherwise spectacular summit footage, and I can respect that. However, altering the images to this extent does not strike me as sincere to the viewer, since the film is presented as a documentary.” Alik Berg concludes, “The whole time Josh and Vince were here [at the summit], I was too. So yes, the drone footage showing Josh and Vince at the summit was edited to remove the third person,” namely himself.