K2 has earned its nickname the "Savage
Mountain" because the second highest mountain in the world suffers
no fools. At the beginning of the 2004
climbing season, Mount Everest had been climbed over 2,000 times,
but only 196 people had climbed K2,
and only five of
them were women. Today all five
of those pioneering female alpinists are
dead. The documentary
Women of
K2
and its companion book
Savage Summit
both tell the story of this fearsome
mountain through the tragic stories of
the women who tried, succeeded
and perished climbing it, as well as the
broad, rich history of this remote
mountain through its first female explorers.
Women
of K2
and
Savage Summit
also ask difficult and controversial
questions of its female climbers as well
as the climbing community: Are women
physiologically and emotionally prepared
for the rigors of this most deadly
mountain? Do they too often rely on strong male climbing partners to
get them up and off the mountain alive?
And because of
ready access to sponsors and media, do
women climbers attempt technically
difficult and dangerous high-profile
mountains, like K2, before they have
learned the ropes on lesser mountains, endangering themselves
and their climbing partners? Both the
film and book go beyond what any
mountaineering or adventure narratives has before because they are
the first to examine these climbing controversies
and the Savage
Mountain through the hearts, minds and
experiences of its female pioneers.
Like Into Thin Air,
The Perfect Storm
and Maurice Herzog's
Annapurna before it,
Savage
Summit explores the
breath-taking thrill of life-threatening
endeavor, but it also does so through its often overlooked
and under-valued participants,
women. Finally, it questions whether
women mountaineers face a double
standard defined and imposed by men who
resent their imposition into the still very-male world
of high altitude climbing.
Jennifer
Jordan's statement: Ironically, I too have become a woman
of K2, not
because I've climbed on its lethal slopes, but because I made two
trips to the mountain in three years and
am probably the only person to visit both sides
of this fearsome giant with no intention
of climbing either. My near-obsession with this mountain
of "rock and
ice and storm and
abyss," as an early explorer called it, began the moment I heard
that each of the five who had climbed
the mountain was dead. I had been interviewing American climber
Charlotte Fox in 1998 when she looked up from an obituary in a
climbing magazine and said, "Chantal
Mauduit just died on Dhaulagiri. She's the last one. Now all
of the women
who've climbed K2 are dead." I didn't
even know what K2 was, never mind where
or what women she was referring to, but
in the years since that fateful afternoon on Fox's Aspen, Colorado
porch, I have come to know the five women
with a love and tenderness journalists
often gain of their research subjects. I
learned that one of the
women of
K2 refused to turn back from her
summit bid, even though she must have
known the alternative was death as she laid cold
and dying in a snow cave.
And I had read that before another
of the women
left K2 base camp for her last
summit bid, she answered letters to her
two young children eager for their "Mummy" to return home - couldn't
she come home now? She never did. I had spoken to another climber's
brother and learned that his younger
sister had a love for life that often made her jump without looking
for a safety net, a carefree -- and some
charged careless -- joie de vie that eventually may have cost her
that life. And I had learned that
another of the
women of K2
had already seen six deaths on the mountain by the time she made her
summit bid during the mountain's
deadliest climbing season in1986 -- her body would be among the
year's staggering toll of thirteen. Who
were these women
and why did they choose a life on the edge
of death? Why did they die,
and why did one mountain claim so many
of them? How did they make the decision
to leave family, husbands and children
to venture into the world's highest and
most deadly playground? Did their gender have a hand in their
deaths? And while the mountain may not
have cared that they were women, were
there other forces at work that did? While grim
and gruesome, the questions haunted me
and I knew I had to learn more than books
and memoirs could provide. So when I
received an invitation to join an expedition to the mountain, I knew
I had to go. And I did. Today, the
National Geographic documentary "Women
of K2"
and by book "Savage
Summit" are the results.
Jennifer Jordan is
an award-winning author, filmmaker and
screenwriter, with over twenty-five years experience as a
journalist, broadcast producer, radio and
television news anchor, voice-over/narration talent
and motivational speaker. She created,
wrote, and co-produced
Women
of K2
for the National Geographic Channel which won five major film
festivals. She is the author of
Savage
Summit: The Life
and Death of the First
Women of
K2, (William Morrow 2005),
which won the 2005 National Outdoor Book Award for Best Mountain
Literature and was selected as an
Editors' Choice by the New York Times Book Review. She currently
speaks on a variety of motivational
topics to national and international
audiences. She also teaches documentary filmmaking at Spy Hop
Productions, Utah's innovative youth media center which has as its
mission "to cultivate the visions and
voices of an emerging generation."
Jordan spent the better part of the
1990s at WGBH-FM in Boston where she anchored National Public
Radio's All Things Considered.
She also worked with the acclaimed WGBH Channel 2, public
television's most prolific production house, as an on-air talent,
segment producer and host, researcher
and writer. Before Jordan joined WGBH
she created, produced, hosted and
marketed her own talk show which she syndicated nationally via NPR's
satellite network. In addition to her broadcast experience, Jordan
wrote numerous cover stories for various Boston periodicals on
topics ranging from famed mountaineer and
filmmaker David Breashears to movie star brothers Donnie
and Mark Wahlberg. Previously, she
directed Harvard University's leading speakers' arena, The Forum at
the John F. Kennedy School of
Government. Along with hosting presidents and
prime ministers, she helped produce "Candidates '88," a 13-week
television series aired live on PBS stations nationwide. After
leaving the Kennedy School, she consulted for Harvard's Radcliffe
College, organizing women's conferences
throughout the country. She co-owns and
operates Skyline Ventures Productions with her husband, filmmaker
and adventurer Jeff Rhoads, in Salt Lake
City, where she spends as much of her
free time as possible exploring the back country
of the Wasatch Mountains, as well as
competing in triathlons and
ultra-distance trail runs.
