Shortly after 11 A.M. on April 24, 1985, Reinhold Messner battled his way up the last few steps to the summit ridge of Annapurna. High winds and heavy fog had rolled in as he and his climbing partner, fellow Italian Hans Kammerlander, reached the upper slopes of the 26,545-foot Himalayan peak. “Again and again I felt the chunks of snow on my face, whipped up by the gale,” Messner later wrote, in a book about the climb. Both men were exhausted. They had been climbing for three days. But they were on the cusp of making history with yet another incredible first: an alpine-style ascent of the mountain’s previously unclimbed 4,000-meter northwest face—over 13,000 feet of near vertical rock and ice—without supplementary oxygen.

At the age of 40, Messner was already a legend. In 1978, he’d made the first ascent of Everest without oxygen. Two years later, he’d repeated the feat solo, catapulting himself to a whole new level of mainstream fame. The summit of Annapurna would take him one step closer to an achievement that would cement his legacy—one he’d been chasing for years. This was his 11th summit above 26,247 feet, or 8,000 meters; the 11th mountain on which he’d entered the “Death Zone,” where oxygen pressure drops so low, no human can survive for long.

There are 14 such peaks on the planet—known as the 8,000ers. Within a month, accompanied again by Kammerlander, Messner had climbed Dhaulagiri, his 12th. The following year, he reached the top of Makalu and finally, on October 16, 1986, Lhotse, becoming the first person on the planet to summit all 14.

Or at least that’s what he thought.

Since 2019, a series of revelations published on the website 8000ers.com has called into question various historic summit claims in the Himalayas. By cross-referencing 21st-century topographical data with the mass of summit photos now readily available online, a dedicated group of volunteer researchers, led by the site’s founder, Eberhard Jurgalski, has revealed that many climbers actually stopped short of the true peaks. Dhaulagiri, Manaslu, and Annapurna—the world’s 7th, 8th, and 10th highest mountains respectively—were particularly problematic, the research revealed. Thousands of mountaineers had missed the true summit of Manaslu, dozens had turned around before the top of Dhaulagiri, and only about half of those who claimed to have climbed Annapurna had actually stood on the highest point of its long summit ridge. Among those who’d stopped short of Annapurna’s actual peak, they discovered, was Reinhold Messner.

Initially, Messner’s public response to this news was measured. His own account of the climb had proved a key piece of evidence, after all. In his 2000 book Annapurna, he’d written that he and Kammerlander could see their base camp from the top. But this, according to the researchers, was impossible given the climbers’ locations, leaving them to conclude that the Italian pair had stopped at a high point called the Ridge Junction, 215 feet and 16 vertical feet short of the true summit. In a 2021 interview with The New York Times, Messner acknowledged the possibility that he may have made a mistake. “If they say maybe on Annapurna I got five meters below the summit, somewhere on this long ridge, I feel totally OK,” he said.

The post The Man Who Took On Reinhold Messner’s Mountaineering Record appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Halfway through act one, the main character, Oscar-winning actress turned wellness guru Gwyneth Paltrow, stepped onto the stage wearing a baby pink ski suit and carrying an old pair of Rossignol skis. Paltrow made an exaggerated show of schussing, bending low and sweeping her poles back and forth as she delivered an extended monologue on the joys of skiing. Then, a conifer wheeled itself on stage to her right, with a plush-toy squirrel in its branches. To her left, a giant cardboard cutout of a deer appeared, and all three of them broke into song.

Welcome to the wonderfully campy world of Gwyneth Goes Skiing, a play that’s loosely (very loosely) based on the actress’s “ski crash trial,” which played out in a Park City, Utah, courtroom last March. Initially scheduled for a ten day pre-Christmas run at the Pleasance Theater in London, UK, the sold-out show—which I was lucky enough to secure a ticket for—has proved so popular that it’s now been booked to return at the beginning of February.

The Paltrow seen on stage was, of course, not the Goop founder herself, but actor Linus Karp in drag. The skiing was hilariously fake too—it was mostly “Paltrow” wiggling her butt as a few paper snowflakes were blown around by an underpowered fan. The cardboard cutout of the deer, by contrast, spoke and sang in the real voice of Leland—a Los Angeles-based composer, producer, and songwriter for the likes of Cher and Selena Gomez who has been nominated for real-life Golden Globe and Grammy awards. The story of how these various elements came together in a small, 200-seat theater, thousands of miles from Utah, is almost as surreal as the action on stage.

Those who watched the ski crash trial—if they watched it at all—did so with a mixture of incredulity and awe: incredulity at the pettiness of the charges brought against Paltrow by retired Utah optometrist Terry Sanderson, who sued her her over a crash on the slopes of Deer Valley, and awe at the vast sums they each spent on lawyers to defend themselves. As Linus Karp and his writing partner Joseph Martin watched the case unfold, however, they saw a musical comedy in the making.

“Whispering, ‘I wish you well’ to him at the end of the trial, as she walks out of the courtroom? That’s theater,” Martin said with admirtion, when we met in the Pleasance’s cozy bar a few hours before the show. “There were a number of those things,” added Karp, who squeezed in cross-legged next to them on a tiny sofa. The pair, who both identify as queer, have a kindred sense of humor and frequently finish each other’s sentences. “She’s interesting because she’s not just a Hollywood star,” Karp said. “There are so many sides to her, there’s the Goop side, naming a child Apple, consciously uncoupling
” “And taking this LA life and sticking her in a courtroom in Utah, that’s already bizarre
” Martin added. “And then you have that lawyer who was asking things like ‘are you friends with Taylor Swift?’ Or ‘how tall are you?’” Karp continued, “there were so many ridiculous lines in there.”

While the show is packed full of surreal gags that the pair wrote themselves, many of the strangest sentences are lifted directly from the court transcripts. “Some of the verbatim stuff is so ridiculous, and our dialogue as a writing duo is also ridiculous, so I think as an audience member, if you’re not hyper aware of everything that was said in the trial, there will be moments where you’re like, I don’t know if this is verbatim or not,” Martin said.

In the play, Martin, who plays Terry Sanderson, has some bizarre—and apparently real—exchanges with the actor playing his lawyer. They also get in some great, deadpan British gags about Utah, and Deer Valley Resort itself becomes something of a running joke throughout the piece. Neither of the actors has ever been to the state, let alone the ski resort. “I’ve never set foot on a pair of skis,” explains Martin. This allows them the artistic license needed to turn the sublime—a luxurious ski destination—into the ridiculous, and gives them the freedom to imagine an entire backstory on the slopes. Later in the production, when the action turns to the courtroom and the actors have real words to work with, they go all out. When Karp delivers Paltrow’s immortal line “I wish you well” (a moment he affectionately describes as “just peak camp,”) he can’t resist making a literal song and dance out of it.

Like the real-life comedic dialogue, many of the songs in the show landed in Karp and Martin’s laps fully-formed. The pair wrote two previous shows together under their company name Awkward Productions—Diana: The Untold & Untrue Story, about the titular Princess, and How to Live a Jellicle Life: Life Lessons from 2019 Hit Movie Musical Cats. (Although the film was savaged by critics, Karp adored it.) Last summer, they were performing both shows at the Edinburgh Fringe, the massive festival of comedy and theater which takes over the Scottish capital every August, when the songwriter-producer Leland came to see both of them. “We went for dinner with him, and he was just really friendly, saying ‘if you ever need a song for one of your shows like I’d love to work with you’,” Karp said.

When they mentioned that they were working on an idea about the Paltrow trial, Leland—who serves as the resident songwriter on RuPaul’s Drag Race—revealed that he already had some ideas that might work. He’d been working on a RuPaul “rusical” segment about the ski crash case, he explained, but for logistical reasons, it had never been featured on TV. As well as his genius with music, Leland brought a level of enthusiasm to the project that both surprised and delighted Karp and Martin. “He’s been like ‘oh can we make it bigger? Can we do more?’” Karp said. “And now he’s saying ‘let’s talk in January before you reopen in February and let’s see what we can add,” says Martin.

Although the songs are a huge highlight, the creators insist that it’s a “play with music,” rather than a full-blown musical, and (without giving away too many spoilers) it’s the enforced audience participation that really steals the show. At the beginning, various unsuspecting viewers are nominated to play walk-on parts. They get dragged on stage periodically to deliver lines with the straightest faces they can muster, with predictably hilarious results. At the end, the audience is asked to act as the jury, and vote on who ‘wins’ the court case. So far, Karp’s Paltrow has won it every night, but there is, apparently, an alternative ending, should Martin’s Sanderson ever emerge victorious.

As to what the real-life antagonists would think of the play? Neither actor would speculate about Sanderson’s reaction, but Martin said that Paltrow “definitely knows about it.” Almost as soon as the play was announced, the London Times wrote a short column which was picked up Hollywood bible Variety, and from there—much like the original trial itself—it went viral. Martin and Karp, who are more used to being covered in niche comedy publications, suddenly found themselves featured on British breakfast TV, U.S. gossip sites like TMZ, and newspapers from Australia, Brazil, and Mexico. Another journalist they spoke to, the pair explained, had flown all the way from Utah just to cover that evening’s show. “When it all kicked off quite a few of the publications wrote ‘We’ve written to Gwyneth’s reps for comment,’” Martin explained. “She’s never actually commented, which is probably for the best. But Leland had a text from a friend who’s worked with her, who said she would love it.”

Despite the mockery, the pair remain fans of Paltrow. Their “piss-taking,” they explained, is born from a place of love. “I think the biggest thing that I have learnt from working on this is just how self aware she actually is,” Martin said. “You don’t release a candle called “This Smells Like My Vagina” and another one called “This Smells Like My Orgasm,” if you are not acutely aware of exactly what that does,” they said. “We’re poking fun at everyone and everything,” Karp said, “but ultimately I like to think it’s a celebration of her.” A celebration it might be, but what Paltrow would make of her on-stage avatar’s ski technique is anyone’s guess.

Tickets are on sale now for the extended run of Gwyneth Goes Skiing at London’s Pleasance Theater from January 30 to February 16.

The post We Saw the Musical Version of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Ski Trial and We’re Still Laughing appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

The hardest part, Polat Dede says, was hearing the voices calling out from under the rubble. As an experienced mountain guide, Dede, 45, has dealt with his fair share of emergencies. But nothing prepared him for the helplessness he felt working as a search and rescue volunteer in the aftermath of the catastrophic earthquake which hit Turkey on February 6, killing more than 45,000 people. “There were voices coming from the crush,” he told șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű, speaking through a translator, “and we couldn’t do anything because there were not enough people or tools to pull them out of the debris.”

Like many Turkish people, Dede was initially unaware of the scale of the destruction caused by the 7.8-magnitude quake, which struck the southeastern corner of the country near the Syrian border. He lives in the coastal city of Antalya, which is 370 miles west of the epicenter, and when the huge tremor stuck at 4:17 A.M. on a Monday, Dede was asleep. “In the early morning, no-one was aware of the situation, or how big it was,” Dede says.

As the day wore on, however, images of the disaster appeared on social media. Dede, who runs an outdoor events company, immediately stopped the work he was doing for the Tour of Antalya, a four-day professional bike race that attracts stars of the Tour de France. It was scheduled to run the following weekend, he says, and he’d been working for months on managing the finishing areas for each stage of the race. But like all major sporting events in Turkey, it was canceled. “Everyone just started to organize and prepare to go and help,” he said.

Dr. Ersan Basar, the President of Turkey’s Mountaineering Federation (TDF), contacted its members, including Dede, via WhatsApp, asking for volunteers to help with the rescue efforts. The TDF could organize the necessary travel permissions from regional governors in the affected areas, Basar’s message explained. Having guided climbers up many of Turkey’s highest peaks, including 16,850-foot Mount Ararat, Dede felt his experience in extreme environments could prove useful.

The following morning, he set out in his small sedan for Antakya, the capital of Hatay, Turkey’s southernmost province, alongside fellow mountaineers Gökalp Saklı, Serkan Ocak, and Olcay Tepe, and photographer KĂŒrƟat Bayhan.

By the time the five friends left, Dede understood that the affected area was massive—nearly three times the size of Maryland—and the communities there needed all the assistance they could get. “They needed to have a lot of help—a lot of volunteers,” he says. He estimates that around 750 TDF members, from all over Turkey, responded. Most were assigned to a particular town, or place. Dede asked for permission to go to Antakya, because he and his group had friends there.

It took them 12 hours to make the drive. As they traveled east, the scale of the disaster revealed itself slowly—the number of damaged and collapsed buildings growing by the mile. By the time they reached Antakya, at around 7:00 P.M. on February 7, the day after the quake, “everything was down, all the buildings—it was about 98 percent completely destroyed,” he says. “It was the worst destruction you can imagine. There were buildings of seven or eight floors that collapsed. In one building alone, 800 people died.”

The men initially faced the daunting task of rescuing survivors by themselves. When they first arrived, nobody from the government was there to even check the papers they’d received from the TDF. “It was only the third day after the quake that the army arrived on site and we received real help,” Dede says. In the meantime, he and his friends worked desperately with the domestic tools they’d managed to gather before their hurried departure—an angle grinder, crowbars, and shovels—and their bare hands.

Despite their initial lack of manpower and equipment, Dede and his team saved multiple lives. “From Tuesday to Sunday, we managed to pull out around 12 people alive,” he says, “but also a lot of dead bodies.” There were some miraculous recoveries, including a newborn, barely one month old. “But both the baby’s parents were dead, and a sister of three years old was dead, too,” Dede says.

Elsewhere, they found evidence of heartbreaking sacrifices. “On the first day, we rescued a five-year-old child. The kid was protected by the parents who were dead over him. They used their bodies as a shield,” he says.

The search and rescue techniques that Dede and his friends had learned from their years of mountaineering proved invaluable, he says. So did their physical stamina from endurance training. Like Dede, Saklı, and Ocak have run ultra marathons.  “Doing this for one day, two days, three days, 24 hours a day, is very difficult,” Dede says. “We spent more or less 20 hours working every day trying to rescue people, and three or four hours just to rest.”

With most of the buildings reduced to rubble, and regular aftershocks making those that remained unsafe, the friends slept in their car, resting in shifts. In the days immediately after the earthquake, a snow storm battered much of eastern Turkey. While Antakya avoided the worst of it, it was snowing when they arrived, and temperatures hovered around 35 degrees Fahrenheit at night.

“There was no electricity, phones were not working, communication was down,” says Dede. They couldn’t run the car’s engine or heater for long, because the gas stations had all been destroyed. Around them, people burned anything they could find, for warmth, and when darkness fell, they became aware of looters. “There were people stealing around us too, unfortunately,” Dede says.

If his ability to cope with cold and hardship helped, Dede says, so did the skills he’d learned as an event planner. His company, Rossist Events, runs events with up to 1,000 participants that include open-water swims, skyrunning races, and ultramarathons. “In this kind of situation, where there’s a lot of people and they don’t know what to do, it was useful to be able to coordinate people,” he says. “If there are too many people who don’t know what to do, everything can go wrong.”

Dede and his friends aren’t the only members of Turkey’s outdoor community to bring expertise, manpower, and equipment to the relief effort. In the days after the quake, 35-year-old Selahattin Sungur, a lift operator from Erciyes ski resort, led a team of nine colleagues to the area around the city of KahramanmaraƟ, close to the epicenter. They took food, tents, blankets, gloves, and snowboard boots donated by the resort’s ski rental shops. “There were 50 centimeters of snow on the ground in the villages near KahramanmaraƟ and the temperatures were 19 degrees Fahrenheit at night, so the snowboard boots were useful,” Sungur told me.

Elsewhere, Turkish ski resorts have opened their hotels to displaced survivors, since many guests have canceled their vacations. Palandöken, near the city of Erzurum, has filled nearly half of its 6,000 beds, according to Kıvanç Karapınar of the Erzurum Tourist Office. Across the Erzurum province, hotels have pledged to hold half of their rooms for quake refugees for the next eight months—more than 35,000 have already moved in.

The sheer scale of the disaster—which destroyed an estimated 25,000 buildings, leaving hundreds of thousands still sleeping in the open several weeks later—goes some way to explaining the strength of Turkey’s volunteer response. Dede says he is proud that the skills he and others learned from mountaineering allowed them to save lives. But for all his willingness to help, he remains frustrated by the government’s widely-reported failure to prepare for the earthquake, and the absence of official support.

He worries about those still sleeping out in the open, and fears that despite the lessons learned about the necessity of earthquake preparedness, little will change. “If there are people who still think that it doesn’t matter, it will happen again.”

Dede and his friends have asked that anyone who wishes help with the ongoing crisis in Turkey makes a donation to AFAD:

The post Meet the Turkish Mountain Guides Who Helped Rescue Earthquake Survivors appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.