Only a handful of climbers are worthy of the label “legend” but certainly John Roskelley is one of them. We are so excited to announce that John will be making a return trip to present at Ice Fest! John will be presenting his new film Nanda Devi: The Tragic Expedition 50 Years Later, during Thursday evening’s programming. You can also catch John teaching one of our clinics or at the Mountain Books program where he will be signing The Roskelley Collection which includes this legendary climbers three acclaimed books, together for the first time in one volume and all written with opinion, self-reflective humor, and spellbinding adventure.
Nanda Devi: The Tragic Expedition 50 Years Later.
The film examines the 1976 American-Indian expedition to Nanda Devi, led by two prominent American mountaineers, Willi Unsoeld and Ad Carter. Carter had participated in the 1936 British-American expedition that made the first ascent of Nanda Devi. On August 29, 1936, British climbers Bill Tilman and Noel Odell reached the summit, completing one of the landmark achievements in Himalayan mountaineering.
Forty years later, Willi Unsoeld’s daughter, Nanda Devi Unsoeld, whose father had named her after the mountain, encouraged Unsoeld and Carter to assemble a team of climbers, friends, and family to attempt a new route up the mountain’s northwest face in commemoration of the first ascent.
The expedition comprised eleven American men and women and two Indian mountaineers. Despite illness, internal tensions, monsoon conditions, and an exceptionally difficult high-altitude route, the team succeeded in putting three climbers on the summit.
Tragedy struck during the second summit attempt when Nanda Devi Unsoeld died at a high camp. The film explores the complexities of expedition dynamics, the leadership challenges and decisions that shaped the climb, and the circumstances surrounding the expedition’s summit success and the death of Nanda Devi.
John Roskelley
Author and photographer, John Roskelley, is a dabbler in everything outdoors. If he’s not dodging rocks on some alpine face in Canada or scratching his way up a frozen WI5 waterfall, John can be found paddling the Columbia River from source to mouth. John admits adventuring flows in his blood. In his first half century, John fought his way up four 8,000-meter peaks, including K2 and Everest, plus a plethora of devilishly hard, unclimbed shorter Himalayan and Karakorum faces and ridges. A graduate of WSU in geology, John has written four adventure books and in 2014 a paddler’s guidebook to the entire 1200 miles of the Columbia River. His photography has been on the cover of National Geographic, multiple book covers, posters, and other notable national magazines. John received the International Piolets d’Or Walter Bonatti Lifetime Achievement award in 2014 and was recently made an honorary member of the AAC.