REI, North Face, and National Geographic Band Together for The Wildest Dream
Travel News — By Ben Van Loon on June 30, 2010 at 11:14 amMount Everest is the king of the world, standing as tall as a passenger-plane’s cruising altitude. It sticks up into the sky intimidating the curious and inspiring the bold. Over the years of mountaineering, thousands of attempts on its summit have been made with only 2,249 having been successfully accomplished and over 200 lives lost.
Everest has peaked the Western explorers’ interest since the 1800s. Though Englishman Clinton Thomas Dent proposed in the late 1800s that an ascent on the mountain was possible, the feat was not actually attempted until 1921 by the English mountaineer George Mallory. On the first mission, Mallory and his team made it to the mountain’s North Col, 22,989ft. above sea level. George Mallory returned the next year with the expedition leaders Charles Granville Bruce and Edward Lisle Strutt, at which time they made it up 26,985ft. before returning.
In 1924, Mallory made his last attempt on the mountain, and as the incidents of the climb unfolded, it would be the last time anyone saw him until his body was discovered in 1999 by the Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition. You can read more about Mallory in his biography, which is as informative as it is terrifying.
In fact, the history and lore surrounding Mallory has been so inspiring that a documentary called The Wildest Dream, set to be release this year, has been made about modern-day climber Conrad Anker’s mission to follow Mallory’s path up the mountain. For mountaineers, travelers, and those awed by the splendor of Everest, the documentary promises to be both beautiful and sobering.
In anticipation of the film produced by National Geographic, outdoor retailers REI and The North Face have teamed together to support the release of the film by hosting a variety of in-store events and creating tons of new movie-based merchandise. The retailers hope to inspire their customers, who often bring the respective brands’ products on their own expeditions.
[Image: bigmoviezone]
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