Himatschal: Watching People Climb Mountains in 1930

Is this for you?

If you like watching old grainy footage of people in wool sweaters freezing their fingers off, then yes, dive in. If you need a plot, snappy dialogue, or anything resembling a coherent pace, you should probably just watch The Fall Guy instead.

This isn't a movie you watch for the story. It's a movie you watch because you want to see what 1930s mountain gear looked like. Spoiler: It looks uncomfortable. 🏔️

The sheer scale of it

There are moments where the camera just sits there, capturing the wind whipping across the snow. It feels incredibly lonely. You realize nobody is coming to save these people if they slip.

I found myself staring at the background extras—well, the climbers—wondering if they were actually having fun or just trying to survive the day. Some of the shots of the mountain peaks are genuinely dizzying, even with the scratches on the film reel.

Oddly specific observations

• The silence is heavy. There’s no dramatic score telling you how to feel, just the sound of the wind and, occasionally, someone breathing really hard.
• The way they handle the equipment makes my back ache. How did they walk in those boots?
• Hettie Dyrenfurth stands out because she’s doing the exact same brutal climb as everyone else, yet she barely gets a moment to catch her breath on screen.

The movie gets noticeably better when it stops trying to be a formal expedition report and just shows the mountain. It’s wild that they even got these shots back then. Some of the angles look like they were taken by someone dangling off a ledge by a single rope.

It’s not a masterpiece. It’s just a long, cold, and slightly messy look at people doing something incredibly dangerous for the sake of science and vanity. You can practically feel the frostbite through the screen. ❄️

I wouldn't call it "breathtaking" in the way modern documentaries are. It’s just… honest. It doesn't care if you're bored. It’s just going to show you another mountain, and then another one, and then another one.

Honestly, I think I prefer this over something like Westfront 1918 for a Sunday afternoon. At least nobody is shooting at anyone else. They’re just fighting the rocks.