K2 Chasing Shadows follows Benjamin Vedrines’ 2024 attempt to break K2’s FKT record, haunted by a previous failed attempt.
Vedrines has tackled projects across a range of disciplines, from endurance to piloting. In 2022, fresh off settling a Fastest Known Time on Broad Peak without supplemental oxygen, Vedrines turned to K2. Pakistan’s 8,051m Broad Peak was his first summit above 8,000m.
Vedrines on the summit of Broad Peak. Photo: Screenshot
To say this was ambitious is an understatement. Broad Peak is considered one of the least difficult and dangerous 8000’ers, while K2 is one of the deadliest.
The film follows Vedrines’ attempt, from his confident start through the long wait at Base Camp as storms halt all activity on the mountain. Behind target on acclimatizing, with the window to summit closing, Vedrines decided to make the attempt despite poor conditions. Pushing on alone, he began reporting balance issues and fatigue.
“Inshallah, it will be fine,” he says into his camera. Then he does the funniest possible thing he could after saying those words: He blacks out from hypoxia.
Vedrines paraglides on K2 in 2022, before the end of his expedition. Photo: Screenshot
Coming down from a successful summit, Mexican alpinist Erix Asdrubal found Vedrines curled up in the snow. Giving him oxygen, Asdrubal told Vedrines to use it to come down and not try for the summit. Vedrines followed his instructions, but as he descended, he tells us, he was already thinking of when he’d be able to come back.
A second attempt
While Vedrines had to wait two years, the film takes us directly to the summer of 2024. Day 39 finds him back at Base Camp. Two years ago, he didn’t visit the memorial, a collection of plaques and cairns dedicated to K2’s many fallen climbers. Now, though, he’s making a visit. Not unaware of the risks he takes, Vedrines ponders what sort of memorial he’d want if he were to die on K2.
Finally acclimatized, Vedrines heads back up onto the mountain. But though he has a big smile as he waves goodbye at Base Camp, he admits that inside, he was scared to revisit the place where he’d nearly died. Wary now, he emphasizes the need to be vigilant and go slowly.
Vedrines in 2024, revisiting the site of his near-death two years earlier. Photo: Screenshot
As he reaches the site of his previous incident, vigilance has become an anxious paranoia. Fatigue begins to pull him down, but doesn’t overtake him. Suddenly, in a strange anticlimax, he’s at the summit. The mood is not jubilant; in fact, Vedrines describes a sense of despair.
“Deep down, there was a sense of sadness because I found this distressing,” he explains, thinking that he “needs this to live…needs this to be okay in the world below.”
External success, for Vedrines, has not translated to internal peace. Photo: Screenshot
After the summit
A few days later, making a last trip up to Camp 2 to bring down equipment, Vedrines gets a distress call. Two climbers were unable to come down from Camp 3. Immediately, we watch Vedrines fill with sudden energy and purpose, setting out to reach them. When he does, it’s like confronting himself from two years earlier. One of his fellow climbers, Marco, is injured and suffering from a lack of oxygen.
Only when another climber reaches them with oxygen does Marco start to revive. Slowly, the three of them help Marco make his way down and out of danger.
It’s this, not his redemptive summit of K2, that Vedrines describes as a “full circle” moment. “Helping others is easier than helping yourself.”
