“The Summit” participants didn’t know they had to climb

Jon Krakauer once said about mountaineering: “There’s something about being afraid, being small, forced humility that draws me to climbing.” The participants of The summit perhaps take this idea too literally. The 16 Americans flew to New Zealand to travel 100 miles by climbing the country’s Southern Alps (the highest peak is 12,218 feet) in 14 days, all with $1 million in cash. But somehow none of them seem to know they signed up, you know? climb a real mountaina revelation that is simultaneously cruel and morbidly hilarious. Forced humility makes good television!

The summit is based on an Australian reality series that premiered in 2023. But when moderator Manu Bennett greets the participants with “Your challenge is to reach the summit,” their reaction is this The traitors made the housemates recognize bird calls: blank faces and shocked exclamations everywhere. “To achieve that?” asks one participant. “Honey, that’s a damn big mountain,” says another. To which I Ask: What was in the casting call for this show? How do you sign up for a reality competition that requires a certain level of outdoor know-how and physical and mental preparation, but then lacks that outdoor know-how and physical and mental preparation? Not every show can have participants at that level Physical: 100and of course not every person who signs up Survivors, The Amazing Race, The challenge, Naked and afraid, Aloneor any other survival competition will take place at the highest physical level. But at least these casts have it some Idea of ​​what to expect. The first leader of the The summit Participants don’t know how to read a map!

Of course, this is “reality” television, so it’s possible The summit The cast did everything for the cameras. But I’m more inclined to say, “No, these people agreed to go to a strange place and do something vague without knowing how wild it would be,” because many of them are extremely unprepared for this climb. Most say they are there to prove something to themselves, to younger people in their lives, or to those who underestimate them because of how they look, act, or sound. But to quote Krakauer again: “Mountains are bad containers for dreams.” A mountain is not the place to train your shit!

As they begin their climb in the premiere, one competitor faints, several struggle under the weight of cash and camping gear in their backpacks (another hands his backpack to another competitor), and one of the toughest competitors reveals himself to be deathly afraid of the heights have. Several players convince themselves that they will succeed because they managed to run a few miles in a day; The goal is to run about seven times a day, hitting regular checkpoints along the way. However, on the first night the group will have to sleep outside if they do not reach the first accommodation on time. Apparently none of these people were watching Triple limita very funny film in which a group of mostly hot American veterans fight to carry millions of dollars they stole from a drug lord up a mountain. If a bunch of super-fit ex-military guys couldn’t handle such a challenge, why do this bunch of normal guys think they can? A serious error in judgment!

To be fair, some of the participants are also ex-military, a few are ex-college athletes, and there’s one guy who looks like he does a lot of CrossFit and very pretentiously says it’s his “pet peeve” when “The people outside are shapeless and unhealthy.” Again, this is not the same as knowing how to climb a mountain, an activity that requires endurance, strong calves and ankles, breathing training when reaching greater heights, knowledge of ice climbing tools such as crampons and axes as well as intense concentration and awareness of your own body. Participants get trapped when crossing rope bridges, but you can’t just slip on a ridge; A sprained ankle can have devastating consequences.

This indescribable quality exists The summit a grimly fascinating voyeurism – and solves ageism and ability discrimination among both the younger, thinner contestants (who assume they will automatically succeed) and the viewers (who may reflexively judge the older, less thin contestants for their slower pace). out of. “You must travel together,” Bennett commands, but the challenges are designed to sow division. Participants who walk more slowly are blamed for slowing the group’s pace. The first time they cross the rope bridge, they must vote for a leader who will decide which pairs will cross the bridge together, a decision-making process that encourages mutual comments about weight and height. On the second bridge, which is crossed by individuals alone to lay out wooden planks for those following, one participant says she is too petite to handle the plank, while another says he is so fit that he can handle it with two boards. (He drops both.)

Then there are the instructions of the mysterious “Mountain Guardian,” a sort of secondary host who acts as the “eye” of the mountain, forcing participants to abandon those left behind. A larger man collapses while a woman sniffs that maybe he’s just craving sugar; The younger members of the group complain about an older participant’s request for a water break. When money is at stake there should be no expectation Great British baking show– Companionship in style. But even for a series in such a recognizable format, The summit inspires some of the quickest, snap judgments based on physicality I’ve ever seen.

The problem with The summit Falling into a thick, thin, young-old binary is that, in reality, none of these people should be tasked with climbing “through dizzying heights, a freezing alpine lake, and a perilous glacier crossing” to a “final icy ascent.” “, as Bennett puts it. I don’t think this show will kill anyone. But I think The summit is guilty of precisely flattening a dangerous experience that Krakauer warned about Into the aira first-person account of the 1996 Mount Everest disaster that left scores of climbers dead and others stranded on the mountain in the midst of a devastating storm. Krakauer wrote about how the sudden popularity of mountaineering made people believe they were physically and mentally capable of doing things they probably shouldn’t be doing. Wrapping an extreme activity into something beautiful and accessible to a group of people with no experience makes for entertaining television that follows the rhythms of reality TV intrigue and strategy. But as one of the series’ first villains, a 28-year-old woman who brags about how well she did on her SATs (suspiciously without mentioning the actual score) is described The summit‘s challenge through Legally blonde – “What, like it’s hard?” – I can’t help but think: Yeah, it probably should be.