A Dispatch from Dave: Dubai: Land of Plenty

As Adam said, this place is like a cross between the Mall of America and Las Vegas.

Had the pleasure of seeing how little ice remains as we flew over Canada and Greenland, though the perpetual sunset is nice. Off to Islamabad in thirty minutes.

--Dave

Off to Pakistan

Dave and Adam are on their way to K2 in Pakistan (or will be in about ten minutes, when their flight takes off -- and really not even then, since they're flying through San Francisco and Dubai). Watch this space for updates and hopefully some photos sent back from the mountain.

Seattle International Film Festival

Went to two screenings of films today.

Earlier today I went to a screening at the Seattle Center of :"Three Minute Masterpieces," a short film contest held by SIFF and the Seattle Times. The film I shot was called "Three Minutes of Movie Masterpieces."

Timothy Watkins and Charles Forsgren's pastiche of movie history, filmed in and around Seattle, lampoons "Casablanca," "Psycho" and other screen classics.

I shot in on my HVX200, but unfortunately, they screened a version they'd downloaded off YouTube, so the quality was not very good at all.

The second film, "Black Coffee" directed by Tran Quoc Bao and written by Charles Forsgren and Tim Watkins was made for SIFF'S Fly Film Challenge. Shot on black and white 16mm film it was in the noir genre with nods to hitchcock. I was only a PA and so can't say I contributed anything much. But it was satisfying to see it up on screen. Good job everyone.

Lung Test at fourteen four

Thought I'd go test my lungs out before leaving for Pakistan. Climbed Gibraltar ledges on Mt. Rainier with photographer and artist Kendall Dewey.

Tried out a pair of La Sportiva's Olympus Mons boots too.

Conclusion: these are the warmest, most comfortable boots I've ever had.


And yes, my lungs still work.

Also, I did a sweet headstand. Well, maybe not sweet. But i did a headstand.

K2 and Broad Peak Expedition

We are pleased to be announcing that we've got some Summer plans worked out. While the prospect of loading the kids into the truck and hauling the Airstream around the great campgrounds of the West was very appealing, we have instead opted for a working vacation in Pakistan.

K2 and Broad peak, the second and twelfth highest mountains in the world are located right across from each other in the Karakoram mountains of Pakistan. K2 has been the scene of many notable expeditions, including one led by occultist and "wickedest man in the world," Aleister Crowley. We, however will be concerning ourselves with the 1909 expedition led by Luigi Amedeo, the Italian Duke of Abruzzi.

We have attached ourselves to an expedition to K2 and Broad peak being organized by Field Touring. Friend and occasional couch surfer at Ursus Films world headquarters, Fabrizio Zangrilli will be leading the K2 effort. The planned route is the SSE spur (marked in red) AKA the Cesen route after alpinist Tomo Cesen. This route is a slightly safer alternative to the Abruzzi spur (in yellow).

Dave Ohlson and Adam Forslund will be heading to Pakistan June 8th. Our primary goal is to film for a long planned documentary on the 1909 Italian expedition to K2. Besides comparing a modern day effort with the 1909 one, we are looking at the photographs taken by Vittorio Sella (images above are of the West Face of K2 and climbers in the Chogolisa icefall, 1909), recreating many of them and relating these to climate change in the Karakoram mountains. See more images of Vittorio Sella's by clicking here. Climate change in the Karakorams has many interesting facets that differentiate it from the rest of the world. While every research expedition we had hoped to accompany this Summer has cancelled due to the unrest in Pakistan, we think that accompanying this climbing expedition will allow us to make a solid start to the film. We plan to return in 2010 to follow research in the field and to do more photo recreations.

If everything goes according to plan we will be updating this blog via satellite phone every week or so. So please subscribe.

AAC Research Grant

Someone cares to fund interesting projects out there and their name is the American Alpine Club. Bless their hearts, they just awarded us the AAC Research grant for a project that will recreate historical photos in Pakistan.

The grant is small, but meaningful and hopefully by next year we'll be up and running on the ground in Pakistan. Well, maybe not running exactly. More like a saunter to be honest. And we'll have to lug around a lot of equipment so maybe it'll be more of a crawl. You get the point.

Thanks AAC!

Grant Proposals & Post Production

It's been a long week of last minute proposal writing. February 9th was the deadline for the Sundance Institute's Documentary Fund grant program. This year we submitted a proposal for a development grant. This would be money to continue developing a documentary idea of ours that involves climate change in the Karakoram mountains of Pakistan. 

The Sundance Institute and it's famous Sundance Film Festival have done a lot for independent films since the Institute's creation in the early '80's. Most notable to Seattle area people is the Institute's support for "Iraq in Fragments," the Oscar nominated film that was produced by local filmmaker James Longley, with help from John Sinno of Typecast Films.

Some people have been asking me about "Beyond Thought's Compass" and what's going on with that project. Well, "it's in post production," is what I keep telling people. But in reality it's in a sort of suspended animation. Since the Fall 2008 trip did not go exactly as planned (see my first post) we've had to decide how to wrap up the project without all the footage we'd planned on having. It's coming along, but takes time. 

We have recently found footage shot by someone else that show our injured expedition member being cared for in Gorak Shep and her helicopter evacuation the next day. I also received some pictures.

This one show our patient on the left with a few of the French doctors who helped treat her that night.

This one shows Fabrizio on the left, exhausted after a day of extraordinary effort. I'm on the right. Looking at this picture I keep thinking, "why the hell do I have a such a big smile on my face?"