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Sacred Himalayan peak Meru Peak in northern India, at nearly 22,000 feet, may not be the tallest mountain in the world, but it is one of the most difficult to climb. It’s so difficult that, at least prior to this documentary’s footage, it had never been scaled successfully, even by several of the world’s best mountain climbers who’ve tried repeatedly, ultimately failing once they get to the precipitous “Shark’s Fin” of the mountain’s central of three peaks, where climbing is slow, the harsh climate is freezing, and the places to rest nearly nonexistent.
Meru documents both a 2008 and a 2011 attempt by Jimmy Chin, who put much of this film together, along with his longtime climbing partner Conrad Anker and ultra-athletic free-climber Renan Ozturk, to scale the complicated peak before the hundreds of pound of food and other necessary supplies runs out that would make success an impossibility.