How Conrad Anker Risked It All to Chase a Dream - Outside Magazine
How Conrad Anker Risked It All to Chase a Dream After winning the coveted audience award at Sundance, the documentary 'Meru' is getting a nationwide theatrical release next month. Then, when Meru won the audience award at its Sundance premiere in January—an honor that typically presages Oscar nominations, as was the case with 2013’s The Square —Chin realized that he’d created more than a climbing film. “I finally said what I’ve been trying to say for so long,” says Chin of the effort. It’s a 90-minute explanation of why he and his friends risk so much, and it succeeds not because the climbing is crazy—though it is—but because it’s a well-told coming of age for three mountain-obsessed men who refuse to give up on their dream... “Meru is the culmination of all I’ve done and all I’ve wanted to do,” says Anker in one of the opening interviews. Anker’s wildly successful and tragic climbing life sits at the center of the movie. Meru tells the story of all three men but connects them with Anker’s personal history: of losing his climbing partner Alex Lowe in a Himalayan avalanche in 1999 and then marrying Lowe’s widow and adopting his three children. Anker’s first mentor, the late Terrence “Mugs” Stump, tried the climb in 1988 and failed. Source: www.outsideonline.com
