Deadly Ascent
Denali rises more than 20,000 feet in the Alaska Range, close enough to the Arctic Circle that its weather can flip from clear to lethal within hours. Known to climbers simply as the mountain that kills, it has taken the lives of experienced mountaineers who underestimated its storms and altitude. This film follows climbers attempting the summit, tracking their preparation, their route decisions, and the moments when the mountain's conditions turn against them. Interviews with the climbers themselves and with experts who study Denali's weather and terrain sit alongside footage shot on the ascent, showing the physical toll of thin air and subzero wind at altitude. The film does not treat the danger as an abstraction: it stays with the specific hazards, crevasses, whiteouts, sudden storms, that have made Denali one of the deadliest peaks attempted by climbers from around the world. What comes through is why people keep coming back to a mountain with that record, and what it actually takes, physically and mentally, to get near the top of it.