Garret in new film about K2 climbing disaster

Some will know local man Garrett Phillips as a singer, some will know him as the actor playing the dishy doctor in TG4’s soap, Ros na Rún but this Friday a film documentary he features in will be premiered in London.

The Summit, a feature length documentary about the deadliest day in modern mountain climbing history, has also been nominated Best Documentary in the London Film festival which kicks off on Friday in Leicester Square.

The winners of the Grierson Award for Best Documentary will be announced at the end of the festival on October 20 at a ceremony in Whitehall, London.

In August 2008, 24 climbers from several international expeditions converged on High Camp of K2, the last stop before the summit of the most dangerous mountain on earth. Forty hours later, 11 had been killed or had vanished, making it the worst K2 climbing disaster in history.

In a century of assaults on K2, only about 300 people have ever seen the view from the planet’s second highest peak. More than a quarter of those who made it didn’t live long enough to share the glory or to tell the tale.

In The Summit Garret Phillips, who also starred in Deception on TV3, portrays the role of Wilco van Rooijen, lead climber of the Dutch Norit team.

“We had a wonderful experience shooting on location in Grindelwald, Switzerland for a month last year. The film is a gripping re-enactment of the utter tragedies which occurred that fateful day in August 2008, and hopefully it will shine a light on the true heroism of Irishman Ger McDonnell, a modern day, unsung Irish hero,” says Garrett.

Director Nick Ryan adds: “At the heart of The Summit lies a mystery about one extraordinary man, Ger McDonnell from Limerick. By all accounts, he was faced with a heartbreaking dilemma — at the very limit of his mortal resources, he encountered a disastrous scene and a moral dilemma: three climbers tangled up in ropes and running out of time. In the death zone, above 8,000 metres, the body is literally dying with each passing second. Morality is skewed 180 degrees from the rest of life. When a climber falls or wanders off the trail, the unwritten code of the mountain is to leave them for dead. Had Ger McDonnell stuck to the climbers’ code, he might still be alive.”

This film tells the story of this awful day with all the tension, pace and suspense of a Hollywood narrative, showing how a band of like-minded adventurers could be torn apart by the elements and the glory at hand.

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.