SHAKHAUR '76-EVEREST '80 A BASQUE-POLISH BROTHERHOOD IN THE HIMALAYA
LUIS ARRIETA - GREGORIO ARIZ - IWONA ZIELINSKA - ANTXON ITURRIZA - TXOMIN URIARTE
Saturday December 12 – 18:00 Sala BBK
Four years before Martin Zabaleta even had set foot on Everest (1980), a group of anonymous climbers set off from the Town Hall square in Pamplona-Iruña to reach the summit of the Shakhaur (Hindu Kush - Afghanistan, 7,116m), making it the first seven-thousander done by Basque climbers. ‘Mendiak 1976’ is now the film project that will commemorate that milestone in Basque Himalayan climbing, and the film ‘Agur Everest’ is one of the main treasures of its mountain film archive. Those pioneering expeditions were also the stages where the unique brotherhood forged by Polish and Basque mountaineering was born, the proof of which will be exhibited at the Mendi Film where the most iconic and best kept relic of that time will be on show: the rosary blessed by Pope John Paul II and left by the Poles Krzysztof Wielicki and Leszek Cichy on the summit of Everest in February 1980, during the historic first winter ascent of the mountain, and recovered by Martin Zabaleta three months later as proof of the success of the Basque expedition.
