From Mankato To The Heart Of The Universe

For a world-class photographer who's skied down Mount Everest and climbed some of the most daunting peaks on the planet, Jimmy Chin was surprisingly enthusiastic to talk to WCCO earlier this week.

The reason: Chin is a native Minnesotan, and the station's call letters are part of his childhood.

"I'm from Mankato, so I grew up with WCCO," the 41-year-old adventure photographer said over the phone from his home in Jackson, Wyoming.

Chin is currently making headlines for his astonishing and deeply personal documentary, Meru, which chronicles the struggle he and his climbing partners – Conrad Anker and Renan Ozturk – went through to ascend "The Shark's Fin," a dagger of rock and ice in the Gharwal Himalayas thought by many to be unclimbable.

The movie came out Friday at Minneapolis' Lagoon Theater, and it's mesmerizing for both climbers and non-climbers alike.

Chin, a photographer who's worked with the world's best climbers and skiers for decades, puts you on the mountain the way only a seasoned climber can. His lens lets you experience the tension of trying to rest in a tent attached to a sheer cliff wall as 80 mph winds lash the material separating your sleeping bag from the sky.

Yet while Meru is undoubtedly a masterful film on climbing, it also operates on a deeper level. One of the central questions is, of course, why do people do this? Why do climbers risk their lives to get to the top of foreign rocks when they have girlfriends and wives and children to worry about?

Meru's answer is that climbing is fundamentally about friendship, of bearing the burden of dreams together.

A boy from the prairie

As the son of traditional Chinese parents, Chin's trajectory in life was to be a doctor or a lawyer. His mother and father, both of whom were librarians at Mankato State University, fostered an early love of reading in their son, leading Chin's imagination to be captured by tales of adventure, such as J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit."

His parents also took him and his sister on trips to the national parks. One trip to Glacier in northern Montana proved to be life-changing for the young adventurer.

"I was just jaw-dropped," Chin said. "I was probably like 8 or 9, you know, I immediately knew I wanted to spend my life in the mountains."

But the Chin house wasn't near anything like a mountain. The closest thing, however, was basically in their backyard: Mount Kato, a small, 240-foot ski hill. Chin said his father would take him there as a "treat" if he did well in school.

After college at Carleton, Chin convinced his parents to let him go out west to climb for a year. To their dismay, Chin stayed on the road for seven years, living out of his car and generally being a "climbing bum."

"I think, originally, they were devastated," Chin said.

It was in his early 20s, however, when he started to become an artist, taking pictures of his friends as they climbed and skied. His peers would soon become sponsored athletes, and Chin was often the only person they wanted as a photographer.

"I was getting calls from all my friends, because they knew I wasn't a liability," Chin said. "You have to have the technical skills to be up there, and nobody wants to babysit a photographer up there. You have to take care of yourself."

Chin's career took off quickly as he published shots in National Geographic and Outside Magazine, among other places. Along the now two-decade journey, he became friends and partners with one of his idols, the legendary climber Conrad Anker.

The Holy Mountain

For Anker, The Shark's Fin had long been an obsession. Many great climbers and alpinists, including his own mentor, had tried to reach its summit, and all of them had failed.

The mountain, located in northern India, is considered to be holy in several eastern religious traditions. Believers contend that Meru is the center of the physical and spiritual world. It is the gateway to both heaven and hell.

Jon Krakauer, the author of "Into The Wild" and an experienced rock climber himself, describes the mountain in the film as the "anti-Everest," meaning that there are no Sherpas to guide you on Meru. Instead, your team has to know the disciplines of ice climbing and big wall climbing, while also having the stamina to perform at an altitude of 20,000 feet and in subzero temperatures.

Such a project sounded like heaven to Anker, the sort of climber who finds difficulty irresistible. So he rounded up Chin and a strong, fearless young climber named Renan Ozturk to try to reach the summit in 2008. The group made it 100 meters from the top, the film shows, before they were forced to turn back, heartbroken.

For a moment, the group thought that, perhaps, The Shark's Fin was indeed impossible. After all, the hardest part is at the top, where it's a nearly featureless sheet of granite. To haul 200 pounds of equipment and food up there and make it down in one piece is almost certainly to tempt fate.

Still, all three longed to go back. But before they would attempt Meru again, each would suffer a significant setback.

Ozturk smashed his skull and broke his neck in a ski accident; Anker, a husband and father of three now pushing 50, wondered if projects like Meru were too risky for a man with his responsibilities; and Chin was severely rattled after walking away from an avalanche that could easily have been fatal.

Of them, Ozturk was clearly the worse for wear. The main question for Chin and Anker then became whether or not to allow Ozturk on the next expedition. While his recovery was swift and remarkable, he did suffer lasting injuries to the arteries that bring blood to his brain -- arteries essential for alpine climbing.

The film mulls this over, but Chin and Anker leave it up to Ozturk. In the end, he chooses to go, to try once more. His partners accept that, understanding they're not merely climbing buddies, but people connected by a lifestyle, one that's both dangerous and deeply rewarding.

Skin In The Game

Chin was't the only filmmaker behind Meru. He shares directing credit with his wife, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi. The two got to know each other while working on the film and fell in love in the process.

It's Chai's hand that pushes the film out of the adventure genre and into something broader. She is able to take her husband's footage and make him into a central character, one that the viewer is, in some ways, asked to question.

"It was a very big shift, and Jimmy, who is a director, felt more comfortable behind the camera," Chai said. "But, you know, we had some very intense discussions about it, where the film, at its core, is about friendship, and he's part of that trio."

While most of the film is footage of the climbers on Meru, it's also spliced with interviews where the climbers, and their loved ones, spill their guts before the camera. You see their anxiety and hear their unbelievably complex life stories. These people are so much more than athletes, and the tales of their lives -- especially Anker's -- are like something out of a novel.

Chai says she understands why her husband climbs (although she is a non-climber), and why he and Anker risked bringing Ozturk back up during the second trip.

"By bringing Renan, they really jeopardized their chance of success," she said. "So the sole objective wasn't necessarily the summit, it was honoring that friendship. Personally, I'm always moved by that fact, because that's the type of friendship that's selfless, and I think we'd all be lucky to have that experience once in our lives."

Still, now that she's married to Chin and the two have a daughter, she's not sure how'd she'd react if Chin was trying something like the Meru expedition again.

"How I looked at [the expedition] making the film is probably going to be different than how I look at it now," she said. "Because now I have more skin in the game."

Risk and its assessment are a big part of her husband's life, and through working on the film, Chai found that one of the main themes is that risk is relative. She knows that to honor the ones you love, you'll end up risking a lot.

The View From The Top

After the close call with the avalanche and eventually getting to the top of Meru, Chin says he doesn't think he could ever stop climbing and skiing.

"I don't know if you like fishing or painting, but there are things that are therapeutic for you," Chin said. "That's what climbing and skiing are for me, and it's such an incredible way to spend time with your friends and family."

He says he can't wait to show his children his mountain lifestyle.

"So many of my friends grew up climbing, skiing, camping and surfing with their parents, and it gives you a really great base for human interaction," he said. "You can't sit there on your phone and check Instagram all day when you are skiing, and you don't want to. You want to be skiing and present, having a good time."

As Meru makes its way through theaters, there are bound to be young people who see Chin's work and wonder: How can I live like that? The filmmaker says, like in anything else that's worthwhile, there is no fast track.

"Like with every endeavor, you have to pay your dues," Chin said, adding that he got a relatively late start at mountaineering. "I devoted years of my life to just skiing and climbing, even if I did come late to the game."

That should come as a note of encouragement to the people who see this film and feel the uncontrollable urge to go out and buy climbing gear and a camera. Because if one kid from the flatlands of southern Minnesota could end up at the crown of the world, why couldn't another?