Everest: Beyond The Limit - Episode 2 thoughts

I was out of town for the Thanksgiving Holiday, and didn't have a chance to watch the latest episode of Everest: Beyond The Limit until today. The show airs on The Discovery Channel Tuesday nights at 10PM Eastern Time.

The second episode thankfully moved away from stressing how dangerous the climb is, and moved on to more about the logistics of the expedition, and mountaineering aspects of climbing Everest. Don't get me wrong, they still made it clear that climbing the mountain is very dangerous, and can cost someone their life, but it was much less of a focus this time, as it was a major element in episode 1 to the point of being overly melodramatic about the it.

The shift in focus didn't make the show a whole lot more interesting however, as it seems that it's being drawen out to stretch it to the nine episodes that are scheduled. For example, the crux of this show was that the team had to climb from Advanced Base Camp up to Camp 1 to acclimatize before returning to ABC. Much of the show was about this fairly mundane section of the overall climb of the mountain, and while team leader Russell Brice watched the climbers via telescope to see how strong they were along the way. Brice was to use his observations of the strength of the climbers to decide who would get a chance at a summit bid later on in the expedition.

Speaking of Brice, he was also shown trying to mislead other teams about when he expected to make his run for the summit. Watching the weather closely, Brice pushed his team of Sherpas to establish the high mountain camps, and set fixed ropes, well ahead of the typical schedule, so that his team could take advantage of the early weather window. But he also feared the other teams might do the same thing, so he deliberately mislead the other teams about his plans, while also scheming to discover the intentions of his "rivals" as well. All indications are that Brice wants to avoid traffic jams on the summit by getting his teams up the mountain first, but when you know Brice's reputation, it comes across as just being selfish and trying to control what happens on "his" side of the mountain.

I'll continue to watch the series, as I'm interested in seeing how they handle some of the events yet to come, but I hope the episodes get more interesting as they get closer to the summit attempts and further into the climbing season.