Telling It from the Mountain

Using spectacular old and new footage, To the Third Pole, a documentary about a famous mountaineering family, gives viewers a thrill ride.

To the Third Pole features dramatic re-enactments shot in the Swiss Alps. The documentary spotlights the Dyhrenfurths, a famous mountaineering and filmmaking family.
Courtesy of Jürgen Czwienk
” src=”https://palipost.com/story_photos/everest1.JPG” width=”199″ /> To the Third Pole features dramatic re-enactments shot in the Swiss Alps. The documentary spotlights the Dyhrenfurths, a famous mountaineering and filmmaking family.
Courtesy of Jürgen Czwienk

The opening sequence of To the Third Pole features dizzying aerial photography of shimmering mountaintops and jagged peaks. This rapturous perspective tells of the ageless allure of mountaineering, an extreme pursuit with rewards that are as much spiritual as physical.
It’s an apt beginning to a film about a family with an intense calling to reach the world’s highest peaks. In the 1930s, Günter Dyhrenfurth, a geologist and filmmaker, and his wife, Hettie, led numerous pioneering expeditions to the Himalayas. Thirty-three years later, their son Norman forged the first successful American trek to Mount Everest.
Norman Dyhrenfurth, now an energetic 90-year-old residing in Austria, lived in Pacific Palisades in the 1950s. He will make a return visit on Wednesday evening, August 27 when a special screening of To the Third Pole, the award-winning documentary about his family’s legacy, takes place at Villa Aurora. Jürgen Czwienk, the film’s director, will also be present.
Early on in the film, climbing legend Reinhold Messner weighs in on the significance of the Dyhrenfurths’ heroic achievements: “That Günter Dyhrenfurth organized these international expeditions at the highest level, and decades later, his son again led expeditions to Mount Everest in the same spirit, that is pretty exceptional. I don’t know of any parallel.”
“Family tradition is at the heart of the film,” says director Czwienk. “What interested me was how passion is transferred from one generation to another.”
Czwienk studied the family’s vast archives, including letters, diaries and photographs. However, the biggest prize, only recently rediscovered in Switzerland, was exclusive access to “lost footage” of expeditions in the 1930s, the first moving pictures at high altitude.
Norman was only 12 when his parents first hit the headlines. In 1930, they led an expedition to Kangchenjunga in the Himalayas, the third highest peak on earth. The images they brought back would shape his adventurous life.
While the elaborate climbing party never reached the top of Kangchenjunga, two members did reach Jonsong’s pinnacle, at the time the highest mountain (7,483 meters/23,693 feet) yet scaled by man (Mount Everest is 29,198 feet). Hettie Dyhrenfurth, responsible for the expedition’s logistics, earned her own accolade, becoming the highest climbing woman on earth after reaching 6,120 meters.
In a world where climbing has become commercialized, seeing firsthand the daring of these original explorers is all the more enthralling. The early films have many light-hearted moments, too, chronicling the group traveling through Egypt to Bombay and en route from Nepal to Sikkim.
Along the way, they scale the pyramids, are the guests of a high lama and attend an exotic Mani Rimdu ceremony, during which monks don masks and perform ritual dances. Later, when they reach base camp, they play records on a gramophone, much to the delight of the accompanying sherpas.
German-born, the Dyhrenfurths moved to Switzerland and became Swiss citizens in 1931. The film highlights how they stood up to their Nazi rivals’ state-sponsored expeditions, beating them in setting many world climbing records. In fact, the two were awarded gold medals for alpinism at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.
The following year, Hettie, a tennis champion from a prominent family of Jewish industrialists, emigrated to the U.S. with her three children, while Günter stayed behind. Before he leaves, 19-year-old Norman climbs Mont Blanc with his father, a passing-of-the-torch-type experience vividly captured through re-enactment in the documentary.
Norman, who inherited the twin passions of mountaineering and filmmaking from his father, initially worked in the United States as a ski instructor, mountain guide and filmmaker. In World War II, he served as an officer in the U.S. army. When the war ended, he came to Los Angeles to become head of the film department at UCLA.
During a recent telephone conversation, Norman fondly recalled his years living on Latimer Road in Rustic Canyon, where he was a member of a group known as the “happy hour boys” who got together regularly for tennis, golf or a day at the races.
“The depressing thing is, when I returned in 1991, only one of the 30 guys was still alive,” he says. “The same is true of my Everest team. Of the 20 members, only eight are still living.”
Norman is referring to the 1963 American Mount Everest Expedition, his “little war against a big mountain” and major life achievement. Leading 19 Americans, 32 sherpas and 909 porters carrying 27 tons of gear, Dyhrenfurth launched the ascent placing the first Americans atop the mountain while pioneering a new route to the summit. He also produced the first motion pictures taken from the top of Everest. It all culminated in a visit to the White House, where President Kennedy awarded Dyhrenfurth and his team the prestigious Hubbard Medal of the National Geographic Society.
Dyhrenfurth spent three years on the organization and fundraising for his privately conceived adventure. “Norman is an old-style guy,” says director Czwienk. “He’s a true gentleman and natural leader. He worked hard to make others famous.”
Norman set out on his first Himalayan expedition in 1952, joining the Swiss Mount Everest Expedition as a documentary filmmaker. “It changed my whole outlook on life,” Dyhrenfurth recalls. “I realized the ivory tower job at UCLA was not for me and I quit.”
In total, Norman led seven major Himalaya trips. He also collaborated on two Hollywood feature films set in mountain terrain: Five Days One Summer with Sean Connery and The Eiger Sanction, a 1975 film starring Clint Eastwood.
“I really wanted to reconstruct the majesty of these first expeditions,” says Czwienk. “They were revolutionary not only as conquests, but also in terms of scientific exploration and filmmaking.”
Czwienk and Dyhrenfurth will appear together for the first time at a screening when the film is shown at Villa Aurora in Paseo Miramar. “It’s so wonderful that the protagonist of my story lives,” says Czwienk. “When you meet someone who can provide firsthand accounts of history, it’s a charmed experience.”
To the Third Pole will be shown at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, August 27. Seating is limited and reservations are required: call (310) 573-3603. Admission is $10; free for Villa Aurora members. A shuttle service begins at 6:30 p.m. on Los Liones Drive off Sunset Boulevard.