The Last Mountain

Tom Ballard was a climber of thirty. In February 2019 he disappeared on Nanga Parbat in the Himalayas. Nanga Parbat is one of the deadliest mountains in that range. His mother Alison Hargreaves was a climber too and died on K2 in 1995. Mother and son lost their lives at almost the same age, in neighbouring ranges. Both of them remain on those mountains. Those left behind are Tom’s sister Kate and their father Jim. The documentary builds the loss out of what they say. The account neither glorifies climbing nor puts it on trial; it looks at what the family carries. Christopher Terrill’s British documentary, eighty nine minutes long, was completed in 2022.