Felicitations :

The Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival 2002 would like to felicitate one of the most important figures for the climbing world. In 1960, six years after the first tourist came to Nepal, the country got its first full-time mountaineering correspondent in the form of a young American woman, Elizabeth Hawley. Hawley is still here 42 years later, and is a repository of every detail of every expedition mounted in the Himalaya in the last four decades. More about Liz Hawley . . .

Symposium:
Directions on Himalayan Climbing

Commitment, and the Himalayan climber
On 4 December 2002, Doug Scott, legendary Himalayan alpinist, delivered a keynote address at a symposium on 'Directions in Himalayan Climbing', organised as part of the Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival. In the excerpts from Scott's speech below, he discusses the primordial connection of mankind to climbing, the psychology of mountaineering, his own experience pioneering a route up the southwest face of Mount Everest in 1975, and, above all, the need for "commitment" to the mountain while climbing it. More . . .

Doug Scott, CBE, has made 45 expeditions to the high mountains of Asia, and is renowned as a proponent of the Alpine Style of climbing. He has reached the summit of 40 peaks, of which half were first ascents, and all were climbed by new routes or for the first time in Alpine Style. Apart from his climb up the South-west Face of Everest with Dougal Haston during Chris Bonington’s expedition of 1975, he has made all his climbs in lightweight or Alpine Style, without the use of artificial oxygen. More . . .

Harish Kapadia first visited the Himalaya almost 40 years ago. His main contribution to Himalayan climbing has been to explore unknown areas and, in a number of cases, to open up climbing possibilities. Some of his major ascents have been of Devtoli (6788 m), Bandarpunch West (6102 m), Parilungbi (6166 m), Lungser Kangri (6666 m) the highest peak of Rupshu in Ladakh. He has led eight international joint expeditions, and in 2002 he explored the high Teram Shehr Ice-Plateau on the Siachen Glacier. More . . .

Stipe Bozic is the most successful Croatian Himalayan climber. In 1979 he became the first to summit Everest via the west ridge, going all the way up with his camera. The South Face of Lhotse was a remarkable Slovenian ascent in 1981, which Bozic has also captured on camera. Bozic has captured all 11 of his Himalayan expeditions on film, including his second ascent of Everest, and other ascents of K2, Kangchenjunga, and Manaslu. More on Bozic . . .

Nawang Gombu Bhutia, 66, was the first person to make two ascents of Everest. The first time was in 1963, when he climbed with an American expedition, and the second was in 1965, with an Indian expedition. Nawang Gombu was awarded a Padmashree by the Indian government in 1964, and a Padmabhushan in 1965, two of India’s three top civilian honours. More . . .

Dr Harka Gurung is Nepal’s foremost authority on the Himalaya. He was the leader of the government committee formed to provide names to mountain peaks in the late 1970s. Born in Lamjung district, Dr Gurung studied in Kathmandu and Patna before receiving a PhD from the University of Edinburgh. He later served as the vice-chairman of the National Planning Commission (1968-75) and minister of state (1975-78) in the Nepali government. Author of numerous book on Nepal and the Himalaya, including Vignettes of Nepal and Annapurna to Dhaulagiri: A Decade of Mountaineering in Nepal Himalaya, 1950-1960, Dr Gurung continues his research on Himalayan life and sciences.

Tashi Jangbu Sherpa received mountaineering training at the Ecole Nationale de Ski et Alpinisme, Chamonix, and was a member of various climbing expeditions, including the Nepal-Italian Everest Expeditioin. He made the first ascent of Bhrikuti with a Japanese expedition in 1982, and was the climbing leader for the Nepali team on the 1988 Tri-National Friendship Expedition on Everest. He has climbed in the Italian and French Alps, Sweden, Norway, Canada and Tibet as well. He has worked as an instructor for the Norwegian Mountaineering School and for the Nepal Mountaineering Association. Former president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, Tashi is now a trekking entrepreneur based in Kathmandu.

Photo Exhibition :
Portraits of Nepal

A one-time Peace Corps volunteer, Kevin Bubriski has spent nine of the last 20 years in Nepal, also taking photographic journeys from his home here to Tibet, India, and Bangladesh. He has always been interested in photography’s potential to serve as a bridge between diverse cultures. Portraits of Nepal, Bubriski’s book of black-and-white view camera portraits and landscapes won the 1993 Golden Light Documentary Book Award. Power Places of Nepal, a book of his colour work in Kathmandu Valley with WHO, was published in 1995. More . . .

Lecture with
Video and Slides
Filming Holy Mountains Around the World, Stipe Bozic

Bozic has for long been working on a project to film holy mountains around the world. In this lecture, he will talk about where the inspiration for the project comes from, how he travels, and what kind of equipment he uses. Bozic will discuss climbing holy mountains and show video clips from Mt Ararat, Everest, Mt Olympus, Mt Sinai, Kailash, Mt Fuji, the Andes, in particular Piko Orizaba, and such peaks in Europe as the Esterel Massif.