Making History on the Trango Towers, Pakistan - Edu Marin
2025 · 33 min · Trad, Big Wall, Alpine · Petzl
Director Guillaume Broust frames a compact field report: Edu Marìn, supported by his brother Alex and their father Novato, on the Nameless Tower (Trango Towers) above the Baltoro Glacier in Pakistan as they attempt and achieve the second free ascent of Eternal Flame. The film places the climb in its historical context — noting the original ascent by Wolfgang Güllich and Kurt Albert 33 years earlier and Alex and Thomas Huber’s first free ascent 13 years earlier — and shows the practical side of a high‑altitude, multi‑pitch big‑wall operation: hauling, bivying on the tower, fixed lines and the small, technical pitches that make Eternal Flame distinct. What matters here is the combination of contemporary climbing and lineage. The piece intercuts the Marìn party’s effort with contributions from Alexander and Thomas Huber and archival material tied to the route’s history, so the film reads as both an ascent film and a short record of a landmark route’s afterlife. At 33 minutes it focuses on sequence and decision—ropework, belay exchanges, weather and logistics—rather than spectacle, which makes it useful as a practical document of modern free climbing on a remote Karakoram tower.
Review
A compact Karakoram field report with a family inside it, and Guillaume Broust keeps it to the sequence and the decision. Edu Marín, supported by his brother Alex and their father Novato, goes to the Nameless Tower above the Baltoro Glacier and makes the second free ascent of Eternal Flame, the route Kurt Albert and Wolfgang Güllich climbed almost entirely free in 1989 and Alexander and Thomas Huber freed fully in 2009.
This is for climbers who want the practical side of a high-altitude big wall: hauling, bivies on the tower, fixed lines, and the small technical pitches that make Eternal Flame distinct. It is also for anyone interested in lineage, because the Hubers contribute and the archive ties the route's history to the new ascent. Skip it if you want spectacle. Thirty-three minutes stays on ropework, belay exchanges, weather and logistics.
What works is the father. Novato Marín on a Karakoram wall with his sons is a specific image, and the film does not overplay it. The Huber material is the right context. What it gets wrong is the free climbing itself. Eternal Flame goes at 7c+ and the hard pitches deserve more time than the logistics get.
Tough Enough is the other family-scale big wall on the site, Arnaud Petit and Steph Bodet in Madagascar. That film is about linking hard pitches. This one is about getting a family to the top of a tower, and I find the second harder to stop thinking about.
