Exceptional meeting of Basque and Kraków alpinists

A touching event occurred at the International Mountain and Adventure Film Festival Bilbao Mendi in Spain. Alpinists from Navarra and Cracow, whose fates brought them together in 1976 during the expeditions to the seven-thousander Shakhaur (Hindukush) in Afghanistan.  The dramatic expedition through the mountains is the object of the documentary supported by the Department of Tourism Municipality of Kraków.

“Mediak 1976” tells the story of the intertwined stories of two mountaineering excursions. The journey of the climbers from Pamplona was supposed to go down in history as the first-thousander summit to be reached by Basques. However, the descent from the summit was dramatic: one of the participants of the excursion died, while the other suffered severe injuries. “Our mountain can wait, your colleague cannot” – the group of alpinists from Kraków told the Basques as the two met in the mountains. The support received from Poles allowed to save the life of the injured climber and for a safe descent down. The friendship between the participants of both excursions lasts to this day.

The documentary was supported by the Department of Tourism, which organised the study visit of the film crew to Kraków in October 2020, to allow the creators to meet the Kraków alpinists. The film made from the initiative of Luis Arrieta and Koldo Pastor, inaugurated the 14^th edition of the Bilbao festival on December 3^rd. The meeting held at the prestigious Palacio de Euskalduna was attended by 2,000 viewers. The film met with a standing ovation and songs praising the Kraków mountaineers which lasted for several minutes.