12 minute read
The Last Ride
TAKING ON KILI AND CLIMATE CHANGE
The Last Ride is a daring four-year project to climb and ski the highest mountain in every continent before climate change robs them of the snow to do it. Mark Edwards speaks to filmmaker and skier Jon Moy before he and the rest of the team take on Mount Kilimanjaro.
Skiing can be risky, especially when, like seasoned thrill-seekers Edward Salisbury, William Tucker and Jon Moy, your tastes run to freeskiing, a form of the sport that throws away the rules and ventures beyond the groomed terrain of the piste, leaving the skier at one with the unique challenges of the wild mountain, such as large drops, hidden obstacles, crevasses and even avalanches.
Ed, Will and Jon have ramped up the risk even further with their latest ambitious project, The Last Ride, in which they will attempt to climb up and then freeski down the highest mountain in each of the world’s continents. However, the risk the project is most concerned with raising awareness of is not that faced by the UK skiing trio and their support team, but rather to the vital signs of our planet earth.
Human-caused climate change is plundering the planet and it has even reached the world’s highest points, thinning glaciers and diminishing snow cover. The Last Ride, which is anticipated to take just under four years to compete, is so named because it is unlikely there will be enough snow on the seven summits – Elbrus in Europe, Kilimanjaro in Africa, Aconcagua in South America, Denali in North America, Vinson in Antarctica, Puncak Jaya in Indonesia and Everest in Asia – for it to ever be repeated.
That snowless vision of the future is at its most imminent on Mt Kilimanjaro. According to scientific forecasts and studies, the iconic image of its snow-capped peaks visible year-round from the sweltering equatorial plains of Tanzania and Kenya will soon be just a memory. The snow coverage on the mountain’s three volcanic cones – all almost 6,000 metres in height – now only amounts to 1.85 sq km and the glaciers have shrunk by 85 per cent since measurements began in 1912 and are predicted to disappear by 2030.
Warnings nothing new
Dire predictions about the perilous state of Kilimanjaro’s snow coverage are nothing new. One of former US presidential candidate Al Gore’s most headline-grabbing soundbites from the award-winning 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth was: “Within the decade, there will be no more snows of Kilimanjaro.” Sixteen years on, the snows remain and will no doubt see out the year, despite a 2009 study led by US glaciologist Dr Lonnie Thompson that forecast the ice fields would be gone by 2022.
Still, it is little surprise that the trio wanted to prioritise the Mt Kilimanjaro attempt to ensure there was still some snow to play with. The Last Ride began with a successful freeski on the way down from the highest point in Europe, the 5,642metre Mt Elbrus in Russia, in October last year and 5,895-metre Kilimanjaro is second up with the team due to arrive in late April.
Climbing alongside Ed and Will on each of the seven ascents will be award-winning adventure filmmaker Jon Moy. He is a former competitive skier himself and has over a decade of experience as a ski camera operator, working with the British Olympic ski and snowboard teams. It will be him – assisted by UK skier and filmmaker Tom Coe on Kilimanjaro – who will capture Ed and Will’s adventures and turn them into an eight-part documentary “through a major streaming platform” once the last expedition to the world’s highest mountain, Everest, is completed in 2024. The team will also be releasing content continuously throughout the project on its social media channels and those of its sponsors and supporters.
Filming and skiing
Jon will be skiing most of the seven summits, but such is the paucity of the snow on Kilimanjaro and Puncak Jaya – where the glaciers are predicted to completely melt away by 2024 – there will be no opportunity to follow and film Ed and Will on thrilling descents. Instead, he anticipates climbing to vantage points to capture the skiiers struggling to do much at all.
“I won’t be taking skis [this time] as there is so little ice left,” he says. “It is more practical for me to work with an ice pick and crampons while filming in this terrain. I think the image of the boys carrying skis all the way up a rocky mountain to only be able to do a few turns before running out of ice will be a striking visual message for our story.”
Raising awareness of the fragility of these frozen landscapes has become the dominant motivation for The Last Ride, soon overtaking the expeditionary team’s initial focus on becoming the first people to climb and ski all of the seven summits.
“The idea initially began as our next big challenge as professional
skiers to push the boundaries of high-altitude skiing and our own limits in these environments, but very quickly became so much more than that,” Jon says. “The idea started with Ed, who began his career in skiing as a freestyle athlete before moving over to freeride and ski mountaineering. He approached his climbing partner William Tucker to begin the process of turning dream into reality and it was at this point that the penny dropped, and they realised they actually had climate activism project on their hands not just ski movie.
This is where I came in. Will gave me a ring one day and said something like “if we had some money behind us would you want to come film us ski some big mountains?” naturally I said ‘100 per cent yes!’ before I even considered how I would be getting up these massive peaks in order to ski down them with a camera.”
Filming challenges
With Elbrus now behind him, Jon has an appreciation of the challenges of working in high altitude and remote locations and knows it is vital to balance “the needs of the expedition with the requirements of the film production. You can’t simply go for another take if you mess up a shot of someone climbing a ridge line or tell everyone to stop and wait in the cold while you change lens. Not to mention all your batteries freezing and having to sleep with all your equipment inside your sleeping bag if you want any hope of it turning on the next day.”
Kilimanjaro, Jon anticipates, will bring its own unique challenges, not least that the damage wrought by climate change will be made starkly apparent.
“I think the biggest challenge for Kilimanjaro specifically will be seeing how far the glacier has retreated and imagining the landscapes around the world that we currently know as snowy peaks turning to rock and dust,” he tells me. “The further into this project we progress the greater our understanding of deglaciation developing, but I think Kilimanjaro will be the first time really see the evidence before our own eyes of a mighty glacier on the brink of extinction. I’m anticipating it being a very sad and humbling experience, but I hope we can channel that into positive action through our project.”
Jon hopes that positivity will come through in the footage he shoots of unique Kilimanjaro, the world’s tallest freestanding mountain with its spectacular sequence of biodiverse ecosystems from savannah, through mountain forest to the glacial conditions at 5,000 metres and beyond. He hopes to showcase not just this remote beauty worth saving, but also the people helping to preserve it.
“Essentially the Last Ride Project is a form of activism. It’s our way of using the love and passion we have derived from the mountains as a vehicle to better understand the climate crisis, to tell stories of its impact from people around the world, and ultimately search for positive solutions to the problems we encounter.”
Local guides
In Kilimanjaro, this will include working with local guides on the expedition and finding out about their experiences of climate change. Most are Chagga, belonging to the people who have lived in the foothills of the mountain for centuries and have, in recent years, seen water levels drop in the perennial streams that run down from the highlands because of the diminishing glacier. However, the introduction of sustainable steps such as bench terraces to conserve water and soil is has helped return the farmland the Chagga are known for to its fertile prime.
Jon says: “For the project as a whole we want to include local people in the story as we go, whether that be our guides telling us how they’ve seen the mountains change over the years, or climate activists and scientists steering us in new directions of investigation.
“The title is a grave warning of what is still to come around the world if we don’t find ways to collectively do better. Meeting these harsh truths head-on is an essential step towards dealing with them effectively. That said, our project is more a celebration of people who are moving in the right direction than it is a finger pointing at those who are not. There are many ways of tackling the issue, but for this project we want to focus on inspiring positive action by showing the fragile beauty of our world and telling the stories of inspirational people.”
This positive ecological message has been welcomed by the Tanzanian government with Tanapa, which organisation manages the country’s national parks, waiving its usual ban on skiing and snowboarding on Kilimanjaro to let the UK crew complete its expedition.
Ready for the risks
“Skiing and snowboarding is generally prohibited on Kilimanjaro because the infrastructure is not in place to support it safely,” says Jon. “We have however applied for a special permit to do so in this case as we are professional skiers trained to operate safely and responsibly and are undertaking this challenge to promote a positive ecological message and to ultimately help fight to protect the National Park and others like it around the world.”
There may be a few climbers on the final stages of their guided ascent of Kilimanjaro who may worry that the low oxygen levels are causing them to hallucinate when they see Ed and Will jinking through the snow on their skis. April, though, is not an ideal month for first-time climbers of Kilimanjaro. The wet season is in full force by then and extremes of weather – such as temperatures way below freezing and high winds – are common at higher altitudes.
Jon is aware the team has chosen one of the most challenging times to take on the mountain, but says their combined experience, support team and level of preparation means they are ready.
“It would be foolish to step into these environments without being aware of the risks involved,” he says. We know there could be avalanches, crevasses, falling ice, temperature injures and all the rest that comes along with it. That said safety always has to be our top priority. Reaching the summit should never blind you from the realities on the ground and teamwork that borders on family is essential.”
Just as the skiiers and the mountain can all be said to be at risk, Jon says there are also more positive overlaps with collaboration being key to the success of the expedition and the bigger picture of driving the global climate agenda.
“I began to understand the gravity of the project and how much work lays before us – from sourcing funding, to physically training - not to mention starting our journey into climate activism. It’s very easy for the undertaking to feel insurmountable, much like addressing climate change. But if mountaineering teaches you one thing it’s that you’re capable of so much more than your ever imaged if you keep a level head, work collaboratively, and tackle the challenges ahead one step at a time.”
If you want to find out more about The Last Ride Project and the team’s progress, visit jonmoyfilm.com/the-last-ride or follow @thelastrideproject on Instagram.
Melting mountains
Mountain glacier systems are decreasing in volume worldwide and its even affecting the highest peaks.
A study this year found the highest glacier on Mount Everest has lost 2,000 years of ice in just three decades.
Puncak Jaya has lost about 80 per cent of its ice since 1936 – two thirds of that since 1972/73. It is now down to about two square kilometres.
The ice fields of Kilimanjaro have shrunk by around 85 per cent since 1912 (when measurements began). They cover an area of just 1.85 sq m.
If the glaciers of Mount Elbrus in Russia continue to melt at their current rate, a study forecast the amount of ice on the mountain will shrink by 40 per cent by 2050.
