The 1966 rescue that made a barefoot climbing legend — and broke every rule in the book.
The American mountaineer Gary Hemming marked the era of the 1960s. The story of this "exceptional" character is intimately linked to that of the rescue of the two German mountaineers on the west face of the Drus, in 1966, a rescue which he had took the initiative. While the official emergency services of the EHM try to reach them from above, a pirate rope made up of Gary Hemming, René Desmaison, Lothar Mauch, Gil Bodin, Mike Brurke, François Guillot, the filmmaker Gérard Bauer organizes to join them from below and succeeded after a fierce struggle the rescue. The press seizes the event and elevates Gary Hemming to the rank of national hero. All the newspapers feature this big guy with a cool attitude, mismatched clothes, jovial smile and long blond hair on the front page. From then on, he was nicknamed: "the beatnik of the peaks".
Direction
Afanasieff packs a full epic into 25 tight minutes.
Practical Effects
Real 1966 footage — no green screens, just ice and guts.
Editing
Archival photos cut like a punk zine, not a dusty tribute.
Director
Jean Afanassieff
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Hemming coined 'the beatnik of the peaks' himself in interviews — he knew myth-making was half the climb.
René Desmaison, the 'pirate rope' leader, later became one of France's most controversial climbing figures after his own 1971 rescue scandal.
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