Peak Danger: 5. Love Is in the Air

Summary

Extreme: Peak Danger – Episode 5: "Love is in the Air"

Release Date: February 17, 2025 Host: Natalia Mehlman Petrzela

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Introduction: A Fateful Meeting

The episode begins with a vivid portrayal of Cecilia Skog’s pivotal moment at a climbers' party in the summer of 2003. Surrounded by celebrations of conquering Mount Elbrus, Cecilia is captivated by a mysterious blonde man, later revealed to be her future husband, Rolf Bae.

Cecilia Skog [00:08]:

"The back of his head, this messy blonde hair was like, dancing with the music. That was the first thing I saw." [00:33]

The immediate and intense connection between Cecilia and Rolf is palpable, setting the stage for their deep bond forged through shared passion for climbing.

A Love Forged on Mountains

Cecilia and Rolf’s relationship blossoms as they embark on numerous expeditions together. Their honeymoon, unlike any conventional celebration, is a daring climb up K2—a decision that intertwines their love with their shared adventurous spirit.

Cecilia Skog [02:04]:

"But we were often away on trips and journeys and expeditions. Most years we had like maybe 150 to 200 nights in tents." [02:41]

Their partnership is built on mutual trust and a profound connection to the mountains, symbolizing their willingness to push boundaries together.

Cecilia Skog [05:46]:

"When you climb the highest mountains, you know that you will be exposed to objective danger. But as a climber, what we prepare for is safety." [05:58]

The Ascent of K2: Triumph and Tragedy

August 1, 2008, marks a significant day as Cecilia and her teammate Lars Nessa become the first Norwegians to summit K2. However, the descent becomes fraught with peril.

Cecilia Skog [11:27]:

"We've been out climbing for 15 hours and now we're going down to where Rolf is waiting." [11:34]

As dusk falls, the climbers navigate the treacherous serac—a massive ice formation—that proves fatal.

The Avalanche and Its Aftermath

A sudden earthquake-like tremor shakes the mountain, leading to a devastating ice avalanche that obliterates fixed ropes crucial for the climbers' descent. Rolf Bae is swept away, leaving Cecilia and Lars in a dire struggle for survival.

Rolf [15:24]:

"And that's when I feel this earthquake." [15:28]

The collapse of the serac cuts the lifelines for the climbers, plunging them into darkness both literally and metaphorically.

Desperate Descent: A Race Against Nature

With Rolf lost, Cecilia and Lars face the daunting task of descending the bottleneck without the fixed ropes. Their journey is marked by exhaustion, impaired judgment due to high altitude, and the ever-present threat of the harsh environment.

Lars Nessa [09:25]:

"Safety actually kills. Safety kills our spirits and our dreams and our hopes. You have to risk a little bit to actually live." [09:25]

Their resilience is tested as they navigate the deadly terrain, relying solely on each other for support.

The Heartbreaking Loss

Upon reaching base camp, the grim reality sets in—Rolf cannot be found. The emotional toll on Cecilia is immense as she grapples with the loss of her partner and the devastating consequences of their expedition.

Cecilia Skog [23:06]:

"He will not be there anymore, ever again. And I feel. It feels so strange because I've never kind of needed him more." [23:58]

Survival and Solidarity

Despite the tragedy, Cecilia manages to descend safely, determined to honor Rolf’s memory. Meanwhile, Lars contemplates the broader implications of the avalanche, aware that several climbers are still stranded without the means to find safety.

Lars Nessa [26:39]:

"The only question is, can you keep holding on?" [27:25]

Themes Explored

The episode delves deep into the relentless pursuit of human ambition and the fine line between passion and peril. It highlights:

• Human vs. Nature: The immutable challenge posed by K2, reflecting the climbers' respect and reverence for the mountain's formidable presence.
• Love and Partnership: Cecilia and Rolf's relationship exemplifies how shared passions can strengthen bonds, even in the face of unimaginable adversity.
• Risk and Survival: The climbers' decisions underscore the inherent risks of high-altitude mountaineering and the thin margin between triumph and tragedy.

Notable Quotes

• Wilko van Rooyen [08:20]:

  "A mountain for me is not a pile of stones for me. It's a living thing, you know, which will survive me at the end because I'm just a few seconds here and I return like dust and this mountain is there forever that I can love something which is so much bigger than me." [08:20]

• Frederik Strang [09:25]:

  "Safety actually kills. Safety kills our spirits and our dreams and our hopes. You have to risk a little bit to actually live." [09:25]

• Cecilia Skog [21:10]:

  "Okay, you have to focus. Rolf needs you. You have to focus just a little bit. One step, one step. And then he's there, waiting." [21:33]

Conclusion: Reflections on Human Endeavor

"Love is in the Air" masterfully captures the essence of extreme mountaineering—where love, ambition, and the quest for meaning collide with the unforgiving forces of nature. Through Cecilia and Rolf's harrowing experience, the episode invites listeners to ponder the true cost of pushing human limits and the depths of resilience required to survive both physical and emotional avalanches.

Natalia Mehlman Petrzela [27:25]:

"The only question is, can you keep holding on?" [27:25]

As the episode concludes, it leaves the audience contemplating the enduring spirit of those who dare to dance on the edge of human possibility, reminding us of the fragile beauty and the inherent dangers that come with chasing the impossible.

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Produced by: Lee Meyer and Amalia Sortland
Editor: Josephine Wheeler
Sound Design and Mix: Nicholas Alexander
Additional Engineering: Daniel Kempson
Original Music: Adam Foran
Theme Music: Silverhawk AKA Cyril Poirier and Adam Foran
Production Managers: Cherie Houston and Joe Savage
Story Development: Amalia Sortland
Commissioning Editor: Dan Clark
Executive Producers: Max O'Brien and Craig Strachan
Produced for the BBC by: Novel

Transcript

[Cecilia Skog]

BBC Sounds music radio podcasts.

[Narrator]

It's the summer of 2003, and Cecilia Skog is at a party full of climbers. They're all celebrating getting to the summit of the highest mountain in Europe and Russia, Mount Elbrus. The music is bumping, the drinks are flowing. Everyone's having a blast. Then something stops Cecilia dead in her tracks. Only one thing is running through her mind. Who is that?

[Cecilia Skog]

The back of his head, this messy blonde hair was like, dancing with the music. That was the first thing I saw.

[Narrator]

Cecilia isn't the only one looking at this mystery blonde guy. He's surrounded by a group of people regaling them with stories of adventure. In between riffing on the harmonica, I.

[Cecilia Skog]

Saw all the eyes that were looking at him and the way they admired this person. And then he turned around, I looked at him and he hit me hard. I can't explain it in any other way than it was like Star Crash, something I've never felt before. It's like just a person looking at me and I'm looking at him, and the whole world stands still.

[Narrator]

That person. It's Rolf, Cecilia's future husband. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Back to the party.

[Cecilia Skog]

He had this light in his eyes, the way he looks at you. He made people feel like they're the.

[Rolf]

Only person in the world. And he was just so attractive.

[Narrator]

Before she knows it, this handsome stranger is walking over to Cecilia. They end up spending the whole night talking, the party around them fading away as they gaze into each other's eyes.

[Cecilia Skog]

I know that everything has changed. I know I have to be with Rolf.

[Narrator]

There's just one tiny little problem.

[Cecilia Skog]

I'm there with my boyfriend, and it's his birthday. I know that I can't have two boyfriends.

[Narrator]

So the next day, Cecilia breaks the news to her soon to be ex.

[Cecilia Skog]

But he knew. He saw it the whole time. I think the whole world did.

[Narrator]

From then on, Rolf and Cecilia were pretty much inseparable. Cecilia moved across Norway from Oslo to the city of Stavanger to live with him.

[Cecilia Skog]

But we were often away on trips and journeys and expeditions. Most years we had like maybe 150 to 200 nights in tents.

[Narrator]

One of those trips was an expedition to the North Pole.

[Cecilia Skog]

We have like three or four days left of the journey, and I have been waiting for Rolf to propose to me for so long. When is this man ever going to propose? How many sunset and sunrises does he need to kind of get in the mode?

[Narrator]

One day, Rolf is lagging a little behind Cecilia. He calls to her and asks her to wait up.

[Cecilia Skog]

When I turn around, I can see that he's. He's down on one knee and his eyes is wet. And in his hand he has this ring. It's like a steel wire from our repair kit that he's been like, twisting, twisting, twisting into a ring. Of course I say yes many times now.

[Narrator]

Cecilia just needs to find the perfect understated dress.

[Cecilia Skog]

I didn't want to look like a cupcake, but I ended up picking the biggest cupcake in the store. It was a big dress.

[Narrator]

Cupcake, dress secured. She and Rolf start planning their dream wedding.

[Cecilia Skog]

There was only one rule. We didn't want to have that many speeches, because that takes up so much time. We wanted to dance. Only four days before our wedding, Rolf came home from a journey to the North Pole. He picked with him this big chunk of ice. It was so big that he almost couldn't carry it. And he put that in his sleeping bag and brought it all the way back to Norway. That was the ice that people could, like, chop up and put into their drinks. So he was on this big bar. It was this big chunk of ice from the north bar.

[Narrator]

Rolf and Cecilia spent their wedding dancing, surrounded by loved ones, clinking glasses filled with polar ice. The love between Rolf and Cecilia is the whirlwind kind. It burns hot and bright in the way that only love at first sight can. It's the kind of love that can leave you feeling vulnerable, too exposed. But Rolf and Cecilia are a team, utterly united both in life and on the mountains. These young lovebirds are at the beginning of their lives together, eager to get started on the decades of adventure, big and small, that await them right after a honeymoon like no other on K2.

[Cecilia Skog]

When you climb the highest mountains, you know that you will be exposed to objective danger. But as a climber, what we prepare for is safety.

[Narrator]

And nothing makes Cecelia feel more safe than knowing her husband is by her side.

[Cecilia Skog]

Together with Rolf, everything was possible.

[Narrator]

I'm Natalia Melman petruzella from the BBC. This is Extreme Peak Danger episode 5 Love is in the Air K2 and its surrounding mountains in the Karakoram range are millions of years old, about 60 million to be as exact as we can. They got here a long time before we humans did. And then it took a long time for us to put our passions for mountains on paper. They're poems that go back as far as the fifth century, which describe the transcendent qualities of mountains. Skip forward a century or ten to the era of Mona Lisa, painter and polymath Leonardo da Vinci. And you'll find even more. As a young man, da Vinci would climb around the Alps, scribbling journal entries about discovering fossils in the mountain caves he explored. The 1790s marked the beginning of the Romantic period, which lasted for about 50 years. For the Romantics, the mountains encapsulated something they called the natural sublime, which imagines being in nature as an almost religious experience. Even the famous atheist poet Percy Shelley wrote this about Mont Blanc. When I gaze on thee, I seem as in a trance, sublime and strange. Over the past few centuries, the Western world has become increasingly secular. But mountains have remained a way for those who seek it to experience something transcendent much greater than themselves. That's how Wilko van Rooyen, the professional adventurer and leader of the Dutch international expedition, felt about K2.

[Wilko van Rooyen]

A mountain for me is not a pile of stones for me. It's a living thing, you know, which will survive me at the end because I'm just a few seconds here and I return like dust and this mountain is there forever that I can love something which is so much bigger than me. That for me is the spiritual level. Actually, you know.

[Narrator]

I think part of the intense spiritual connection someone like Wilco experiences is because of the huge risk involved. With every small step he climbs up this mammoth mountain, he puts himself further and further into the hands of fate. This constant reminder of your mortality is equal parts awe inspiring and terrifying.

[Wilko van Rooyen]

You must be willing to die if you really love the thing you are doing. You even will take the risk of losing your life.

[Narrator]

To Swedish climber Frederik Strang, a life spent without risk is its own kind of death.

[Frederik Strang]

Safety actually kills. Safety kills our spirits and our dreams and our hopes. You have to risk a little bit to actually live.

[Narrator]

I think that's ultimately what many of the climbers have come to K2 to do, to live as fully as they can on the knife edge of human possibility. It's been the mindset of adventurers old and new, going back generations. Like George Mallory, the British mountaineer who died attempting to summit everest back in 1924. His famous quote was, what we get from adventure is just sheer joy. And joy, after all, is the end of life. But for both Frederick and his teammate, Dr. Eric Meyer, being on a mountain like K2 also offers them a rare opportunity to be fully present in the moment.

[Frederik Strang]

You're not thinking about if you left your door open. You're not thinking about if you parked a car at the wrong side of the road.

[Narrator]

Waking up in the mountains and knowing.

[Lars Nessa]

That your tasks are distilled down to.

[Narrator]

Simply eating, drinking, climbing, safe, taking care.

[Dr. Eric Meyer]

Of yourself and your partners, and shutting everything else out.

[Frederik Strang]

You are absolutely here and now. That is what climbing offers.

[Narrator]

Being absolutely here and now is what brought Cecilia and her husband Rolf together.

[Cecilia Skog]

We're fortunate to share the same passion. Sleeping in tents and being out there with this really tall sky above our head. There is so many adventures out there and it's like, wow, what a beautiful planet we're on.

[Narrator]

It's the evening of August 1, 2008. Cecilia has just summited K2. Now she's making her way back down the mountain. Her teammate and fellow summiter, Lars Nessa is by her side.

[Cecilia Skog]

We've been out climbing for 15 hours and now we're going down to where Rolf is waiting.

[Narrator]

After deciding he was too exhausted to reach the summit, Rolf's been patiently waiting for Lars and Cecilia on the mountainside, about 150ft down from the top.

[Cecilia Skog]

He was so happy when he saw us coming back. It was so good to be together as a team again.

[Narrator]

Lars is also happy to see Rolf on a mountain like K2. There's real safety in numbers.

[Lars Nessa]

High altitude symptoms is not easy to recognize on yourself.

[Narrator]

Remember this high up and after so many hours on reduced oxygen levels, your judgment can become seriously impaired.

[Lars Nessa]

It's like being drunk. You think you're the best climber in the world, but you're not. You don't recognize your own dizziness and bad decisions. That's dangerous and you need others to see the symptoms and also take the decisions on your behalf.

[Narrator]

Luckily, the trio's feeling pretty good after all. Lars and Cecilia have just made history as the first Norwegians to summit K2. They're all eager to get back down to Camp 4 so they can crawl into their tents, curl up and get some much needed rest.

[Cecilia Skog]

We start climbing back down, the three of us together.

[Rolf]

The sky is pink, it's beautiful, and the stars are all out.

[Narrator]

The three Norwegian climbers are heading down towards the huge icy serac. It's essentially a great cliff made of jagged, broken up ice perched on the side of the mountain. This is the same serac that had caused Dr. Eric and filmmaker Frederick to turn back earlier in the climb. The two of them thought it looked too dangerous. But in order to get down and back to Camp 4, there's no avoiding this intimidating overhang. Lars, Rolf and Cecilia all need to rappel from the top of it, which involves essentially leaping off a ledge backwards and doing a controlled fall into the icy darkness below. Lars goes first.

[Lars Nessa]

I did that up Sile and waited on a small ledge for the other two. When we came down there it was starting to get dark.

[Cecilia Skog]

There is not enough light to climb without head torch.

[Lars Nessa]

So we found our head torches in the backpack and attached them on our helmets.

[Cecilia Skog]

My batteries are really low, so I decide to change them.

[Lars Nessa]

I asked Rolf if he wanted me to continue as the first Rolf answers.

[Rolf]

No, I go first.

[Cecilia Skog]

I want you to take care of my wife.

[Narrator]

After switching positions with Lars, Rolf is leading the way for him and Cecilia. The three of them are now making their way along the area known as the traverse. That's the thin ledge you need to inch along with your face right up against the huge ice wall of the serac. The traverse may only be a few hundred feet, but up here with your oxygen deprived brain and exhausted muscles, each step feels like a mil. Lars, Cecilia and Rolf have been climbing for about 17 hours. And now the inky black sky above has washed away any trace of the earlier sunset.

[Rolf]

I can see Rolf is about 15 to 20 meters ahead of me on the traverse. I can see his light and I can see he's moving underneath the big serac.

[Cecilia Skog]

And that's when I feel this earthquake.

[Rolf]

In my whole body. This big shake where I lose balance. I fall on the rope.

[Lars Nessa]

I could hear the cracking and falling of ice. It was hard to get any feelings feeling of the distance to the ice, but it felt quite near.

[Rolf]

I can see Rolf's light disappear in the dark.

[Lars Nessa]

After the icefall. I could hear Cecilia yelling and calling for Rolf.

[Rolf]

I call his name over and over again. There is no answer.

[Narrator]

Hearing Cecilia's panicked cries, Lars begins working his way over to her as fast as he can.

[Lars Nessa]

She was 20, 30 meters ahead of me on the traverse when I came to her. She said she had been pulled out of balance by something hitting the rope. I told her to just stay there and I passed her and continued and.

[Rolf]

Am say yes, you have to look for him. Because when I lost my balance I also lost the batteries in my head torch. I don't have any more light so lar continue. And I asked him over and over.

[Cecilia Skog]

Can you see him?

[Rolf]

Is he okay? Lars, answer me. Is he okay? Can you see him?

[Narrator]

Lars makes his way to the nearest ice screw. They're used as safety anchors that climbers can attach rope to.

[Lars Nessa]

There I saw that the rope were cut. It looked like it was cut by a knife on the other side. I could see that all the tracks and traces from us climbing were swept Away.

[Narrator]

Lars instantly knows what's happened. Part of the huge overhanging serac has collapsed. Gigantic chunks of ice have come plummeting at breakneck speed, slicing through the fixed ropes on their way down the mountain. There's no sign of Rolf.

[Rolf]

I don't give up that hope that Maybe he is 50 million meter below. We have to go down to see if he's okay.

[Lars Nessa]

So I made a decision that we should try to absile and descent towards the bottleneck.

[Narrator]

The dangerous bottleneck section comes directly after the traverse. It also sits in the shadow of the serac. The Norwegian team had brought some spare rope in case they ran into trouble. Lars loops it through a nearby ice cream, and Cecilia watches as he rappels down.

[Rolf]

Blush ended up in the middle of the bottleneck. He calls my name to tell me, now it's your turn to rappel. I call very hopefully, have you seen him? Is he okay? And he says, celia, you have to come. Come. I could hear hope in his voice, like, yes, he found him. Of course he's found him. He's there. I have to hurry up.

[Narrator]

Cecilia follows Lars, rappelling as quickly as she can down into the bottleneck. But Rolf isn't there.

[Rolf]

I have that feeling. But Lars, of course, he wanted me to have that hope, so I should continue, because being up there is not a good place to be.

[Lars Nessa]

I knew that if we had to stay for the night at that altitude, in that environment, there would be small chances for us to survive.

[Narrator]

It's now pitch black. The temperature is as low as minus 40. Lars knows that his life and Cecilia's are almost literally dangling by a threat. And he made a promise to Rolf that he would take care of his wife.

[Lars Nessa]

She was easy to lead. She also knew what to do. She just needed someone to say that, yeah, we have to do this. We had to climb with our face against the wall, and we had only one head torch. I climbed first a couple of meters and then I waited. And we're using my light for Cecilia.

[Rolf]

We continue just moving one foot at a time. One foot, one foot. And then the ice axe. One foot, one foot, then the ice axe.

[Narrator]

In a rhythm with every step Cecilia takes down, she's getting one step closer to Rolf.

[Rolf]

He's so good at taking care of himself. Just go on a little further, a little further than he's there.

[Narrator]

As she and Lars slowly climb down the bottleneck, Cecilia is still in her rhythm. One foot, then another, then the ice axe through the snow. She keeps pushing on into the depths below.

[Rolf]

I lose My focus and I trip over.

[Narrator]

Cecilia drops. She's sliding down the mountain, scrambling to stop herself.

[Rolf]

I am able to take my ice ax and pull it into the snow and put my chest and my body over the ice ax. And I stop.

[Narrator]

Cecilia's breathing as deep as she can as she tries to calm herself down.

[Rolf]

Okay, you have to focus. Rolfs need you. You have to focus just a little bit. One step, one step. And then he's there, waiting.

[Narrator]

It's slow going, but eventually they make it to the vast snowfield below. As they continue to descend, there's still no sign of Rolf. Cecilia rationalizes his absence.

[Rolf]

He's waiting inside the tent because it's become a lot cooler and I can feel I'm getting colder. And of course he's waiting inside the tent.

[Lars Nessa]

We got to Camp 4 at 11 o'clock in the evening, 20 hours after we started out.

[Narrator]

Their teammate Oy Stein is waiting for them. He's been anxiously watching the clock. Cecilia immediately asks him the question, Is Ralph here?

[Rolf]

Have you seen him? He hasn't seen him. No, he hasn't seen him. Of course he hasn't seen him because he's in a different tent. Rolf is in our tent. So I ask Lar if he can open the tent and see.

[Narrator]

Lars does as Cecilia asks. With heavy feet, he walks over to the tent she shares with Rolf and peers inside.

[Rolf]

He tells me that he's not there.

[Narrator]

Lars knew this before he opened the tent. He's known it from the moment Rolf disappeared.

[Lars Nessa]

I immediately realized that Rolf was dead. He could never have survived both the avalanche itself and also falling several hundred meters.

[Narrator]

With the news that their tent is empty. Cecilia's last remaining shred of hope is torn away and her entire world implodes.

[Rolf]

He will not be there anymore, ever again. And I feel. It feels so strange because I've never.

[Cecilia Skog]

Kind of needed him more.

[Rolf]

And that's when he's gone. That night, Lush takes off my crampons. And then I go into the tent.

[Cecilia Skog]

And.

[Rolf]

Lush holds me the whole night.

[Narrator]

The next morning, a shell shocked Lars starts preparing to return to base camp.

[Lars Nessa]

It was important for us to take care of Cecilia, to get her out of situation and home.

[Rolf]

It feels so wrong to leave when I know that he has to be there somewhere. How could I just leave him up there?

[Narrator]

But deep down, she has to know her friends are right.

[Rolf]

I continue down one rappel after the other, away from him.

[Narrator]

Cecilia makes it down to base camp the next day, and then she prepares for a long, lonely journey home on.

[Cecilia Skog]

My Way out from base camp. I don't need any sleep.

[Rolf]

I just walk.

[Cecilia Skog]

I walk and walk and I'm looking.

[Rolf]

For rocks that looks like hearts.

[Narrator]

Each time she finds one, she places it in her backpack.

[Cecilia Skog]

He must have weighed like 20 kilos, but I couldn't feel it. I was like, it was so important to pick all of them.

[Narrator]

But while Cecilia is able to make it safely away from K2, it's a very different story for some of her fellow climbers. During the night, when she was being comforted by Lars, there were a lot of people still out there on the mountain and Lars knew they were about to make a devastating discovery.

[Lars Nessa]

We knew that 15 climbers or so were behind us and also would meet the same obstacles with no fixed ropes.

[Narrator]

The same fixed ropes that the climbers spent so many painstaking hours placing in the bottleneck and in the traverse. They've all been washed away by the cascading ice avalanche that killed Rolf. Lars had left behind the thin emergency rope that he and Cecilia used to get down.

[Lars Nessa]

We hoped that they would understand that this rope could lead them to safety.

[Narrator]

But it's pitch black. A needle in a haystack doesn't begin to describe it. And the climbers don't even know there's a life saving needle they need to look for. So for now, they're all trapped and will need to survive the night out in the open, in the death zone.

[Wilko van Rooyen]

The only question is, can you keep holding on?

[Narrator]

That's next time on Extreme Peak Danger. Extreme Peak Danger is produced by Lee Meyer and Amalia Sortland. The editor is Josephine Wheeler. Sound design and mix by Nicholas Alexander. Additional engineering by Daniel Kempson. Original music by Adam Foran. Our theme music for Extreme Peak Danger is by Silverhawk AKA Cyril Poirier and Adam Foran. Our production managers are Cherie Houston and Joe Savage. Story development by Amalia Sortland. Our commissioning editor at the BBC is Dan Clark. Max O'Brien and Craig Strachan are executive producers. And I'm Natalia Melman Petruzella, your host and executive producer. Extreme is produced by Novel for the BBC.

[Dr. Eric Meyer]

Imagine a scrap of data that could help rescue a man lost at sea.

[Narrator]

That far north most people aren't found. This is a race against the clock.

[Dr. Eric Meyer]

Or expose staggering financial fraud.

[Narrator]

All the Swiss banks, the British banks, the French banks. What I was looking at was a horror show.

[Dr. Eric Meyer]

Or uncover a medical breakthrough.

[Wilko van Rooyen]

Within 10 years, the whole world was.

[Rolf]

Convinced that he was right.

[Dr. Eric Meyer]

Ten extraordinary adventures of data and discovery Uncharted with me, Hannah Fry on Radio 4 now available on BBC Sounds.