The mission of professional mountain climbers is almost impossibly difficult by design: Their very livelihood is based on achieving the unprecedented. Their expeditions are complicated, exhausting, often life-threatening. Risk is the fuel that keeps them going.

This Op-Doc video profiles three of them. Back in 2008, the elite climbers Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin and Renan Ozturk spent more than two weeks in excruciatingly difficult conditions attempting the first ascent of the precarious Shark’s Fin route on Mount Meru, in the Indian Himalayas. That ascent was thought to be impossible, and indeed, they did in fact give up, just a few hundred feet from the summit. I found their story a stunning account of failure, and the factors that go into accepting it — in this case the likelihood of losing fingers and toes, if not their lives. It is also ultimately a fascinating story of resilience.

These themes transcend mountain climbing. As a native New Yorker, I became acquainted with the sport only in 2012 when I met Jimmy Chin, who was making a documentary with his fellow climbers about their experiences on the Shark’s Fin. I joined their filmmaking team, and ultimately Jimmy and I co-directed a feature-length film about their series of near-death climbing experiences on Meru and beyond.

My relationship to this kind of risk-taking changed when Jimmy and I married in 2013 and became parents. I was no stranger to risk myself, having made documentaries in dangerous conditions in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Africa. Parenthood has made me more cautious. But making this documentary has taught me that our relationship to risk is fundamentally relative. I remain struck by the trust these three professional climbers share and how their matrix for decision making is not what we onlookers might assume. Their story makes me question the paths we choose in life, and why.