Word: mountainous
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...when Hall spoke his last, and he was not the only one the mountain claimed that day. Just 36 hours earlier, 33 people had set out for Everest's peak. When the storm at last subsided, eight had perished. The story of that disaster, one of the worst in climbing history, became the subject of magazine articles, television specials and a growing collection of books, notably the best seller Into Thin Air, by journalist Jon Krakauer, who was a survivor of the murderous climb...
...part of the story has never been told. Breashears and Viesturs were on the mountain that week to try something never before attempted: to capture the ascent to Everest's summit in the highest-quality movie film available, the dizzyingly realistic 65-mm IMAX format. Resting at their campsite in preparation for the grueling mountaintop filming, they became unintended participants in the tragedy, as well as unexpected heroes. Their film, which tells the story of Everest and the drama that unfolded on it, will premiere next spring. This week they offer an advance look at it as the book Everest...
...Breashears was nowhere to be found. Having already visited Mount Everest 10 times, he flew back again last month to film a documentary for the PBS series Frontline. Two weeks ago he talked to TIME by satellite hookup from the base camp on the northern, Tibetan face of the mountain, and discussed the making of his film, the creation of his book and the lessons taught by the fatal climb. "We passed some hard nights the last time we were here," he said, "thinking about the nature of the mountain, why we were on it and, most important, about...
Even under the best of conditions, scaling a mountain like Everest is an act of near madness. Standing on top of the peak is roughly equivalent to stopping a passenger jet in mid-flight and climbing out onto the wing. The altitude is the same, the 40[degrees]F- below-zero temperature is the same, and, most disturbingly, the lung-shredding, brain-addling atmosphere--barely one-third the pressure of sea-level air--is the same. In the 44 years since New Zealander Edmund Hillary and a Sherpa climber, Tenzing Norgay, first scaled the peak, more than 700 people have...
...first sign that all would not go well came on the night of May 10. Though the established route up the mountain's south flank is precarious--barely wide enough to accommodate one climber at a time--no fewer than three expeditions had announced plans to begin their trek to the top that evening. Making things worse, two of the teams--Fisher's and Hall's--were the two largest on the mountain. All together, 33 people would be tramping the upward trail at the same time. For Breashears, this was reason enough to stay put. "We didn't like...