Storm Over Everest

Locations
Call Number: DVD 796.52 St
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 1st Floor 1-week checkout	DVD 796.52 St	1-week checkout	On Shelf

Special features: A storm over Everest slide show that takes you behind the scenes with the filming and climbing teams; access to Frontline web site.
As darkness fell on May 10, 1996, a fast moving storm of unimaginable ferocity trapped three climbing teams high on the slopes of Mount Everest. The climbers, exhausted from their summit climb, were soon lost in darkness, in a fierce blizzard, far from the safety of High Camp at 26,000 feet. World-renowned climber and filmmaker David Breashears, who aided the rescue efforts back in 1996, now returns to Everest to tell the fuller story of what really happened on that legendary climb. Through remarkably intimate interviews with the climbers and Sherpas--many who have never spoken before on American television--Breashears sheds new light on the worst climbing tragedy in Mount Everest's history.
DVD, anamorphic widescreen presentation; Dolby Digital.

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Perfect Companion to Into Thin Air submitted by Sara W on July 3, 2011, 10:23am This film revisits the dramatic events of 1996 when eight climbers died in a single day on Everest and brings together interviews with the climbers and guides who were in the epic storm 10 years before.

Several of these climbers have written accounts of their experience on their own, the one I am most familiar with is Beck Weathers and his book Left For Dead. Beck is awesome. He tells his story very well and has a very good outlook on his experience.

Conducting these interviews and collecting these stories years later also clears up some misconceptions - such as the story of Makalu Gao's reaction to his climbing mate's death. The conditions on Everest are made for miscommunication - hypoxia, obstructing and restrictive equipment, weather and exhaustion are all barriers to a clear exchange.

Makalu Gao and Beck Weathers are probably the most animated and engaging of the interviewees, but the stories of the people who survived the terrifying all-night "huddle" and the guides who kept them alive and got them to safety were positively moving.

While it can definitely be viewed and enjoyed on its own, but you'll get far more out of it just after reading Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air. It's not just that this fleshes out the background and adds faces to the names in Krakauer's story - it's that it lays the foundation of the extreme danger and tragedy these individuals faced.