Storm Over Everest
Storm Over Everest is a new PBS documentary looks back at the May 1996 season on Everest and the incredible story that most know through Jon Krakauer’s Sept. 1996 story in Outside Magazine and later book, Into Thin Air. Filmmaker and legendary mountaineer, David Breashears takes viewers back through his experience and that of all of the climbing teams on the mountain in that tragic season.
“I had a deep conviction that the often-told story of the May 1996 tragedy could be more vivid, powerful and real with interviews from the survivors using motion picture and sound. So much of what happened that fateful year emanates from the stories of the survivors caught in the dark by that ferocious, fast-moving storm — a storm that could be described with words, but whose power needed to be seen and heard in order to fully comprehend it.”
- David Breashears-PBS.com
PBS has made the full-length documentary available for viewing online as well as created discussion groups on the web and a roundtable discussion on the Ethics of Climbing.
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Perhaps you’ve had your fill of Everest’s infamous 1996 season, with all its death and intrigue and legendary incidents of Humanism 2.0. Not so fast. Breashears captures a decade of reflection from survivors, teasing out how their already remarkable lives were burnished by their narrow escape. Crazy weather, summit fever and plain old overpopulation created chaos. Here’s the fine-grained wisdom that came out of it.
It’s always good medicine, of course, to spend time with the incomparable Beck Weathers. Other colorful personalities get their moment of recollection — Charlotte Fox is a font of crisp narrative — but Breashears’ brilliant stroke is in interviewing Makalu Gau, the Taiwanese climber whose luck was such that he ended up appearing callous and out of his league. “Storm on Everest” restores Gau’s good reputation; Gau’s candor is by far the most vivid of anyone’s.
Then there’s the gorgeous photography. Breashears own wide-screen footage patiently stitches together the South Col route, giving us ample time to couch-climb Everest with our own eyeballs. There are good-faith reenactments of the hellish Camp Four storm. (I’m thinking he used a jet engine for a fan.) Clean still photos document the hopeless bottleneck at the Hillary Step and the weird mob on top, mingling and lingering past the turnaround time.
The only quibble is the soundtrack. From the first frame, the music insists that we feel slack-jawed, rapturous, gooey. It doesn’t let up for nearly two hours.
Had this tivo’d and finally sat down and watched it last night. Well done overall, and the music didn’t bother me that much. Over the constant 80 mile per hour wind noise I sort of lost track that there was music. It was a good recounting of the events, but it was obvious they selected people to interview that wouldn’t create any waves. What I did find surprising was absolutely no mention of Krakauer. Not interviewing him is one thing, but striking his name from the record is another. I know that he was the guy who found Beck in the tent before they descended, and even there they said “Beck was found by ‘another climber’”. Guess I don’t know all the politics of that, but obvious that he was intentionally shut out. I guess for me if you want to tell the whole story, you need input from all that were there regardless of if you like what they have to say.