Nine questions for Storm Over Everest filmmaker David Breashears

By Mike Pearson, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Friday, May 9, 2008

In May 1996 filmmaker David Breashears was on Mount Everest to shoot an IMAX film when a deadly storm assailed the mountain and killed five climbers. Never have so many people been lost in one day on the world's highest peak.

Although too far away to help rescue the stranded climbers, he returned to the mountain to film parts of Storm Over Everest, a retelling of the 48 hours in which hell on earth came in the form of blinding snow and freezing temperatures.

Breashears, who spent his high school years in Denver and learned to rock climb in Boulder Canyon, has reached the summit five times. He's also worked on Hollywood movies including Seven Years in Tibet and Cliffhanger. The Rocky's Mike Pearson caught up with Breashears by phone recently to talk about the rigors of conquering Everest.

How willing were the survivors to talk about their ordeal?

I had to gain their trust. There had been a lot written about what they had done (including Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air), and some of them were really bruised and hurt by that. In gaining their trust, I had a couple of things on my side. One, that I was a mountaineer who was going to talk to other climbers, and not just some filmmaker who couldn't understand their experience. I was (on Everest that day), though I wasn't in that particular storm. I think they thought I could comprehend what they had gone through. Then I explained to them what kind of film was I going to make . . . It was going to be a film about why they were there. 'We're going to lead people up the mountain, as you describe it, then down the mountain and into the storm, as you describe it.'

You were on the mountain in May 1996. How aware were you of what was happening?

We knew many of those people, and we had been at Camp Three and we were beginning the summit ascent. We would have been the first on the top that year but we had high winds at that camp and unsettled weather and we had a large group coming up behind us, so we turned around and went down. The weather was clear. Knowing the storm was coming, we just needed better weather and fewer people on the mountain. For the next 48 hours we watched them climb, and we heard the first emergency calls. We weren't rescuers, we were only helping people who had already helped themselves.

Did knowing some of those who died make doing the film more difficult?

It made it something that we wanted to get right. It made it something that we were all deeply committed to making dramatic and strong and vivid but never exploiting what happened to people. It made us want to really convey as accurately as possible the power of the storm. There's 62 hours of interviews and some of the stories were hard to hear. People were ready to die and coming to terms with who they really were.

What made this particular storm so bad?

It came when people were getting near to camp, exhausted and sleep- and oxygen-deprived, and it came up from below with a lot of snow so they couldn't see and they got lost. If I'd seen something like that many years ago, I'd have wondered if I wanted to climb Everest.

How have the survivors reacted to the movie?

The few that have seen it said it was sometimes hard to watch. Generally they said it was emotional and beautiful and then they said it was heart-wrenching. Three of them said 'and it was just like being back in the storm.' One person did say 'It was hard to watch because it made me remember.'

Can you talk about your Colorado connections?

"I was born in Fort Benning, Ga., and at the age of 4 or 5 moved to Cheyenne, Wyo., and lived there through most of grade school and junior high. Then for high school my mother moved us down to Denver and I attended Thomas Jefferson High School. As a rather skinny, shy young man, I wasn't really suitable in terms of my physique or temperament for team sports, so I used to drive to Boulder in my mom's car and that's where I learned to rock climb. I spent many a day, many weekends, many weeks in summer in either Eldorado Springs in Boulder Canyon or up on Longs Peak climbing. There's a place near DU called Observatory Park. My sister lives there. This is two decades before indoor rock climbing gyms. If I couldn't get to Boulder or Eldorado, I would go bouldering on the observatory.

When did you become interested in climbing Mount Everest?

"When I was living in Greece, our family had the Life library of books, and in the one book, titled The Mountains, was a chapter on mountaineering, and I found the photo of Tenzing Norgay on top of Everest most fascinating of all. I got fixated in my head that Himalayan climbing was noble and something to aspire to.

What kind of person wants to climb Mount Everest?

I think we're all made up of three elements: dreamers, meaning people who look at this and say 'What a wonderful idea, how fantastic it would be to stand on top of Everest?'; purists, people whose life is climbing and that's how they make their money; and then there would be the trophy hunters, the people who want a feather in their cap, something on their mantelpiece. We're all a mix of the three, it's just which is more to the forefront.

What do you hope viewers take away from Storm Over Everest?

"The humanity and resilience and determination of the people who got through that storm. I want them to take away some deeper insights and a tad more clarity brought to that event. To understand that storm is to understand what those survivors went through and what those who perished went through. We all find ourselves sometimes in situations whether work or a relationship where we've gone too far, put on blinders and said what's moving us forward is (the idea that) hope springs eternal.