Re-Creating the Height of Disaster

The statistics are staggering and terrifying: For nearly every four people who get to the summit of Mt. Everest, one dies in the attempt.

Since Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay conquered the 29,028-foot peak in 1953, the top has been reached more than 630 times. And more than 150 people have been killed this century on the slopes of the world’s highest mountain, located in the Himalayas on the Tibet-Nepal border.

Most climbers require oxygen supplements near the peak; at such high altitudes, dehydration can be a swift and merciless killer. Weather changes are sudden and violent. Temperatures can easily drop to 40 below zero at night.

Despite the deadly risks, climbing Mt. Everest has become a great attraction during the two-week period in May when weather conditions are the best. These days, many people--often without proper training and climbing experience--pay as much as $65,000 for the chance to reach the summit under the guidance of professional mountaineers.

ABC’s “Into Thin Air: Death on Everest,” premiering Sunday, chronicles the disastrous May 10, 1996 ascent of Mt. Everest that left eight people dead. It is based on the best-selling book “Into Thin Air” (Villard Books) by Jon Krakauer, a journalist who was assigned by Outside magazine to join an expedition. He made it to the top with four teammates but was the only one to survive; four climbers with other groups that day also died.

Christopher McDonald (“Veronica’s Closet”) stars as Krakauer; Peter Horton and Nathaniel Parker play Everest veterans and friendly-but-rival guides Scott Fisher of the United States and Rob Hall of New Zealand. Both Fisher and Hall perished on the mountain because of a horrific blizzard that blew up fast and caught the climbers on their way down from the summit.

The drama was filmed last May in the Austrian Alps. They aren’t as high as the Himalayas--for the real thing, viewers will have to wait until spring for the release of “Everest,” an IMAX film made at the same time Krakauer was climbing--but the conditions were still arduous.

Indeed, says director Robert Markowitz (“The Tuskegee Airmen”), making the ABC film “was the most difficult project that I or anybody who went on that mountain with me had ever done. And there were a lot of experienced people. We were at 11,000 feet, basically, for seven weeks of shooting. Temperatures dropped to 15 below and winds were at 35 miles per hour. Much of the storms [in the film] were real. We shot for two weeks at night.”

During the second day of shooting near Innsbruck, Austria, McDonald recalls, the production was hit with a killer storm. “The storm was blowing horizontal, it was that bad,” he says. “If you didn’t stand in the right position you would be blown over.”

“We had absolutely no control, and we knew that the mountain would decide our fates,” says executive producer Bernard Sofronski. “We didn’t even know if we were going to finish this movie. We had to trust the mountain.”

Markowitz says going through that experience helped the cast and crew understand what the real climbers endured and “why it was so insane as to what happened. All of these people, even the guides, went up for the wrong reason.”

Everest, Markowitz says, is a life force unto itself. “It’s very much like going on the ocean. One must submit themselves to those elements. You relinquish control, and the only reason to do it is to have the spiritual experience. But all of them, including the Sherpas, abandoned that knowledge and went up for very selfish and fundamentally egotistical reasons and, in some cases, a matter of greed--all trying to fill some hole that was in their lives, just to be able to say when they got home they had conquered Everest. Conquering Everest is a contradiction in terms. You only go up there with the mountain’s permission.”

Krakauer, an accomplished climber, was on the set for the first two weeks of filming, including the anniversary of the tragic event.

“Jon was part of our training program,” Sofronski says. “It was incredible what he did for the group in terms of answering questions, like what happens when you’re at 29,000 feet? How do you move? All of these questions we never could have answered.”

The cast trained 11 days before filming began. “They got athletic actors,” McDonald relates. “We had techincal work with all the ropes and then we went up the mountain. I had an advantage. I live in Lake Arrowhead, [which is] at 6,000 feet, anyway. I have enjoyed a lot of trekking and climbing in all kinds of weather up there.”

Safety was the major concern for Sofronski and Markowitz. “We had major Austrian climbers,” Sofronski says. “They trained these actors like you wouldn’t believe and made them feel safe. That was the biggest thing for me this whole time. I knew with this army of people [on a mountain], there was a major risk factor. I instructed a safety team that they would jump on top of people if someone made a false move.”

Sofronski, Markowitz and McDonald say they would never try to climb Everest.

“Never, never. I mean, absolutely never,” Sofronski says. “Climbing? Yes. But when you start getting to the elevation where you’re dying? Why would I have to punish myself that way?”

Still, Sofronski acknowledges, the desire to climb Everest is akin to an addiction. In fact, four more people perished on Everest in May, 1996, and at least seven more died there in May this year.

“The addiction is so enormous,” Sofronski says. “There is something in this celebrity-forever-by-climbing-Everest which is the ultimate.”

“Into Thin Air: Death on Everest” airs Sunday at 9 p.m. on ABC.