Baltasar Kormakur · 2015 · survival

Baltasar Kormakur's 2015 film of the 1996 Everest disaster. Two commercial expedition leaders take paying clients up the mountain in a season with too many teams on one route. The summit push runs late, the fixed ropes are not in place, and a storm arrives while people are still above the South Col with the oxygen running out.

1. 1
   Kathmandu

   The clients gather in Kathmandu - a Texan doctor, a postman from Washington who has saved for years, a journalist writing it up - and Rob Hall briefs them on a mountain that is now guided, sold and booked out.

2. 2
   Lukla

   They fly into the airstrip at Lukla and walk in through the Khumbu over a fortnight, gaining height slowly, past the villages and the memorial cairns of everyone the mountain has already kept.

3. 3
   Base Camp

   At Base Camp below the icefall, several expeditions acclimatise together and the season's real problem becomes visible - too many teams intending to summit on the same day, sharing one line of fixed rope.

4. 4
   The South Col

   From the South Col the summit push leaves at midnight, and the delays begin at once: ropes not fixed, bottlenecks at the Hillary Step, and climbers still going up hours after the turnaround time has passed.

5. 5
   The summit

   They reach the top late, in weather that is closing, and the descent turns into a storm on open ground above eight thousand metres - where a radio call home from just below the summit becomes the thing everyone remembers.