Tag Archives: Mount Everest

Everest (2015) is nauseating viewing.

Based on the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, this is your generic retelling fare. I hated this movie, utterly hated it. The picture comprised an array of rather irritating archetypes feeling very sorry for themselves because they experience the harsh elements on the highest mountain on the planet. There is no drama to proceedings at all because they are barely characters and get what is coming to them. Like, what did you expect? It’s Mount Everest, not an indoor climbing centre.

What the fuck even is a ‘guided climb’? I do not understand why it is even legal. There is a quote from the only semi-interesting ‘character’ in the movie (the redoubtable Jake Gyllenhaal) which is something like, “If you need help getting up the thing you should not even be here. “

I like the sound of that and it is a rather universal statement which applies to any endeavour. The movie looks nice – well shot and framed. It’s just pointless, a fawning ode to stupidity.

Avoid.

Further reading:

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/everest-2015

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/english/movie-reviews/everest/movie-review/49014666.cms

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Tenzing–Hillary Airport.

 

lukla-nepal-airport

An (alleged) airport a snail-crawling 25 miles from Mount Everest, with no radar system and entirely comprising a single 500-metre runway built into a cliff, I read that Sir Edmund Hillary himself oversaw its construction and that locals were ploughed with liquor (no one will reveal what kind) and asked to perform a ‘foot-stomping dance’ to flatten the soil and make it suitable for landing. I can picture the whole endeavour as a garish episode lifted from a peak Werner Herzog movie, with a Klaus Kinski Svengali lording over the ‘indigenous’, the martinet a grizzly Bavarian launching battered shoes and Jägermeister at them. This shockingly isn’t an apocryphal story, and the airport, a.k.a. ‘It’s a Trap’, was only paved in 2001.

It’s an appropriate precursor to an attempted scaling of Everest. The danger aspect would overwhelm this fat bastard and inject hubris into proceedings – “If I survive this landing the worst is over and I can surely surmount the beastly mountain.”

The list of accidents on the Wikipedia entry is a most disconcerting read, and I wouldn’t recommend watching one of the many bumpy landings should an upcoming flight be on the cards. Fuck knows how a plastered Denzel would have coped. As a passenger, I’d be stammering out of my mind on crystal meth birthed from Walter White’s RV just to endure the experience.

Further reading/viewing:

https://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-advice/health-safety/inside-the-worlds-most-dangerous-airport/news-story/21519b748e67fe5b14dca1c00d14372c

https://www.tibettravel.org/everest-base-camp-trek-in-nepal/airport-for-ebc-trek-in-nepal.html

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