I am the place with only three colors-
blue of sky,
white of snow,
black of rock.
I am the place where the temperature
is often very cold.
...and where the air
is uncomfortably thin...
I am the place where life,
ALL Life, is very fragile.
I am the mountain so high
that no bird can fly over me
although many have tried.
To the Tibetans, I am Chomolungma
goddess mother of the earth.
To the Nepalese I am Sagarmatha
goddess mother of the sky.
And to the rest of the world,
I am Mt. Everest.
the United States
bound for the Kingdom of Nepal
to join the Inventa Everest 2000
Environmental Expedition.
They will team up with
the largest contingent of Sherpas
ever assembled for
a clean-up operation.
Their goal is to unburden Mt. Everest
of over 40 years of
expedition garbage
and to summit
the world's highest peak.
Here the Westerners
meet their Eastern guides
and make their final preparations.
Bob Hoffman, a former airline manager,
is the expedition leader
and mastermind behind the half-million
dollar clean-up operation.
Apa Sherpa is responsible for
managing all Sherpas on the expedition
and overseeing the climbing logistics.
Pemba Nurbu will help coordinate
a team of 22 clean-up Sherpas.
Professional mountain guide
Jim Williams, along with Apa,
will lead the 9 member climbing team...
Each member has paid their way
for a chance to summit Everest.
Sometimes called "Mr. Everest"
for reaching the top
in his 10 previous climbs,
Apa will climb this year for
a world record 11th summit.
Apa combs the back alleys of Kathmandu
in search of materials
for the Base Camp Puja ceremony.
Rice, incense, kata scarves,
and prayer flags
are all on the shopping list.
The prayer flags are gonna
go over our complete camp area...
and we'll have 5 lines of
prayer flags going out.
I still have mine
from the '98 expedition.
Prayer flags are thought to
bring good luck in Buddhist cultures...
The blue is the sky...
The white is the...
clouds...
clouds, yeah...
The red is for fire...
The red is fire...
The green is earth...
Yellow.
And the yellow is water.
And also each one has a prayer on it,
and the Lung-la horse is
the fast-carrier of the prayers
to the heavens
...and it's believed that
each time the wind blows
the flags are sending those prayers
for safety to heaven...
so that's the significance of them.
Before the expedition
can set out for Base Camp,
Apa must bring the ceremony items
to a Rimopche to be blessed.
However, Rimpoches are not always easy
to find in the bustle of Kathmandu.
Finally, after many turns,
they find him.
Rimpoches are Buddhist holy men
considered to be the reincarnates
of former high lamas.
The traditional tea is served,
and the puja offerings are blessed.
accompanies Hoffman
on a dawn run at the Monkey Temple.
Should the surgeon from Connecticut
succeed in this summit bid,
he will be the oldest human being
to do so.
This will be his 4th attempt.
Having completed their preparations,
the team embarks on the last air leg...
...the one-hour flight into
the Khumbu Valley
and the beginning of the trek
to base camp.
Coupled with gusty winds
and a very short landing strip
that requires good brakes...
...Lukla airstrip gives even
the most experienced Khumbu pilots
reservations about landing here...
That was some ride...
Our pilot kept saying
"Holy shit, holy shit,
it's a holy shit"
From here they will walk
the rest of the way to Base Camp.
Porters and yaks shoulder
much of the load...
Each porter carries up to 70-pounds...
...everything is instinctively weighed
simply by touch...
Mt. Everest lies on the border
between Tibet and Nepal,
in the Sagarmatha National Park.
The word "Sherpa" does not mean
"mountain porter,"
as it is often mistranslated
in the West.
It simply means
"People from the East"...
referring to
the neighboring region of Tibet...
The Sherpa people have been migrating
to the high reaches of the Himalaya
from Tibet for over 500 years...
With a population of 1000,
Namche Bazar is the largest village
in the Khumbu region.
Even today, Tibetans come weekly
to this Sherpa capital
to ply their wares
at the Saturday market.
The team will return here
at the end of the expedition,
carrying all the collected
refuse to be recycled or incinerated...
Canadian, Jamie Ross is
the environmental director
of the expedition.
Ross was also a member of
Hoffman's 1998 expedition.
We are working with a group here
called the Sagamatha Pollution
control committee,
and they are a group organized to oversee
environmental issues in this park
which is the Sagamatha national park.
The most important thing
to come out of this expedition
is have a major impact on the clean-up
up at Base Camp
and on the mountain...
Get a lot of trash off...
and raise awareness of what we're doing,
so that other people will do the same.
The SPCC will work with the 17 teams
climbing MT. Everest this season.
Each team must provide accurate counts
of equipment going to Base Camp.
The government requires that teams
must pack out expedition garbage
or lose a 4000 dollar deposit.
By current Himalayan standards,
this Expedition is a massive operation.
It will utilize 200 yaks... to carry
and 1 ton of food to sustain
the entire team for 8 weeks...
The Tengboche monastery lies
approximately half-way between
Lukla and Base Camp.
The Monastery was established in 1916,
and is one of the more renowned
Monasteries in the Khumbu region.
Here the team rests
and receives a blessing.
The team awakens to
an un-seasonal snowfall.
The presence of snow at this elevation
can mean an early Monsoon season.
On the tenth and final day
of the trek,
and just eight hours walking distance
from Base Camp,
the team reaches the Sherpa Memorial...
It is a very significant place, to,
you know, just come and visit them
because this is very special place
for... for the climber... the climber
who died on Everest
and other mountain... and,
as part of the Buddhist religion,
once the people died,
we have to cremate on mountain,
on the top of the mountain,
which you can see the whole mountains...
and the river...
running river... that feels...
that will take you to the heaven...
we believe in that...
Do You Have friends here?
sure... Yeah...
It's very spiritual...
I just love the sound of the wind...
It's a chance to reflect...
It's at this point for me
the expedition becomes very real.
Seems to be a gateway for me...
Where the trek finally ends
and now we are starting into
thinking about climbing the mountain...
This is a very solemn place...
It's where our humanity meets the top
of the world and the heavens...
because all these stonework's
that represent that lost their lives
on the mountain shows the effort
and the loss...
Well, this is a mostly...
you'll see Sherpa climbers here...
But these days, they are
sharing with the Westerners, too...
I knew Scott Fischer a little...
He was one of the toughest
mountaineers I ever knew...
When you think he and Rob Hall
could die on Everest,
it means that anybody
could die on Everest...
It reminds us of our mortality
and reminds us that we have to know
when it's time to turn back,
and try and always make
the right judgment calls...
Not go beyond our capabilities...
Everest is worth climbing, but not
worth dying for, that's for sure...
There is a young Sherpa boy...
He was on another team...
There was only three teams
in 95 on the mountain...
And we were going on up to Camp 3 and
we were at the bottom of the Lhotse Face
and he was getting nearer to the camp
and he didn't clip into the fixed line...
And he fell, and we watched him fall,
all the way down the mountain...
Leaving a trail of blood...
By the time he hit the bottom of
the mountain he was already dead...
And it was the first time we had seen
anyone die on the mountain...
And it always reminds us just
how dangerous that Lhotse Face is...
I always just come up here
and just spend a minute...
There's too many up here... too many...
While certainly no 5 star hotel
and after 10 days on the trail,
Base Camp is a virtual Shangri- La.
Home sweet Home...
Located on the Northwestern edge
of the Khumbu Glacier
and situated against the West
shoulder of Everest,
this piece of communal real estate
is free of avalanches,
rock- slides and falling ice seracs...
Apa. I'm save arrived...
Sun's out it's a gorgeous day...
Be a hell of a lot better
if you didn't show up.
I was having a good time...
I hope my bags unpacked you
son of a bitch...
We told them to take it back down
the Khumbu...
Too much weight
it killed about 3 yaks
trying to get all your stuff in...
I was expecting to have my tent up
by now...
I don't see my tent...
Uh, Bob, where's my tent?
Each climbing season,
Base Camp must be built from scratch.
The only materials used are
the rocks and boulders
that are churned out by
the ever-shifting glacial moraine...
While comparatively safe,
life on the lateral moraine of
a glacier does have its challenges,
It's hard, it's cold and it moves.
A 5 foot per day glacial flow slowly
agitates years of biological waste
deposited at the upper camps.
A continual contamination of ground
water is a constant health hazard
for the people living at Base Camp
during the climbing seasons.
The human waste problem at Base Camp
is hard to distinguish from the
animal waste problem at Base Camp.
What we've found so far is that
the water supplies in some places
are showing moderate contamination
with fecal coliform.
And fecal coliform is an indication
of contamination by biological waste.
Whether it's by humans or yaks,
we don't know, we can't tell that here.
But what we are finding is that
some areas that people use for water
sources are actually contaminated,
and that makes us, obviously,
change our water sources,
be more careful with the water
that we're drinking.
And, uh, trying to make sure that
any human waste that's generated here
is definitely contained and treated
so that we're not contributing to
that problem...
At this elevation
the amount of oxygen in the air
is half of what it is at sea level,
which makes the actual act of
cleaning-up more difficult.
The Sherpas live at elevation
some as high as 14,000 feet,
which naturally allows them
to physically accomplish
what many people from sea level cannot.
We've hired an additional
to concentrate on the clean-up effort.
Our plan for camp 2,
once we get it established
is to have the Sherpas clean up
as much of the exposed garbage
as possible.
So far reports from the teams
who have gotten in there
have indicated that we have a very
high snow and ice level up there.
It's going make finding this garbage
and removing it a very difficult task.
The Sherpas will then continue up
to camp 4
to remove some of the hundreds of
oxygen bottles
that are still up there as well as
tent poles and general trash.
Before proceeding beyond Base Camp,
each expedition conducts
a puja ceremony.
The puja asks the spirits
for understanding
and tolerance of Human activities...
Asks for luck, health, fair weather,
and permission to climb the mountain...
The puja is conducted by
a monk or Lama.
The alter is built of stone
and is part of the Base Camp set-up.
This is the heart of the worship site
or Lhap- so...
The climbing gear
is laid near the fire.
This is so the smoke
from the burning juniper branches
may purify the crampons,
ice axes and ropes so vital
for the days ahead...
On the morning of the puja,
Sherpas and the westerners alike
bring the sacramental offerings
to the lap-so...
Rice, incense, & beer,
are traditional gifts to the spirits.
Near the end of the day-long ceremony,
and with prayer flags in place,
the center pole is raised to embrace
the camp with good luck.
Finally everyone chants together
while holding handfuls of flour...
"Go up, may good fortune arise."
hang which is a rice beer, is shared by all members
of the expedition
as a way of closing the ceremony.
Tomorrow the team will venture into
the Khumbu Icefall and begin a week-
long acclimatization
at the higher camps.
Avalanches, falling ice seracs
the size of houses,
and aluminum ladders precariously
balanced over crevasses-
are all hazards in
this lumbering river of ice.
More climbers have perished
in the Khumbu icefall
than on any other part
of the mountain...
Even the summit.
Human beings do not perform well
at this elevation
due to the lack of oxygen.
An acclimatization-process
is necessary
to adapt the body to the thin air
of this new environment.
Time spent at the higher camps
enable red blood cells
to multiply which in turn will carry
more oxygen.
The climbing team continue
their acclimatization
while the Sherpas push up to Camp 4
to begin the cleanup operation.
Although the Khumbu icefall is regarded
as the most dangerous leg of the climb,
the Lhotse face is no casual walk
in the park.
It is a 4000 foot near-vertical
wall of ice.
Like the icefall,
multiple trips up and down
only increase the danger
for anyone traveling...
Because the wind-blown South Col is accessible,
we wanted to go up there and clean off
the hundreds of oxygen bottles
that have been left... and mainly,
these are the large, heavy ones
that no one wanted to bring down
in the past.
Some of them weigh up to
In Nepal, the average annual income
is five hundred U.S. dollars per year.
At twenty-five dollars
per oxygen bottle,
this man will make his income
in 4 trips to the South Col.
Down the hill he will walk
with 5 empty Bottles in his pack...
worth $125 U.S. dollars.
Ask any Sherpa why he climbs,
and the answer is nearly always the same:
"I climb today so my children
do not have climb tomorrow."
But how did the garbage come
to be here in the first place?
The climb up Everest itself is
so arduous... so dangerous...
so cold and windy... that past climbers
felt lucky to get out alive.
They thought little about
the trash they left behind.
The accumulation of garbage is simply
the past 40 years of climbers
reaching for the roof of the world...
and often hastily retreating.
This is Pemba speaking from Camp 2...
over...
Base Camp, can you hear me?
Our Sherpas are going up to South Col
and starting to bring
the oxygen bottles.
And I'm going to scale here,
hoping to weigh some oxygen bottles...
I'm going to send down
from Camp 2 to Base Camp,
Because there are 9 Sherpas coming
up tomorrow from Base Camp to Camp 2
and on the way back
I'll send down there
some garbage and
empty oxygen bottles... over.
OK. I understand.
It's possible for us to weight
the bottles here instead of...
Today's our rest day.
We're out looking for garbage and
trash left by previous expeditions.
That's not going to well,
because the snow- and ice-cap here at
Camp 2 is way higher than normal.
Usually this is bare rock
and you can see a lot of the trash,
but now it's covered with
snow and ice
so we're combing the area
without too much success.
A storm moves rapidly up
the Western Cwm,
temporarily halting the
clean-up effort.
The climbers accompanied by
several Sherpas retreat back to Base Camp
with the first full packs of
trash and oxygen bottles.
The remaining Sherpas will wait out
the storm at Camp 2.
Once the weather clears, they will
promptly resume the clean-up operation.
All the trash and bottles that
come into Base Camp
must be weighed and logged,
to accurately compensate
the Clean-up Sherpas.
As well as present
a final report to
The Sagarmatha Pollution
control committee...
...and on the oxygen bottles,
here's how much per kilo...
so if it's one 15-kilo bottle,
or 6 for a TOTAL of 15,
you get the same money by the weight.
So now can you say that one again?
I just wanna make sure that
I got it right.
Okay, so it's 15 kilograms...
Okay now but how many rupees
for the full trip?
Camp IV to Base Camp is 3800 rupees.
I think most of
the Khumbu Sherpas,
they're all belong for
the trekkings and climbing.
Because we don't have education.
We have a good school in Kathmandu,
but we can't do anything.
If we want to learn about,
like a doctor, at the doctor schools,
engineering schools -
everything is Kathmandu.
But, to the Sherpas
who live in the mountain areas,
they are good for the mountain areas.
Because they are used to
the altitude...
They'd like to study about
the doctor and the engineer,
but they don't have enough economic
...the problem of the economic.
So they are running for the Everest,
and other mountains,
because they get the good money.
Because, you know, this is my income...
without this I don't have a job.
After this, I have like 5 or 6 months
in Kathmandu without job.
Because my son, I have 2 boys...
they are in school...
I have to look after all of them...
and I have to pay for the house rent...
like every man.
And because of the expeditions and trekking,
we get a good job, to earn money,
and our children,
they are very lucky,
they can go to school in Kathmandu.
Otherwise they stay in our village...
we don't have a good school
in our village.
Sherpas are extremely
good business people.
The families work in these units,
so as a family unit,
they will make a fairly substantial
chunk of change.
Probably, in the end, more money that
a U.S. guide would make on the trip.
Weather forecasting in the Himalaya
is extremely challenging.
Expeditions rely on daily satellite
images streaming in on the internet...
Uh, we've got a weather report
from Breckenridge next 5 days.
And that weather report is not good,
repeat, the weather report is NOT good.
While the clean-up team of Sherpas
tend against the inclimate weather at the high cam
the subject at base camp is the
rapidly closing summit window.
We are looking at a good day and
I don't see the point of going
other people
until we have a month of good days.
I think everyone realizes
or feels like at least I feel like
we got only one summit in this group,
we are not going to go up twice
and if we put this much
effort and time
we should wait for
a better window deal.
What's the downside of waiting at
Camp 2 rather than waiting here?
What you gain in acclimatization
you lose in strength,
and the balance is not equal,
and while you acclimatize
a little more,
you may have a little less
of a headache
when you get up to 4, you've grown
that much weaker.
At Base Camp your maintaining.
But I am looking at the weather
and the weather has not been good,
It has not been the weather I've seen
on this mountain 3 previous times.
Know that the disasters that have
occurred have been three things;
you've got bad weather,
high winds, deep snows,
you're not going to get to the summit,
a couple of people do...
If you have long lines of people
going on up,
and you get caught up in a cue more
or less to speak, you don't make it.
And you go up too high and your
sitting there waiting for your summit,
you're so beat up, you don't make it.
Weeks of living and working at
this altitude
continue to take its toll
the climbers.
Team member Rob Chang has fallen ill
and has little choice but
to leave the expedition.
I've been climbing for 11 years.
Going down, I know what it means.
But like I said, I don't want to
become a liability here.
I'm not getting better...
I'm kinda feeling worse, so...
It's always a matter of judgment
in terms of the time it takes
for your body to acclimatize.
Which is a finite process
that you have to spend time
getting used to this altitude,
so you're comfortable breathing.
Your body needs time to
acclimatize to that.
On the other hand, the other thing
that's happening to your body
is there is a continuous,
slow deterioration process going on.
And so it's a balance of the time
it takes to acclimatize,
and get that done properly,
and not wait too long,
and let the deterioration process get
ahead of the acclimatization process,
and then you have a net loss.
Living at extreme altitude
is not physiologic.
It's man wasn't made to live here
for a long period of time, and in fact,
there are no indigenous populations
that live this high.
Part of the problems are that
you don't sleep as well...
you mal-absorb fats, particularly
you tend to lose weight...
with that you lose vigor.
...and then the thing that
you don't wanna have happen is
the body begins to metabolize
the muscle mass...
and that results in weakness,
and weakness does not work
when you're climbing Everest...
you gotta be strong.
We do everything we can to
prevent weight loss:
we have huge high calorie meals...
many of us take supplements of
different kinds to keep the calories on.
In fact, I've always thought I could
open a Mt. Everest Weight-loss School
and guarantee our participants
in writing the loss of weight.
There's no way you can maintain
your weight up here.
And that's we're sorta facing here
as we wait out the weather.
Sherpas continue to make progress
on cleaning up the high camps
amidst deep snow and harsh weather...
We have 324 oxygen bottles.
Expecting another approximately
Trash-wise, we brought a bunch of
trash down from Camp II,
and that's been mostly food waste,
old tents, tent poles, gas cans,
there's some batteries, and the total
on that is approximately 500 pounds.
We're picking up some of the oldest
bottles, and the heaviest bottles
earlier teams which were helping out with cleaning-up
didn't bring down
because of their weight.
All of the oxygen bottles that've
been brought down are dated,
and this particular bottle was
manufactured in June of 1951.
The first team to go up was in 1952,
it was a Swiss team.
The leader, a gentleman by the name
of Lambert, and Tenzing Norgay,
reached the place we call The Balcony,
at about 27,000 feet...
In other words,
they almost made it to the summit.
They came very, very close,
and we believe very strongly that
this is one of those bottles
from that very first attempt.
Or, in other words,
the very first oxygen bottle
that was ever dropped
at the South Col.
There were a number of
these little fat ones...
We've all seen pictures of
the Hillary-Tenzing climb...
This is the exact bottle that Hillary
and Tenzing used on the '53 climb.
This style of bottle was
only used by that team.
It was a military bottle that was
manufactured for the British military.
After that all climbers were
getting their bottles from Europe,
and they were privately manufactured.
So we have 2 real antiques.
Finally, after nearly 7 weeks,
Bob Hoffman receives the weather
report he has been waiting for,
the summit is clear...
What this is giving you is
a constant feed of O2...
at 2 liters, 3 liters,
whatever, per minute.
You'll probably find that you, up high,
will wanna have your mask
on most of the time.
I'm kind of conflicted about it.
On 1 hand, I find it very constricting.
I feel as though I'm being asphyxiated.
I wanna rip the mask off, and yet,
I can feel my fingers getting warmer,
my toes begin to warm up,
and I move faster.
And so, I think the benefits
far out-weigh the negatives of
using an oxygen apparatus.
This is the glamorous side of
mountaineering, right here.
I was just checking E-mail
from my youngest son,
and he says, Dad, be careful,
I don't wanna lose you now.
And I thought, God, what am I doing
to the people at home?
I got a tear in my eye thinkin'
I've got this 18-year-old kid
afraid I'm gonna die.
And I have no intention of dying,
but we always have that risk.
I think not enough exposure is given
to this side of mountaineering,
because it really is in some ways
a selfish sport,
because I don't think enough of us
pay attention to what effect
it has on others...
So I just think about the glamour
and beauty and all the height.
It's good on the climbing.
It's good to think people back home.
The anxieties and in some case
the sufferings they go through.
On Sherm's 3rd Everest trip,
one slip in the middle of the night
nearly cost him his life...
I think we were just below the
Balcony and suddenly boom!
I don't know exactly what happened,
I think I just misplaced a crampon.
I went down, and when you go down
on a steep,
icy surface you begin to enjoy the
effects of uncontrolled gravity.
A crevasse saved Sherm from falling
off the 5000 foot face of Everest.
Bob Boice witnessed Sherm's fall and
traversed in the dark
along the icy balcony to reach him.
Boice abandoned his own
summit aspirations
to short-rope his injured friend
the 5 hours down to Camp 4.
Others joined in the rescue effort,
in what would be an excruciating
two-day descent to Base Camp.
Sherm was evacuated with severe,
multiple injuries that would take
nearly a year to recover from...
Hoffman's team will be one of the
last expeditions to the summit this season.
Additional clean-up Sherpas will
accompany the climbers to the summit
to do a final sweep of
the upper mountain.
As long as we don't get any more snow
tonight, we'll be all right.
I'm just concerned about more snow,
because that could give us
avalanche danger.
But if we don't get any more snow
tonight, we can cut a trail on up.
The wind is from the south...
and it's never good when the clouds
are moving in outta the south.
That's always what
I've always looked for.
We normally get the winds off
Everest going in the more northerly,
ah, easterly direction...
But shit, movin' outta the south...
And until that wind shifts,
we're gonna continue to have this.
I think all of the waiting
around was worth it.
I mean it was hard for everybody,
including the people who were
making decisions about when to go,
but now we're up here and
I think we're ready to do it.
We still have a long way to go...
I don't know if the weather's gonna
be on our side or not...
But I mean who knows,
the spirit of these mountains
can do very funny things...
and if not,
today might have been just
a long training exercise.
The weather up here is a crap shoot,
and if what Apa said yesterday is right,
from here on out it's monsoon season,
so, we should stay up here,
and give it a crack.
So I want everyone into Camp 4 by
noon-time, so we'll get an early start...
We'll be hydrating and resting,
and then we'll start out for the summit
somewhere between 10:00 and
Climbing through the night...
Our goal is to be on the south summit
between 6 and 7 o'clock in the morning,
and on the summit between 8 and 10,
and then back down to 4...
Stay the night at 4... 2... 2
back here to Base Camp,
and then it's party time.
Chuck Huss and Dan Smith are stricken
with altitude-related illnesses,
and will stay behind at Camp 4.
Six American climbers and 12 Sherpas
depart for the summit before midnight.
The team leaves the night before to
give themselves extra time
to reach the summit and descend before
the periless afternoon storms arrive.
For the next 7 hours, the team will
climb in complete darkness.
As dawn breaks, the sun is out...
but ominous clouds form below and
the winds above begin to increase.
Apa and 3 Sherpas are out in front,
breaking trail...
Apa fixes the rope lines up the 40-foot
exposed face known as the Hillary step...
From the summit the first
transmissions are heard...
Apa and three Sherpas went to the summit.
Apa Sherpa summits Mt. Everest
for the eleventh time
and establishes a world record...
His moment of personal glory is
fleeting as Apa descends
back into the worsening storm,
looking for Sherm Bull.
Nearing the Hillary step,
Apa encounters Lily Leonard,
Jim Williams and Francis Slakey.
All three will soon summit each
for the first time...
The storm continues to intensify...
This is Base Camp.
Where are you do left?
How are you doing? Over.
Complete white-out conditions here...
Can't see a damn thing...
I'm stuck in place...
There's no Sherpa following me...
And the team's totally spread out.
At 11 AM and in the complete white-out,
Pemba Nurbu is the last to summit.
Pemba and 3 cleanup Sherpas descend,
cleaning up discarded oxygen bottles
as they go.
Below the south summit, Bob Hoffman
wisely decides to abandon
his summit bid.
Alone and with snow blindness
in one eye,
he turns and descends toward
the South Col...
finds Sherm Bull...
Unwilling to allow the storm
to daunt him,
Sherm pulls himself methodically
up the fixed lines.
Taking into consideration
the intensity of the storm,
Apa convinces him to turn back
and give up his dream...
Sherm and Apa is turning back...
For those in Base Camp,
all that is left to do is
to wait for confirmation that the team
has arrived back safely at Camp 4.
Bob Boice, alone at the south summit,
calls in to report that his
oxygen tank has frozen up.
Hello Ben, it's Robert... Ran out of
o's between the summit and the step...
Jim Williams intercepts
the transmission.
Boice, relax start breathing...
get yourself in a comfortable place...
It may take some time...
...eventually finding Bob Boice
weak and very cold.
Williams replaces the frozen tank and
the two descend together back to Camp 4...
It has been 22 hours
since the team left Camp 4...
They now begin a 2-day descent
to Base Camp.
In their final sweep of The upper
mountain and the South Col
the Sherpas will pack out
more than 100 spent oxygen bottles
and other refuse.
I'm so proud of you, hon.
You don't know how much.
Man, that was a bitch of a day
and you just didn't wanna hear
what I wanna do.
I'm super proud of you.
I'm 58-years-old, and it kicked the
stuffing outta me coming down...
But coming down was really
life threatening...
I mentioned to you that
I had one eye shut down...
I had to take off my goggles,
so I knew I was susceptible
to snow-blindness,
but I couldn't see outta them...
And this blizzard, we had a white-out
the whole time we were up there...
and so what I was having to do... is...
we had a line of ropes going up,
and I clipped into a figure-8
and repelled backwards,
where I could kinda see
where the rope was coming from...
But I kept on stumbling into
deep snow drifts.
This frost-bite...
I think it's almost worse maybe 5 days
after it happens... supposed to
when it has actually occurred.
I mean I've never really
had a bad case before,
but I knew at The Balcony that
I was gonna have... frost-bite...
I'll be honest with you,
I'm really scared...
I hope I don't... like, lose anything
...like any tips... you know,
that wouldn't be good...
you just don't realize how much
you depend upon your fingers
until you lose them...
for a few... for a few days.
Actually we get on the summit
at the right time,
around 8 o'clock on the summit.
First I went to the summit,
I went to fix the rope up to the summit,
then I come back to Hillary step
where I met Lily,
then went back to the summit again.
This time I want to get all the teams
to the summit,
but the weather changed and
only the three summated...
So you see it as your job to
get the whole team on the summit?
On the top... I want to get all of them on the summit,
but the weather had changed...
The next thing you know,
Apa pops over the hill.
This guy, I'm tellin' ya... I just
can't... Oh, you've heard about him...
I can't say enough about him.
Not just as a Sherpa,
but as a person.
So he comes over the hill, and I'm
struggling away, and he said,
"Sherm, I wanna get you to the summit
more than anything in the world."
And he said, "You know, I think,
probably, I could, get you there."
But then he said, "I dunno about
getting you down, Sherm."
He said, "I think you might die."
And then he said the thing
that really got me, he said,
"I think a Sherpa might die doing it."
I said, "Apa, I take your advice 100%.
I would never put someone else's life
at risk for somethin' I wanna do.
I mean it's one thing if a climber
wants to risk his own scrawny neck,
that's somethin', but to take somebody
else's life, put that at risk,
there's no, no one has the right
to do that
particularly on an egotistical
adventure like climbing a mountain.
I thought it over about
"Apa, let's go down...
let's go down."
And I gave up my dream,
and I got a little emotional
about giving up my dream...
been trying to do this thing
for almost 10 years now...
but... there are more important things
I chose in life - I chose my wife,
I chose my family,
I wouldn't jeopardize those things...
Bob, are you gonna be dancing
this evening?
I don't think so...
just being here... thank you...
just being here is about
all I can manage.
He loves that bathrobe.
The Inventa Everest 2000 Environmental
Expedition left Base Camp
with 632 discarded oxygen bottles...
and over 600 pounds of garbage
from the high camps.
reached the summit of Everest...
and a new world record was established
by Apa Sherpa.
For the Sherpas this ends
the climbing season,
many will return next year
to support other expeditions...
Our simple message is...
that no matter where we live...
no matter what we do...
we can do a better job in cleaning up
our own environment.
If we were able to come to
some place as difficult,
and with an environment as harsh as
Mt. Everest has, and clean it up,
there's nothing we can't do
in the world
in helping the environment.