The movie Everest opened in theaters last Friday, and people are wondering whether it is embellished or even possibly toned down for one reason or another. Our feature article this morning gives plenty of reasons to watch the movie instead of climbing the mountain yourself, but how accurate is the film? Uproxx talked with mountain climbers Sean Swarner and Nick Heil, who have been there. They tell us that the climb itself isn’t all that hard compared to other mountains (Denali is actually taller from base to top), especially with the infrastructure that’s been built, but there are other, more serious dangers.
Swarner: When you’re up above, in the death realm, above 26,000 feet, your brain’s not even functioning very well. Your body is deteriorating and you just can’t even think at that level. What would be simple down here in New York, like tying my shoes, up there would take a half an hour just because your brain can’t even process things that well. You really have to push yourself and be very cognizant of how your body feels and what’s going on, because being hypoxic, oftentimes you don’t even know you’re hypoxic, and that’s one of those things… Bad things happen.
Heil: The really sort of insidious danger on Everest is altitude. It’s about being up in these extreme altitudes and how debilitating that is. I think this is the thing that most people that read about Everest and find Everest interesting and compelling, but who haven’t been to altitude, can’t quite grasp because there’s nothing quite like being up at high altitude. You may not be even fully compos mentis in these environments. In fact, no one is. You’re making decisions based on very compromised mental facilities, and it’s easy to make mistakes.
I spent a day walking around Aspen, Colorado, and was astonished at how the altitude affected me, and it’s only around 8,000 feet. Everest, at 29,000 feet, is more than three times the altitude. Read the rest of the interview at Uproxx.