5/31/1998: Life in Boston

What to do when it's warm....


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This weekend was a hot and steamy one here in Beantown, so what better way to cool than go someplace air-conditioned?

Yeah, yeah, I know going for a swim would do the trick too, but air conditioning is pretty good too. Anyway, we decided that today, since the sun wasn’t really out, we’d head to the Museum of Science, where the IMAX film “Everest” had its world premiere and will be showing all summer.

I knew I was going to write about this tonight, and the whole time leading up to the viewing and during it, I kept thinking of how I would describe it. When I left the theatre, there was only one word in my head. Wow. Wow Wow Wow. Watching an IMAX film is like being in a helicopter with a big glass dome on the front, and just sticking your head right in it. It was like flying. The panoramic shots are just simply breathtaking, and they make sure that there are plenty of them.

The movie starts and ends with Tensing Norgay’s son (Norgay is the Sherpa who accompanied Edmund Hillary to the summit in the 50’s.) This would be his first trip to the summit. He gives you a deep feeling of what the Himalayas mean to the Sherpas, and why they climb them. You also get, here and throughout the film, some fascinating views of Buddhist temples. The first with Norgay’s son as a youth, lighting prayer candles to speed his father along to the summit. And as the close, with him as a grown man, putting together a twenty-five thousand candle tribute to speed the souls of the 8 climbers who died on their journey

After meeting the younger Norgay, you are given short biographies on the expedition members.

First you follow Ed Viesturs (I think that’s the spelling, apologies if not) and his wife on a mountain biking trip through the Utah desert/mountains. Watching them bike a trail and flying over the thousand feet drop-off their edging along is indescribable. The shape this man is in is simply amazing. A quote from his wife, “When we go for a five hour bike ride, I consider it a workout. Ed considers it warm-up.”

Then we move to Mexico, where another member of the group is rock climbing right on the ocean. You first see her hanging from the underside of a rock by one hand, and watch her as she makes her way over the ledge and works her way up. Then, they hooked the camera to her and had her rappel down the cliff. I have to stay that my stomach turned at this point. Watching these movies, you have to realize that you can’t see ANYTHING else but the screen, and your body reacts to it, believe me.

When the movie finally moved to Everest itself, I was just speechless. You really get an idea of how vast the mountain is. Five and a half miles above sea level. They make a point of showing you a view with all the tents of base camp in the foreground, with the glacier and mountain taking up the rest of the screen. If that doesn’t give you the idea that this is not a place that people should be, I don’t know what does. Just amazing, watching them cross the icefield on roped-together ladders, spanning crevasses maybe 500 feet deep. Then watching them climb straight up the mountain, suspended thousands of feet above the air, and then looking up and seeing the mountain looming impossibly high above them.

The film crew had to put their climb on hold to help out the climbers whose attempt at the summit was told in the book Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. They do this with no hesitation, no consideration that it might jeopardize their own attempt at the summit. Read the book, and you’ll realize that there were many others who were nowhere near that selfless.

They do eventually make the summit, after nine weeks on the mountain. Pictures from the top of the world. Breathtaking.
The film left me with two very conflicting thoughts. Going in, I thought to myself, “you’d have to be absolutely insane to try to climb Everest.” Leaving the film, that thought stuck with me. I think the IMAX camera did the best job I’ve ever seen of showing just how massive everything on Everest is, and just how small the humans are who scale it. But seeing the views of the Himalayas, I think I can understand how someone could be moved to try it. Could you just imagine being able to tell someone, “I’ve been on top of the world?”

That would be something.