♪ LIAM NEESON: There is a place that is above all others, a place where dreams are chased above the clouds, a place where only the strong and lucky survive.

The top of the world, where the wind is fiercest is a desolate, deathly place where humans cannot live.

Every breath burns the lungs like cold fire.

Many have died there on the mountain known as "Everest."

♪ ♪ MAN: When I was a boy, my father told me that the highest mountain in the world is the home of the gods.

My people, the Sherpa people, are Buddhist.

We call Mount Everest "Chomolungma" or "the goddess who lives on the summit."

For 50 years or more those who tried to climb to the summit failed or died.

Then in 1953 the first two climbers reached the top: Edmund Hillary and my father, Tenzing Norgay.

When I was just five years old, I lit butter lamps to honor the mountain gods who protected my father at the top of the world.

He said the mountains gave him great strength.

I thought he was the bravest man on earth.

Now, 43 years after his great climb on Everest, I'm training for my own summit attempt.

I think it's in my blood.

The first thing I learned was the self-arrest.

It's the only way to stop yourself if you fall and begin sliding down a steep, icy slope.

My father was a hero.

Before he passed away, my father warned me about the dangers on Everest.

But I always felt kind of a hunger inside to live up to his legend, so I have to try it.

NEESON: This spring, Jamling will join an Everest expedition led by Ed Viesturs of Seattle.

Ed has climbed Everest four times.

He trains every day, even when he's on vacation in Utah.

ED: Well, I brought together a team of highly skilled climbers to assist a scientist who's studying the geology of the Everest region.

This year Paula, my fiancée, will be our base camp manager.

We're going to Everest just two weeks after we get married.

I figured Everest would be a cheap place to honeymoon.

♪ PAULA: The difference between me and Ed is that when we go for a five-hour bike ride, I call it a workout.

He calls it a warm-up.

NEESON: The third lead climber of this Everest team will be an accomplished young mountaineer from Barcelona.

Araceli Segarra has climbed high mountains before but she is best known for her skills as a rock climber.

SEGARRA: I like to go to the beach and just hang out but I prefer climbing mountains.

I'm not trying to prove anything.

I just love to climb.

It's my passion, that's all.

NEESON: If she makes it to the top of Everest, Araceli will be the first Spanish woman in history to do so.

Even when she's training in Mexico, Araceli's real goal is halfway around the world.

Mount Everest is part of the highest mountain range in the world, the Himalaya, which stretches 1,500 miles across Asia.

Far below the icy peaks of the Himalaya lies the capital of Nepal, Kathmandu, basking in a warm subtropical valley.

NORGAY: I love this city.

In 1953 Kathmandu was the point of departure for my father and Hillary.

On March 15 my teammates and I gather here to make final plans.

NEESON: The climbers have come to Kathmandu to help a scientist from England, Roger Bilham.

Roger wants the team to place instruments high on Mount Everest so he can study its geology.

Sumiyo Tsuzuki of Japan will document the expedition.

...to climb Mount Everest?

I don't know if I'm strong enough.

I've never climbed Everest.

I need to see it.

We have three tons of gear all told and probably half to two-thirds of that might be food...

It's been in my dreams, you know, ever since I was a kid, to climb.

NORGAY: Tomorrow we helicopter up into the foothills of Everest.

Sumiyo joins me in spinning the prayer wheels to offer prayers for the dangers that lie ahead.

When I saw the rickety, old Russian helicopter Ed had rented, I figured we'd need all the prayers we could get.

♪ SEGARRA: This cargo helicopter cannot fly as high as base camp but it gives us a head start up to 9,000 feet.

From there, we will walk over 30 miles to the base of Mount Everest.

I love to climb the highest mountains in the world.

Most of them are here in the Himalayas.

NEESON: Araceli's passion is climbing high mountains.

Roger Bilham's mission is understanding how they form.

BILHAM: Continents actually move and when two huge land masses collide, all that rock has to go somewhere and so it goes up, and that collision is what pushed up the Himalayan Mountains.

About a hundred million years ago the land we call India began moving north, towards Asia.

As the continents slowly collided, India slid under Asia.

The rock in between was squeezed and piled up, forming the Himalaya.

India is still pushing further underneath Asia, so every year Mount Everest grows about a quarter of an inch higher.

At 29,028 feet, Mount Everest soars five and a half miles above sea level, making it the tallest mountain on earth.

We have another one down there... NEESON: Tall mountains are built by many tiny movements which Roger tries to record with GPS satellite receivers.

What are we going to learn with that?

Well, we... SEGARRA: Roger is, um... he's happy when he explains to you what he knows.

It's alive for him, the geology.

BILHAM: The powerful underground forces which pushed these mountains five miles high also cause massive earthquakes.

In a village like Khumjung, few houses are built to withstand such tremors.

We can't forecast earthquakes but perhaps, if our team succeeds in making a GPS measurement on Everest, that will make our earthquake data more accurate.

NEESON: On a ridge at almost 13,000 feet is the remote Buddhist monastery known as Thyangboche.

NORGAY: 43 years ago my father stopped at this monastery to seek blessings to climb Mount Everest.

NEESON: The Sherpas believe the mountain gods protect those who honor them.

But pride and arrogance can anger the gods and cause great suffering, even death.

ED: With a train of 60 yaks to carry our gear, we head for base camp, 5,000 feet up from here.

NEESON: As the climbers go higher, they risk altitude sickness, but if they ascend gradually, the body adjusts on its own to the low oxygen level.

It's called acclimatizing.

The number of red blood cells doubles so the blood can carry more oxygen.

Just surviving at 29,000 feet is a challenge in light of this medical fact: a person taken directly from sea level to the top of Mount Everest would be unconscious in a few minutes and dead soon thereafter.

Those who have died on Everest are honored by stone monuments called chortens.

SEGARRA: You walk into Khumbu, you see the chortens, you think about the people who died for the mountain we are going to climb.

ED: On April 2, we reached the foot of Mount Everest.

Here, on a huge glacier, we set up base camp.

Next to our tents are those of a dozen other expeditions all with the same goal-- a summit that's two miles higher.

NEESON: Ed is concerned that there are too many teams on the mountain and some of them show a critical lack of experience.

From this base of operations, Jamling is in charge of organizing the loads and sending them up with the strongest Sherpas, the summit team.

(speaking foreign language) NORGAY: Most Sherpas like me can carry heavy loads up here without getting sick or short of breath.

Our blood carries more oxygen.

So when I say climbing is in my blood, I'm not kidding.

PAULA: As much as I like everyone on the team, I somehow never expected to bring 30 people along on my honeymoon... 30 hungry people.

SEGARRA: The head cook is called Chyangba.

He is always singing and laughing.

He is really a funny guy.

(rumbling) ED: Several times a day at base camp, you hear the roar of an avalanche.

♪ NEESON: 150 people have died on Everest.

About a third of them have been killed by avalanches.

NORGAY: We hope to follow the same route my father and Edmund Hillary took to the summit in 1953.

There are three main danger zones.

The first is the Khumbu Icefall, where huge ice towers tumble without warning.

Above that is the steep and icy Lhotse Face, which rises nonstop for 4,000 feet.

The third danger zone is the southeast ridge near the summit.

The icefall is a frozen river, about 500 feet deep, that surges downhill almost four feet a day.

Some of the gigantic ice blocks weigh over 40 tons and if they suddenly break loose, they can crush you in a heartbeat.

♪ ED: In the icefall, we use ladders a lot, which can take a little getting used to.

SEGARRA: I like to get my falling done early because later on, I don't like to fall again.

When you look down, you wonder how deep is the crevasse.

Well, I don't want to find out.

The Sherpas say that if you fall in the crevasse, you will fall all the way to America.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ED: After we climb through the icefall, we head towards middle camp, where we spend a few weeks acclimatizing.

Uh, if you go too high too soon, you risk getting edema, which is where your lungs begin to fill with fluid and that can kill you.

NEESON: At middle camp, the climbers must begin to drink more water, which they get by melting snow.

The dry air sucks moisture from each breath and also makes them cough.

Coughing fits have left Sumiyo with two cracked ribs.

ED: Whenever porters went back down to Paula at base camp, they brought her videos, because, you know, Paula wanted to see that I was okay.

It was, after all, our honeymoon.

Let's see what we got.

ED: Yeah, we're going to have some... probably some sliced... lightly sautéed spam along with some mustard.

It looks like breakfast time at, uh, advanced base camp.

That's pretty boring.

SEGARRA: ...'cause now I'm thinking about ice cream with chocolate and... a little of cream of the topping.

It can be great.

(laughing) Typical.

NEESON: May 7-- after five weeks at 22,000 feet, the team has acclimatized.

Each drop of blood can now carry more oxygen.

They're ready to go for the top but right now, the summit is being blasted by freezing, hurricane-force winds.

ED: Almost all year, storms and high winds make Everest unclimbable, but sometime in May, you may get a week of calm, clear weather which then allows you to sort of sneak up to the summit.

It was still very windy up high, so I chose to sit tight.

It's not easy, watching other teams going up and then wondering if perhaps you're missing your only chance of reaching the summit.

Of the 12 other teams here, the largest is led by my good friend Rob Hall from New Zealand, a very experienced Everest climber.

The memory of May 8, and the days that followed, will haunt me forever.

Heading up the steep, icy Lhotse Face that day, we watched a column of over 50 climbers including my friend, Rob Hall.

They faced a three-day climb to reach the summit.

At the time, even though I felt uneasy, I never suspected what a nightmare they were heading up into.

NEESON: Two days later, most of the same climbers set out for the summit.

Late on that fateful day, a fierce storm slammed into the upper part of the mountain without warning.

(wind whistling) ED: Over two dozen climbers were scattered along the route to the summit-- many of them caught high on the mountain much too high to get down safely.

NEESON: In the final hour of daylight, a few climbers fought their way back to the chaos of high camp but for the rest, it looked grim.

People have been caught before in storms high on Everest but very few have survived.

ED: The stranded climbers ran out of bottled oxygen.

As the wind chill dropped to 100 degrees below zero, 17 climbers were still trapped on the mountain, including Rob.

When night fell, most of the climbers hunkered down just hoping to survive the night.

When Paula called me that night, she reminded me that Rob's wife Jan was seven months pregnant.

We were all struggling to face the fact that we had friends high on the mountain, in the storm, fighting for their lives, and that perhaps some of them weren't going to make it.

I knew I wouldn't get much sleep.

All right.

Good night.

The next morning, we got word that seven climbers were still missing, but one of the stranded climbers was still in radio contact-- Rob Hall.

He'd beaten the odds and survived a night of arctic winds at 28,000 feet.

Rob just couldn't find the strength to move but he wasn't ready to give up.

Clean the ice out of your mask and start moving.

You got to pull yourself up over... Talking to Rob on the radio was tough.

It's downhill from there.

HALL: Okay.

Okay.

There was nothing I could do for him.

I was at middle camp, and he was at least a two-day climb away.

You can't wait all day for me.

You have to help yourself.

Using a makeshift radio patch, we then connected Rob with his wife Jan in New Zealand.

When we heard them talking on the radio, I mean, we all lost it.

We all started to cry.

Later they chose a name for their unborn child and Rob went to sleep in subzero temperatures.

But he didn't survive the night.

NEESON: Just above the high camp, a climber named Beck Weathers had been out in the storm for over 22 hours.

He had been left for dead by other climbers.

And then, nearly blind, his hands literally frozen solid, Beck stood up, left his pack and desperately tried to walk.

All I knew was that-that as long as my legs would run and I could stand up, I was going to move toward that camp and if I fell down, I was going to get up.

And if I fell down again, I was going to get up.

And I was going to keep moving till I either hit that camp or I walked off the face of that mountain.

NEESON: Beck's teammates were certain he was lying dead in the snow, so they were pretty startled when he staggered into the high camp.

Beck's life hung by a thread but Ed was determined to rescue him.

ED: The camera team put down their gear and followed me up the mountain into the storm.

We'd just lost Rob.

We sure as hell weren't going to lose Beck, too.

He was so blind and so weak that we had to support him and physically place his feet in each step.

But even with our help, Beck just didn't have the strength to get through the icefall.

His frostbitten hands would have to be amputated, so time was critical.

We had to get him out of there soon.

NEESON: A helicopter rescue at over 20,000 feet seemed out of the question.

Up here, the air is so thin that the blades have almost nothing to bite into.

At any moment, the aircraft may lose lift and fall out of the sky.

The only previous flight up here ended in a crash.

But a Nepalese pilot named Colonel Madan K.C.

decided to risk it.

Even when the helicopter flew up above the icefall, Beck's survival was still very much in doubt.

SEGARRA: The pilot had trouble setting down.

No one knew if they would crash.

NEESON: After the climbers loaded Beck in, the pilot struggled to lift off.

Finally, he did.

WEATHERS: As we flew away, the tears began to flow and I was just so grateful to be alive.

Colonel Madan, Ed Viesturs, the guys on the film crew-- I literally owe them my life.

NEESON: Yet, as remarkable as this rescue was, it could not dull the grief that settled over Everest after the worst disaster in the mountain's history.

Eight people lost their lives in the storm.

ED: We all went back down to base camp and Paula and I held each other for a long time.

The tragedies hit our team very hard, myself in particular, because Rob was a close friend.

And it was very sad to think about his wife who was seven months pregnant and... and realize that my good friend wouldn't be there to see his first child born.

Mmm... wait, wait a moment.

(sighs) (sighs) Well, I don't like climb a route... ...with people dead on the way.

I'm not afraid of... of cross dead people and frozen... see them...

I don't like.

That's all.

NORGAY: Base camp was becoming a ghost town.

Almost all the other expeditions packed up and left.

And we thought maybe we should get out of there, too.

I sent word to the monastery asking if I should abandon the climb.

Seven days went by, and I felt my dream slipping away.

But then we got word about Beck and that made me feel lighter and stronger.

ED: A few days after Beck got back home to Dallas, he began the long road back to recovery.

He would ultimately lose both of his hands to frostbite but he never lost his spirit, never lost his will to live and it was his remarkable recovery that lifted our spirits.

We started to think about going up again but a strong wind was still blowing a huge plume of snow off the summit, so it didn't look all that great.

SEGARRA: There's not reason to climb with wind.

If it's not possible, well, it's not possible.

It's the mountain who say that you can climb or not.

NORGAY: I finally got word from the monastery.

The gods were not opposed to my quest.

NEESON: Each of the climbers made the same courageous decision.

They had to try again.

They held a Puja ceremony to cleanse their spirits.

Then they put aside their grief and followed Ed back up through the icefall once more.

(breathing heavily) ♪ SEGARRA: When we get up to the middle camp, the wind was still very strong up above.

We start to think we'll have to give up.

NORGAY: When the other Sherpas said they were afraid, I told them what my father had taught me: a climber must always treat the mountain with respect and use caution in the face of danger.

PAULA: I just wasn't ready emotionally to have Ed trying for the summit again, so I just summoned up my courage and told him to go for it.

It was the hardest thing I've ever done.

ED: We were running out of time.

We decided to go higher so we'd be in position to go for the top-- if the wind stopped.

But first we had to ascend the Lhotse Face which would be an exhausting two-day climb.

(climber breathing heavily) NORGAY: The Lhotse Face is a steep wall of ice 4,000 feet high.

We use fixed ropes, but people die here all the same.

They unclip, make a mistake and fall.

After rocketing downhill for as much as a mile, they then plunge into a bottomless crevasse.

SEGARRA: Up here we really start to feel the lack of oxygen and that's the biggest danger on Everest.

The less oxygen your brain gets, the harder it is to think straight.

You believe your mind is sharp, but it's not.

ED: At high camp, we were already three-quarters of the way to the top.

Finally, the wind on the summit had calmed down.

...GPS all set up and it's collecting data... At 26,000 feet, it was quite a struggle to set up the GPS receiver, and it, and it worked.

...numbers coming in, so I hope you're happy about that.

I did not tell Roger that we could see hundreds of rocks that were once at the bottom of the sea.

We've got enough to carry without picking up rocks for Roger.

You should be able to see us from Kala Patar... NEESON: May 22.

The team would try for the summit that night, while Sumiyo stayed at the high camp as the radio contact, despite her cracked ribs.

Ed wondered if Paula had received the video he had sent down to base camp.

ED: By the time you get this video, I'll be heading for the summit.

If I have to turn around, I will.

I'll be very careful.

NORGAY: At this altitude, your mind runs in slow motion.

You can't sleep, can't eat, your brain is starving for oxygen, your body's deteriorating and your muscles are wasting away.

That's why the final 3,000 feet is known as the "death zone."

I was feeling tense, because in a few hours, I was going to set out on the climb of my life.

It takes about 12 hours to get from high camp to the summit.

You have to start around midnight so you can get to the top by noon.

Ed was going to climb without oxygen so he started at 11:00 that night, an hour before the rest of us.

NEESON: At midnight, it was 30 below zero.

Araceli, Jamling and five Sherpas packed up their oxygen supplies and started for the summit, following Ed's trail.

♪ SEGARRA: In the night, with my goggles and oxygen mask, I felt like I was on the moon.

The others were nearby, but we never spoke.

I felt completely alone.

All I heard was the sound of my own breathing through the oxygen mask.

NEESON: High on Everest, there is nothing to breathe.

There is only a third as much oxygen in each breath as there is at sea level.

Most climbers need bottled oxygen up here but not Ed.

ED: You stagger along.

Every ounce of energy is sucked from your muscles.

You just can't get enough air.

This is what it must feel like to drown.

The sun rose, but whenever I stopped to wait for the others, I got cold.

So I had to move on.

I climb without bottled oxygen because I like the challenge.

It's just me and the mountain.

It's as simple as that.

BILHAM: Hey, Paula, good news-- I think I can see our team on the southeast ridge.

Over.

ED: The human body is not built to survive up here.

It screams at you to turn around and go back.

SEGARRA: It took all my strength and concentration just to put one foot in front of the other.

I've never been so tired in my life.

Sometimes, I want to sit down in the snow and rest but I tell myself, "ten more steps" and I keep going and going.

(breathing heavily) NORGAY: The wind begins to sound like drums in the monastery but maybe that's just the blood pounding in my brain.

As the pain gets worse, I feel that I'm closer to death than I've ever been without passing over to the other side.

PAULA: Every half hour, I radioed Sumiyo.

"Have you heard from Ed?

Have you heard from Ed?"

ED: I knew exactly where I'd find Rob lying frozen in the snow.

When I got there, I sat down next to him and cried.

I wanted to hear his friendly New Zealand accent one more time... but then the voice I heard was Paula's-- the echo of what she'd said on the radio.

PAULA: Um, I said, "Climb this mountain like you've never climbed it before," and he said he was very choked up but he said he thought about that all the way to the top.

♪ ED: Just below the summit is the most difficult pitch of the whole climb-- a wall of rock and ice known as the Hillary Step.

When I got past that, I knew I was going to make it.

Paula, hola, hola.

I radioed Paula and calmly told her I'd made it... Whoo!

But without bottled oxygen, I got too cold to wait for Araceli and Jamling.

I passed them on my way down.

SEGARRA: Then, Ed came down from the summit and gave us a small hug.

He told us the summit was not far.

NORGAY: After 12 hours of climbing, I had to really force myself to concentrate.

There's a drop-off of over a mile on either side of the ridge.

SEGARRA: There were only 100 meters left but they were the longest hundred meters I did in my life.

♪ NEESON: After nine long weeks on the mountain, they made it.

And Araceli Segarra became the first Spanish woman to reach the top of the world.

♪ SEGARRA: When I got to the top, I was tired but then I realized that I've really done it and I start to feel happy.

I was sure I could see halfway around the world.

I wondered if my friends were thinking about me.

They had no idea I was standing on the top of the world.

I wanted to shout to them, "I'm okay.

I made it!"

Even with cold hands, I took pictures of Jamling.

He had worked hard to get here.

I was so happy for him.

NORGAY: I've been dreaming of this moment since I was a boy.

To finally stand on the summit, my heart just overflowed.

My tears froze to my cheeks.

I left a picture of my late mother and my late father and His Holiness the Dalai Lama and also a little toy I got from my 10-month-old daughter and a prayer flag as an offering for Chomolungma, the mother goddess of the world.

SEGARRA: When we started down, we were careful... no mistakes but we hurry to see our friends at base camp.

It's way down there, below the clouds.

NEESON: As the team began the two-day descent to base camp, they had time to reflect.

They had never expected to be swept up in a disaster that would touch the whole world.

Yet, even in the face of extraordinary hardship, they had always acted with courage and grace.

PAULA: I've never been so glad to see someone in my life.

We did it.

♪ NEESON: High on Everest, Roger's GPS was putting out data that one day may give geologists more insight into earthquakes.

And Jamling's prayer flag fluttered in the wind at the top of the world and sent a different kind of message.

SEGARRA: Looking back, I sometimes wonder how I found the strength to get to the top of Everest.

I know now that my passion for climbing gave me the strength.

ED: This year, Paula was waiting for me at base camp.

It was wonderful.

She put aside her own fears and encouraged me to climb, and that has made us closer than ever.

NORGAY: I didn't think getting to the top would change my life, but it has.

Back in Kathmandu, I arranged an offering with 25,000 butter lamps to give thanks for our safe and wonderful climb.

Those moments on the summit were sacred.

Up there, above the clouds, I touched my father's soul.

Ever since I was a boy, I've looked up to him but I always felt kind of a hunger inside to live up to his legend.

I know he'd laugh to see me on the summit of Mount Everest.

He'd say, "Jamling, my son, you didn't have to come such a long, hard way just to visit me," as if he knew all along I was worthy of the mountain.

♪ [MUSIC] The thing that is different about IMAX and for me that is much more powerful and beneficial to the audience is that they feel like they're in the place that the movie was made.

There's tremendous challenges to this format for me.

I had to rethink filmmaking, almost every part of it, the pacing, panning, tilting, action, how fast action can move, where things should be in the frame.

Our idea was to put together a team of mountaineers and have the audience experience through IMAX, what it's really like to climb Everest.

It seemed crazy, but we wanted to take an IMAX camera, the largest film format on Earth, right to the top of the largest mountain on Earth.

The actual IMAX camera that we normally use weighs a little over 100 pounds fully loaded That was not feasible to take to the top of Everest.

So we developed a camera, which we call a lightweight camera, but it actually weighs over 40 pounds when it's fully loaded.

People basically felt that getting the camera or getting something that big and that heavy up to the top of the mountain was impossible.

Much bigger than IMAX things, cameras are quite heavy.

And I thought this camera no good to summit.

Just lifting the camera up and putting it on the tripod, two people doing it, you get it up there and you're... [heavy breathing] like that, you know three or four minutes, just getting one shot.

Everybody then had to go take a nap for two hours, it was just so exhausting.

We were climbing, but they were climbing and working with the camera.

And that's a double work.

We had a satellite phone and I was able to talk directly to David when he was up at about the 25,000 foot level.

In Laguna Beach, it was like a summer's day.

It was May, it was warm, everyone was out on the beach surfing.

And I was getting this call from near the summit of Mount Everest.

David was saying that it was minus 20 degrees and the wind was blowing at 100 miles an hour and he just didn't think that it could be done right then.

David's caution was completely correct.

Some of the other expeditions on the mountain pushed for the summit despite the threatening weather and that was when tragedy struck.

Leading the news tonight, tragedy on the roof of the world.

Climbers lost at Mountain Storm.

The tragedy had hit everyone really hard and so the team went back to base camp to regroup and to think.

I could give them no other reason to go back up Everest except you're here, we're fit, we're strong, we won't make those mistakes and let's go if we still wanna climb Everest.

Once I got climbing, I had a great day.

I broke trail all day, was the best, strongest day I've ever had in the mountains.

You're tired at that point and it's not easy to keep your spirit up.

But you are almost there and you want to try, just try.

When I saw it, I was just so happy, just thrilled.

They would say, yes, you're here, this is it.

And I went and just hugged him and cried.

They had so much courage and perseverance that they willed their way to the top of the mountain.

And we hope that the Everest film will give the audience a sense of the beauty of the mountains and the incredible spirit of the people who climb them.

[MUSIC]