‘Everest’ shows survivors’ decision

By JULIE HINDS

Some of the footage of the climbers is heartbreaking.

DETROIT — Lou Kasischke has a gentle voice and a kind face. When he talks about surviving the Mt. Everest tragedy of May 10, 1996, it’s with the introspection of someone who’s spent a dozen years sorting out the meaning of it all.

He was 400 vertical feet away from the summit when he decided to turn back. Others in his expedition kept going. Four of them died.

“I could have gone the short distance to the top, but I’d still be there,” he says softly.

The 65-year-old attorney no longer practices law and now lives mostly in Harbor Springs, in northern Michigan. He’s told his story many times to churches, schools and civic groups.

This week, Kasischke will share it again. He’ll be among the survivors featured at 9 p.m. tonight on “Storm Over Everest,” a PBS “Frontline” documentary by David Breashears about the ferocious blizzard that killed eight people on the world’s highest mountain.

A noted filmmaker and mountaineer, Breashears was in the middle of co-directing and photographing the first IMAX movie about Everest when the storm hit. He and his crew were part of the effort to help the stranded climbers.

In 2004, Breashears made his fifth ascent to Everest’s summit to shoot footage for the “Frontline” project. Starting in 2005, he spent a year talking to survivors, accumulating 62 hours of interviews that he winnowed down to a two-hour film.

The film contains footage of the beauty and danger of the mountain and harrowing re-creations of the storm. But much of the time, it’s people talking, telling in remarkably intimate and gripping detail what it was like to be there.

The story of the mountain’s worst tragedy has been told several times before, most notably in Jon Krakauer’s acclaimed best-selling book, “Into Thin Air” (Krakauer was climbing that fateful day, on assignment from a magazine to write about the commercialization of Everest, but he isn’t part of the Breashears documentary).

“Storm Over Everest” isn’t an account that questions the skills or motivations of people who paid as much as $65,000 to join Everest expeditions. It doesn’t turn those involved into superheroes, either. Instead, Breashears shows the complexity and humanity of the climbers.

There are revealing moments, like Beck Weathers, who was left for dead, explaining that profound depression was his reason for climbing, because the physical exertion provided relief from thinking.

In a heartbreaking segment, a woman at the base camp, Helen Wilton, recalls helping patch through a phone call between expedition guide Rob Hall, who was trapped too high for rescue, and his pregnant wife back home in New Zealand. Wilton describes how she wept as the couple exchanged their last words.

“Every time I see that, I get a lump in my throat,” says Breashears.