Into Thin Air: Death on Everest

I decided to start a book and movie review collection. A way to keep track of what I'm feeding my brain. Maybe sometime later I will want to tell somebody about a book I read or a movie I saw, and this way I can just tell them to look it up in the Daily Cud.

Anyway, tonight I watched a really good movie on the satellite about a group of mountain climbers that attempt to climb Mount Everest. They all made it to the top, but some of them didn't make it back down the mountain. It was filmed in 1997, but I'm not sure when the climb happened. It was a true story. NPR interviewed one of the climbers, Jon Krakauer, on NPR. Watching it made me decide climbing Mount Everest wouldn't be very much fun. The air is so thin, it's like you're being strangled constantly. The view from the summit was impressive, if that was the real summit and not a computer generated imitation.

I felt so bad for the mountain climbers. There were two or three groups led by professional guides with Sherpas helping them. The clients were a bunch of less experienced climbers. They basically thought they could book a tour to the top of Everest. I don't know if they realized how dangerous and difficult the climb was. I think maybe if the groups had been smaller, or some of the climbers had been more experienced things wouldn't have turned out so bad. The better climbers spent too much energy helping the weaker climbers, then when things really got tough they didn't have the strength to keep going.

I'm going to have to come up with a rating system for my reviews. Something bovine related. I guess for now I'll just say this movie gets two thumbs up.