Preview Everest
A new movie on the 1996 Mount Everest disaster strikes close to home for its technical advisor Guy Cotter – a Kiwi mountaineer who personally witnessed the tragic events unfold. By Nick Dent
On May 10, 1996, mountaineer Guy Cotter was leading a commercial expedition on Mount Pumori in the Himalayas. Eight kilometres to the east he could see a group of tiny figures – the party led by his colleague, Rob Hall – crossing the ridge to the summit of Everest. Cotter radioed Hall to give his congratulations.
A couple of hours on, Cotter was shocked to realise that Hall was still up on the summit, at 8,800 metres, in the region known as the ‘Death Zone’. “It’s a long time to spend up there,” Cotter says. “And there was a storm coming up the valley towards us: an ominous wall of black cloud. I don’t think they could see it because it was coming in low. That was definitely when I was concerned.”
Twenty-four hours later, eight climbers were dead. The tragedy sparked debate on overcrowding on the world’s highest peak – 34 people had attempted to reach the summit that day with four different expeditions. Cotter, who still leads groups to the top through his company, Adventure Consultants, recently worked as a technical advisor on the film Everest, which dramatises the tragedy, an experience that he describes as “out-of-body”.
“After 20 years I’ve moved on, so to have a portion of my life recreated was bizarre,” he says, speaking to Time Out from his offices in Wanaka, near Queenstown, NZ. “The poignant scenes [to film] were those where I personally became involved. Like seeing the survivors coming into Base Camp. It was like people coming back from a war zone.”
Cotter is played by Sam Worthington in the movie, which is directed by Iceland’s Baltasar Kormákur ( 2 Guns). Jason Clarke ( Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) stars as Rob Hall; Jake Gyllenhaal plays rival expedition guide Scott Fischer; John Hawkes and Josh Brolin play climbers; and Keira Knightley, Robin Wright and Emily Watson are colleagues and family members watching events unfold.
The movie is bound to stir up controversy, arriving at a grim time for Mount Everest and Nepal. In April last year, an avalanche near Base Camp killed 16 Sherpas. And Cotter was leading a climb in April this year when the Nepal earthquake struck and killed 19 more people on the mountain. “We were at Camp One and the irony was that we were safe on the mountain, and the people who died were all at the Base Camp.”
Criticism of the Everest climbing industry focuses on the plight of the Sherpas, whose perilous work pays just $50 a day. Cotter points out that this is ten times the average national salary. “Is it a hazardous job? Yes, and it is for us too… When I was speaking to the wife of one [Sherpa] who died this year she said, ‘Thank you for bringing work to our people and please keep coming back, because we need that work, more than ever.’”
Cotter has personally summited Everest four times, which he says is “incredibly fulfilling. A lot of the satisfaction in mountaineering is retrospective. You always have in the back of your mind that you’ve got to get off the mountain. You have to keep your wits about you and most accidents occur on the descent.”
Everest opens Thu Sep 14.
“You have to keep your wits about you. Most accidents occur on the descent”