What is the future of climbing at Everest? Free talk & slideshow from award-winning filmmaker and author

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Tuesday, June 3rd, 2014
7:30 PM

The climbing season at Mount Everest commences in May, and, like every year since 1920, there have been tragic losses.

In 2010, award-winning Vancouver-based filmmaker Dianne Whelan travelled to Base Camp. In this personal and eye-opening new book, Base Camp: 40 Days on Everest, she shares gripping stories of Maoist rebels, avalanches and dead bodies surfacing out of a dying glacier. From her perspective at base camp, she interviews climbers, doctors and Sherpas, all living there for months on end as they wait for a weather window to summit the top of the world. In this push to achieve the summit, many do not survive. Woven into these personal stories is the devastating truth of the human impact on the mountain and the eerie and unforeseen effects of climate change. Experts believe there are 250 bodies buried on the path from base camp to the peak, and with the glacier melting at more than four inches a day, the toll of this desire to conquer Everest is irreversibly surfacing.

Dianne Whelan will share stunning photos and stories from the new book, as well as never-before-seen outtakes from the original documentary, 40 Days at Base Camp, which was the opening night film at the Banff Mountain Film Festival, and continues to air on the Knowledge Network.