Review of “Team Everest – A Himalayan Journey”
If you lost an arm climbing a mountain in Mexico, then tried to climb Mount Everest and failed in the attempt, what would you do? Gary Guller was asked to put together a team of disabled folks and ascend Mt. Everest. He did and this documentary tells that story.
His team was made up of people in wheel chairs, paraplegics, a deaf mute, a lady with bipolar disorder and fibromyalgia, and four amputees. While most of the movie focused on the guys in the wheelchairs, I’m going to focus this review on the amputees, (this is after all Amputee News). And to be clear, only one person actually climbs Mt. Everest, the rest make it to the base camp at the foot of Mt. Everest.
There are four amputees in Gary’s team, Gary is a professional mountain climber and is a left arm amputee, Dinesh a right above knee amputee, Lakpa a right arm amputee and Tenzig a left above knee amputee. Their stories are all very different and although both Lakpa and Tenzig are natives of Nepal, neither had ever been near Mount Everest. Dinesh is programmer who lost his leg at the age of nine due to a tumor in his knee and Lakpa is a lama, (teacher of Dharma) who lost his arm due to a snake bite 50 years ago. How Tenzig, a shaman, lost his leg is not mentioned in the movie.
The one over-riding theme in this movie is “bistari”, the Nepalese word for “slowly”. Dinesh states it best when he explains his strategy for making it from camp to camp on the way up to Mt. Everest base camp; he didn’t care if he was the last one to camp, as long as he made it to camp. Making it to each camp is a tough job for those with all their limbs, and watching the movie you soon realize that just making it to the base camp would be major accomplishment for anyone. The trails have some paths, but even those are precarious with the trail being little more than a couple of feet wide with a fast and long descent for the clumsy or those not paying attention. Dinesh has a leg that locks the knee when walking so when the path turns to climbing, rocks, ice, mud, or worse, his strategy is not so much a choice as a physical requirement. Tenzig has no prosthetic and gets by using crutches. In some cases this works better than a prosthetic as it gives him three points of contact with the ground. However, it’s also exhausting and in many cases difficult. In both cases they maintain their pace, neither rushing themselves nor giving up. Lakpa and Gary do well over the course of the walking and climbing and it’s clear from their non-verbal (neither speaks the other language), communication that they enjoy their time together.
As amputees we manage and in many cases exceed normal expectations, but to do something like this is to push the boundaries well beyond the norm. It’s not a matter of “Hey look, I’m just as good as anyone else!” It’s a matter of pushing the limits past that. Many of us can finish a walk-a-thon, (and feel justifiably proud), but it’s something else to spend three weeks enduring hypothermia inducing cold, heights that can cause your blood cells to expand, climbing over boulders, snow and ice and all with a major reduction in the natural abilities that we no longer take for granted. It’s not done with a grandiose dramatic act of athleticism, its done bistari, with patience, perseverance and a clear understanding of what they are doing and how they will do it.
When the team finally makes it to the base camp they spend three days reveling in their accomplishment. To top the whole thing off, Gary and a Sherpa continue up Mt. Everest and on May 23rd, 2003, Gary becomes the first arm amputee to summit the highest mountain in the world.
This is an inspiring documentary, how could it be otherwise? But there is something more here; it’s a lesson for amputees, the disabled and others. There are big tasks, undertakings, goals for all of us and like Dinesh it’s not so important that everyone beat us to the camp site, so long as we get there.
I’m recommending this movie to you.
Team Everest: A Himalayan Journey
A Danger Dog Films Production
Produced by Gary Guller and Andy Cockrum
http://www.teameverestthemovie.com/