The Man Who Skied Down Everest

1975
G
1h 26m

IMDb RATING

7.1/10

808

YOUR RATING

Yûichirô Miura in The Man Who Skied Down Everest (1975)

Documentary Sport

This Oscar-winning documentary tells the story behind Japanese daredevil Yuichiro Miura's 1970 effort to ski down the world's tallest mountain.This Oscar-winning documentary tells the story behind Japanese daredevil Yuichiro Miura's 1970 effort to ski down the world's tallest mountain.This Oscar-winning documentary tells the story behind Japanese daredevil Yuichiro Miura's 1970 effort to ski down the world's tallest mountain.

Director
- Bruce Nyznik
Writers
- Yûichirô Miura
- Judith Crawley
Stars

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

7.1/10

808

YOUR RATING

Director
- Bruce Nyznik
Writers
- Yûichirô Miura
- Judith Crawley
Stars

See production info at IMDbPro

Won 1 Oscar
- 1 win total

Photos5

Storyline

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Did you know

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Trivia
Narrated by Douglas Rain, the voice of HAL-9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

Quotes
Narrator: The first barrier in the ascent of Everest is a huge ice fall. It looks like the tongue of some gigantic demon. More lives have been lost here than on Everest itself. It rises 1600 feet--a world of dangerous, fragile beauty; a cascade of massive blocks of ice moving imperceptibly from the glacier above, pushed by the weight of centuries of the snows of Everest. Without warning it can shift and break into an avalanche of millions of tons of ice. On the other side of this barrier lies the most challenging ski run in the world.

Connections
Edited from Eberesuto dai kakko (1970)

User reviews22

Review

Featured review

5/10

pretentious and self-centered

The movie is well made with great photography and narration. However, the subject of the film takes himself way too seriously. His actual feat of skiing "down Everest" is massively exaggerated. From what I could tell, he appears to be skiing down about half of the Lhotse face. The narrator claims that he is skiing from a level where the 1952 Swiss expedition reached. Not true. They reached 28,500 feet, just short of the Hillary step. Miuri starts from somewhere below the South Col (26,000 feet) with the aid of a parachute too slow him down. He tries to hold a wedge shape (an amateur move to control speed) then sits down on a traverse at about 24,000 feet and subsequently slides/bounces on his butt another 500 to 1,000 feet. I figure he skied from about 25,500 to 23,000 feet.

This is presented as a successful and amazing run. Miuri states "I cant believe I'm alive" and "why have I been allowed to survive?", blah blah blah...etc. I'd like to know how the 800 porters, sherpas, other climbers, and families of the 6 dead men feel about this. I'm surprised the Japanese expedition didn't try to put some climbers on the summit while they were there. Apparently, it was all about Miuri and his lame ski run.