Base Camp

Each spring, over eight hundred climbers attempt to reach the summit of Mount Everest. The conditions are challenging, and without warning can become life-threatening. Some make it to the top of what is considered the worlds most majestic mountain, but others are not so lucky, and in the attempt to reach the elusive summit, many more have tragically lost their lives. Not all are recovered, their bodies left to the mountain. In the spring of 2010, 18,000 feet above sea level, documentary filmmaker Dianne Whelan immersed herself in the challenging and captivating world of base camp on Mount Everest. In this personal and eye-opening expose, Whelan shares gripping stories of Maoist rebels, avalanches and dead bodies surfacing out of a dying glacier. From her perspective at base camp Whelan interviews climbers, doctors and Sherpas all living for months on end in the belly of the mountain as they wait for a weather window to summit the top of the world. Woven into the personal stories of these climbers is the devastating truth of the human impact on the mountain and the eerie and unforeseen effects of climate change. Experts believe there are over 250 bodies buried on the path from base camp to the peak of Mount Everest. With the glacier melting and moving at over four inches a day, the toll of the human desire to conquer the mountain is slowly and irreversibly surfacing at base camp.