21 super fit, highly motivated, British Army mountaineers risk everything in a bid to become the first Britons to conquer Everest via the notoriously difficult West Ridge. Everest - Man Vs Mountain, a five-part documentary series capturing the journey of a 21 person British Army team taking on one of the toughest mountaineering challenges in the world.
Shot by the climbers themselves, as well as professional climbing cameramen, this series follows every gruelling step of their eight week expedition up the treacherous West Ridge of Mount Everest, previously only ever completed by 19 people. Expedition leader Dave Bunting and his team of Army mountaineers trained vigorously for three years, but nothing could prepare them for the realities of a near vertical kilometre of sheer ice, a knife-edge ridge and winds of over 100mph, all at potentially lethal altitudes. And that’s even before they get to the final stretch, known with good reason as the Death Zone, representing the most technically demanding high-altitude climbing on the planet. The team comprised specialists equipped with skills that were a necessity to the climb including an oxygen manager, maps manager, climbing doctor and the food manager who was the only woman on the expedition, Jude Humphries.
With Spring being the only season in which climbing the West Ridge is even vaguely possible their challenge is a race against time as well as extreme and unpredictable weather conditions, and the very real danger of severe altitude conditions. At the furthest point of the climb, the avalanche-prone Hornbein Couloir stood between them and success.
