大象传媒

We had an early taste of the dangers of Everest on our walk in. Just before we reached base camp after 8 days hiking, we overtook a solitary Chinese trekker who looked seriously ill. He had tried to walk to base camp in 3 days and was on the verge of a cerebral edema, when your brain explodes inside your head. If he'd spent the night alone, he would have died. Our sound recordist Simon Forrester helped him onto oxygen immediately and our porters carried him down the mountain in the night to a lower altitude. This experience is fairly common on Everest, which draws people in like a magnet from all over the world. But many are unaware of how dangerous it can be, even just hiking to base camp.

We shot our film just two weeks before a devastating avalanche crashed down through the icefall killing sixteen Sherpa. Luckily the icefall doctors were having a day off at the time, but the tragedy occurred just above where we had been filming. One of our camera support team, a softly-spoken smiley character called Phurba Ongyal Sherpa was tragically killed in the avalanche. After the deadly avalanche of 2014 and the earthquake this year, Everest will never be the same again.

We apologise for the low quality of the video.