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PAUL (off-screen): You're out on the edge of the world if you're on top of Everest.
You can speak on a satellite phone, yeah.
But that doesn't mean anybody can get to you.
PETE (off-screen): You can have great guides,
you can have an excellent route set,
but when you are dealing with the highest mountain on Earth...
You're still a long ways from anywhere.
ERIC (off-screen): 26,000 feet does not feel that good.
On the brain or the body.
Now we've got a little snowstorm rolling in here which might be
hampering our summit bid.
We have one chance at this, and that's leaving tonight.
We're all hopeful that we can make it.
Otherwise we're going back down tomorrow regardless.
CLIMBER: Let’s go! We’re ready!
BAKER: There's a reason that some of this has never been done before.
We're trying to go to the highest reaches of Mount Everest,
to install the highest weather station in the world.
To try to do science up at some of these elevations is an added challenge.
And we're pushing the envelope.
(theme music plays).
NARRATOR: Every spring in the Himalayas,
a temporary town comes to life.
For the next two months,
this will be the highest village on Earth.
Everest's south base camp,
at over 5,000 meters
it's at the extreme edge of where the atmosphere can
sustain human life.
For decades, climbers have gathered here,
each preparing for their chance at Everest's summit.
(bells ringing)
This season, one group is here with an entirely different goal...
TOM: Namaste, my name's Tom.
NARRATOR: To get a better understanding of how this mountain impacts all of us.
(chanting in native language)
PAUL (off-screen): We know literally nothing about what goes on above 5,000 meters.
And yet, it's this fantastic window into a portion of the atmosphere,
where granted not a lot of people live,
but that's critically important to what goes on
in the rest of the world.
NARRATOR: Paul Mayewski will be leading a team of more than 30 scientists,
in some of the most challenging conditions on Earth,
to compile the first complete portrait of the iconic mountain.
PAUL: The National Geographic Rolex Perpetual Planet Expedition
is the largest scientific expedition
ever conducted on Everest.
NARRATOR: Among those braving the mission will be:
Geologists...
Glacial experts...
And a biology team...
Most ambitious of all,
two climate scientists are here to install the highest weather station
the world has ever known,
as close as they can get to the summit.
PAUL (off-screen): Preparing for every expedition is different.
This one was going to very high elevation.
The plan was to not only create a scientific program that would be
multi-disciplinary, interdisciplinary,
but find the right people to do this.
NARRATOR: One of the first to get the call was glaciochemist and
mountaineer Mario Potocki.
MARIO (off-screen): It was beyond the dreams, going to Everest,
so I said, "Of course. Such adventure. Yes, please."
But doing work at that elevation,
8,000 meter in death zone, that's gonna be challenging.
NARRATOR: Mario's mission is to collect a core from the highest ice on the planet.
Inside the ice is a record of several thousand years' worth of climate on Everest.
It contains critical pieces of missing information to help scientists
understand climate change today.
But the thin atmosphere near the summit presents Mario with a new challenge.
To safely get to the top of one of the
most extreme environments in the world,
the scientists need a different kind of expert.
Pete Athans has made dozens of expeditions to the Himalayas,
starting 40 years ago.
PETE (off-screen): I just love the feeling of being stripped down to just
very, very basic elements.
When you get out into the wild conditions and wild places
on Earth you're let's just say,
the simplicity of life becomes much more forward.
NARRATOR: Incredibly, Pete has summited Everest seven times,
leading teams of climbers all the way to the top.
PETE: You find out what they're made of,
what your team is made up of and what you're made of
as an individual.
To see if you have the capability and aspirations, energy,
physiology to rise to the occasion.
NARRATOR: But this expedition is like none other Pete has ever attempted.
PETE: They're trying to commit to getting those takeaways from the rooftop
of the world that we don't know.
That's the new terra incognita. That's what we don't know. It just hasn't been done.
NARRATOR: Everest has always held its secrets close.
Just 100 years ago,
the Himalayas were such unknown territory that the maps were
mostly blank spaces.
It took more than three decades from the first attempt to summit Everest in 1921,
before Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay would be the ones to finally
touch the highest point on earth.
That first success inspired thousands of others to try their luck.
PETE (off-screen): I think the enhancements in everything from the clothing we wear
to our communications equipment have made climbing Everest easier.
However, on the worst days,
it's still impossible for even the best climbers in the world.
NARRATOR: At base camp,
Pete is heading up the safety and climbing logistics for the scientists,
none of whom have ever attempted to summit Everest before.
One of the first features they'll have to navigate is the notoriously
dangerous Khumbu Icefall.
PETE: For dealing with the Khumbu Icefall we setup a simulator at basecamp out in
the less complicated icefall, very close to basecamp.
We setup some difficult ladders for them,
getting a feel for spikes and their crampons,
and how to manage the rungs on the ladder.
NARRATOR: To study the impacts of pollution on Everest's glaciers,
Inka Koch needs to collect snow from above the icefall.
INKA (off-screen): Once I decided that I would go up to
six and a half thousand meters on Everest,
and through the Khumbu Icefall, which is quite treacherous,
I got really scared.
CLIMBER (off-screen): Climbing!
INKA (off-screen): And was super excited, but also really quite intimidated.
MARK (off-screen): You can kick your toe in and then drop your heel.
PETE (off-screen): Setting up fixed lines, practicing with ice screws and
other types of anchors that they may not be familiar with,
and then running them through, for lack of a better term,
an obstacle course.
Just whatever works more efficiently on...
To the point where they just felt less intimidated by the physical environment.
MARIO (off-screen): You have to have a lot of respect going through Khumbu Icefall.
That was the biggest thing in our heads, because the safety issue.
It's like very unpredictable place.
NARRATOR: The ice fall is the most active, shifting part
of a giant, constantly moving, 16-kilometer-long glacier.
Base camp lies directly on top of its lowest curve.
To get to the summit from Everest's south side,
climbers follow the glacier up the mountain,
stopping to acclimate for several nights at camps along the way.
The Khumbu is the highest glacier in the world.
To better understand how it's impacted by a warming climate,
expedition scientists will be studying it from
many different angles.
ALEX: You can see the bedrock there...
One of the big scientific questions this expedition is answering is how climate
change in particular is happening in the high mountain regions?
How quickly are the glaciers changing?
How quickly are they reducing in their size and their volume?
NARRATOR: To answer these questions,
National Geographic geographer, Alex Tait,
is heading up a team to map the giant glacier in its entirety,
including base camp.
The highly detailed map will be a snapshot of the iceform today,
so they'll be able to track changes in the future.
They'll be using a combination of digital scans and photographs to
stitch together 3D images of the environment.
Chris Millbern's job is to scan and photograph every square centimeter in sight.
CHRIS: If we can pull off this scan,
I'm pretty convinced that we can pull it off anywhere.
This is a really difficult environment and
it's really hard to climb around so we can
only take pictures from so many angles on foot.
Drones really help us give the overall sphere an extra bit of resolution,
an extra bit of perspective on Everest base camp.
We're using LiDAR, which is a laser scanning tool.
And this laser scanner shoots out 2 million points per second,
taking individual measurements every single time that it shoots out
one of those lasers.
It does that in a 360 degree sphere and measures everything
that it can see.
What we then do is we take high resolution images to paste onto
those measurements that the laser scanning provides.
NARRATOR: To map the entire extent of the glacier,
the team takes to the skies,
using LiDAR mounted underneath a helicopter.
CHRIS: Having a scan of a glacier means that you can measure the exact recession
a year from now, five years from now, ten years from now,
and see exactly what the difference is.
PAUL: The way that we can understand the impact of warming in the Himalayas,
is largely through the extent of glaciers.
NARRATOR: After the north and south poles,
the Himalayas have more frozen water than
anywhere in the world.
PAUL: The high mountain areas are critically important because those are
our water towers.
Those are the places where a tremendous amount of water is stored.
NARRATOR: Nearly a quarter of the world's population depends on that
glacial water to survive.
ALEX (off-screen): Downstream from high-mountain Asia,
we have hundreds of millions of people who
rely on the water from the rivers that flow out.
NARRATOR: The glaciers that hold the precious resource have been shrinking at an
alarming rate over the past few decades.
Since 2000, melting in these mountains has doubled.
Without a plan for what's ahead,
most of south Asia could be facing catastrophe.
NARRATOR: The Himalayas are losing around 7.5 billion tons of ice every year.
This creates two different dangers.
If the glaciers disappear,
the water supply for more than a billion people will be at risk.
And as the meltwater rushes down from the mountains,
there's a more immediate danger...
Deadly flash flooding.
Until now, there have been few warning systems
in place to predict disaster and provide
lifesaving information for people below.
Tom Matthews and Baker Perry are here to try and change that.
Their plan is to install a network of weather stations at five carefully chosen
locations along the main climbing route.
The last station will be placed as close to the summit as the team can get.
All the stations will have instruments measuring temperature...
Humidity...
Air pressure...
And wind speed...
This network will produce a constant stream of near
real-time data to help create accurate weather forecasts.
One of the lower stations will be installed near base camp,
with part of it perched on the ice itself.
TOM: These will just hold... Good. Good, good, good.
MAN: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
TOM (off-screen): We knew it would get harder and harder as we went up to
install these weather stations.
Yep, tighten everything.
So we knew early on that the Sherpa team were going to be instrumental in this,
that we would have to work quickly and efficiently as a team to deploy those weather
stations as fast as possible.
Once the base camp science had been done,
we could then start focusing on moving higher.
PETE: Does everybody have a mask and a regulator?
TOM (off-screen): The fear of going through the ice fall and
the worry of columns of ice collapsing,
of avalanches coming down from the slopes,
it was a little bit overwhelming at times to
think about the ordeal that was ahead, or the challenge that was ahead.
NARRATOR: Over the next four weeks,
the high-altitude team of scientists and Sherpas will
work their way up from basecamp ever closer to Everest's summit.
They will set up weather stations and collect ice cores
at key locations along the way.
Camp 1 is just above the ice fall.
Camp 2 sits in the middle of a huge natural amphitheater,
filled with massive amounts of snow.
Camp 3 is perched at 7,000 meters.
TOM (off-screen): You can barely believe there's a camp up there.
It's only as you're ascending to Camp 3 that
you can see there's this kind of notch carved out,
and there's an area that you can pitch tents.
NARRATOR: From there they'll climb up to Camp 4 in the South Col.
TOM (off-screen): You're still looking up at the top of the mountain there.
From the South Col, you've pretty much got to climb the equivalent height of the
tallest mountain in England.
NARRATOR: The Balcony is the last resting stop before the final
few hundred meters to the summit.
TOM: 4:00 am, we're about to start up the icefall proper.
Hopefully we'll get through it as quick as we can and emerge safely at Camp 1.
BAKER: All good.
AMRIT: Excited!
MAN (off-screen): Yeah!
NARRATOR: The first phase of the climb is a test of skill and nerves.
PETE (off-screen): In recent years certainly the most fatalities have taken place
in the Khumbu Icefall.
It's our greatest technical challenge.
It's the one where you have the fewest options for putting a safe
and efficient route through.
AMRIT: So, who got the first ladder of the day?
Cause it's going up on the ladder.
BAKER (off-screen): You're always on edge for sounds and
for what might be coming at you.
If the hazards weren't there,
of a block of ice falling or an avalanche occurring,
it'd be a lot more fun.
I mean it's an obstacle course to go through.
TOM: You're aware of the risk and the kind of Russian roulette nature of it.
You know every crack, every rumble from up above
is accompanied by quite the same level of fear.
PETE: I'm hopeful that we'll be able to understand
more about the glacier after this expedition,
and maybe we'll be able to come up with some theory as to what
exactly is going on there.
What makes one good day turn into someone else's bad day within 24 hours?
How do we predict that if we can?
NARRATOR: The dangers on Mount Everest are natural and expected,
but this year there's another hazard,
one more difficult to accept.
REPORTER: It's a bucket list for many, turning fatal this year.
Reports of inexperience and overcrowding emerging in one of the deadliest
seasons to hit Mount Everest.
TOM (off-screen): We were unlucky enough to experience Everest in a very,
very busy season.
People are only moving higher up on the mountain
when the weather is okay to do it.
There weren't many windows that were suitable for climbing.
DIRK (off-screen): We're kinda at this bottleneck in the icefall
where there's two vertical ladders,
and they're a little bit of a tough climb for some people,
so there's 150 people standing here under a serac,
we're kinda standing back from it a little bit.
It's not the safest situation.
BAKER: We're gonna be here a while,
so we might as well get comfortable.
Appreciating the virtue of patience.
AMRIT: My fingers are getting a little cold, my toes are getting cold,
but it'll get over.
It's all good.
MARIO (off-screen): That's a very charming place.
It's hard to describe because you feel all pressure,
or all tension,
emotional tension because you have hanging gigantic pieces of ice overhead.
But then when you're just over everything and
in Camp 1 you just like think,
‘Oh my god that was an amazing experience.'
AMRIT: Heavy breathing, short breath,
but now I feel very good.
It's very rewarding.
We feel like we did something good today.
NARRATOR: As the high-altitude team approaches elevations increasingly
dangerous to human life...
ANTON (off-screen): Two types of surveys we'll be doing.
Water filtration...
NARRATOR: Back at base camp...
ANTON: Collecting water samples.
And also doing things like turning over rocks, looking underneath,
and seeing what's there.
NARRATOR: Biology lead Tracie Seimon and her husband Anton Seimon are
studying life forms better suited to survive up here.
TRACIE (off-screen): The biodiversity of this area is really poorly understood.
This will be the first comprehensive biodiversity survey
performed on Mount Everest.
We are at 5,300 meters.
We are trying to find some of the highest life forms we can.
ANTON (off-screen): Really interesting.
There's much more life up here than meets the eye at first glance,
that's for sure.
So here's some tussock grass and some mosses,
and these were all growing under the pebbles and rocks you see here.
And here, there is a very delicate little plant.
There's a little alpine garden here.
NARRATOR: There are even tiny insects, known as bristletails.
Related to the common silverfish.
TRACIE: He's got these long filaments sticking out, that's a bristletail.
NARRATOR: The drastic changes these specialized species
are facing up here could provide an early indicator
of what's in store for the rest of the world as our climate warms.
ANTON (off-screen): We're getting a window into what the rest of the world is
starting to experience and likely to experience in growing proportions.
As the ice is melting and everything's moving uphill, the snow lines are rising,
the biosphere itself is rising to occupy that space.
But how rapidly is it rising?
Which species are rising faster?
What's being left behind?
NARRATOR: As the high-altitude team moves farther up the mountain,
the greatest danger they must face comes from the very thing they're
determined to measure...
The weather.
PETE (off-screen): The fears are always the uncontrollable elements...
The weather.
That's always the one we try to keep an eye on the most,
so we don't put our team into any type
of hazardous jeopardy.
People are well prepared to deal with the cold,
but it's really more having the ability to deal with the wind.
TOM (off-screen): We changed our plans this morning.
We were originally going to leave tomorrow,
but the weather window dictates that it's
really most sensible to leave today.
BAKER: I think we're all excited to go up, but obviously a little
apprehensive with just health and altitude
and crowds and weather,
but this is the time to go.
NARRATOR: As the scientist and Sherpa team responds to the changing conditions,
Pete keeps close track of all the teams from base camp.
PETE (off-screen): I'm always conflicted about having people under my care on Everest,
especially when I'm not going above basecamp,
and because as well as somebody might understand the mountain
the natural world doesn't always know who the experts are.
NARRATOR: Pete Athans knows better than most how unforgiving Everest can be.
He was on the mountain on one of its darkest days.
On May 10th, 1996,
he was making his fifth ascent up Mount Everest.
He had reached Camp 3 for the night when he received the news.
PETE: We heard at about 11:00 PM at night that there were still 16 people
who hadn't made it back down to the high camp,
at Camp 4, 26,000 feet.
We dropped everything that we had at that point and worked our way back up
to Camp 4 to assist people.
NARRATOR: Earlier that day,
several teams had set out to make their summit attempt.
But a series of delays with rope lines and
crowding slowed many members of the teams,
and some were still pushing towards the top late into the afternoon.
As the day inched closer to night,
a powerful blizzard pounded the mountain.
PETE: There were extreme high winds.
There was some snow fall, poor visibility.
NARRATOR: Unable to locate the safety of Camp 4,
the climbers were trapped out in the open on the mountain.
Eight people lost their lives.
Preventing tragedies like these is just one more motivation
for the weather station team.
TOM: Being able to predict the weather with greater accuracy
and avoid surprises could potentially save lives.
DAWA (off-screen): We are at Camp 3 today.
We just came from Camp 2.
Mostly like, vertical uphill.
But we had a really kinda mixed day today
with the hot sun into the snowy ending,
and now it's getting better here.
TENKZA (over radio): Be by 5:30.
PETE (off-screen): So the Sherpa team will meet them at 5:30 at Camp 3.
TENKZA (over radio): Yeah, that's correct.
PETE: Okay Tenkza,
that's a good time for them to start,
and they will then get to the South Col pretty early.
TENKZA (over radio): Sounds good, see you tomorrow.
(speaking native language).
PETE: Basecamp standing by.
TOM: Cold start but we're nearly there now.
Sherpas just joined us from Camp 2.
About to saddle up, start the oxygen flowing,
then long climb to Camp 4.
CLIMBER: Moving up.
Almost to the South Col.
It’s good to be heading higher.
TOM (off-screen): Many times I was thinking about what the early pioneers of
Everest climbing must have been thinking
at different stages of the climb.
The uncertainty of what was ahead.
And not knowing at any point, whether perhaps the route would become unclimbable.
I don't know how those early climbers managed to suppress those voices of fear and doubt
as they were pressing on towards the summit.
NARRATOR: This team has more in its sights than the summit.
Mario is finally within reach of the ice core he's come to Everest for.
MARIO (off-screen): We are at Camp 4, South Col.
30 minutes from here there is a beautiful blue ice.
I believe it's very old glacier and I'd love to drill a couple meters on the top,
and meter or two on the bottom.
I hope that will work.
PAUL (off-screen): Ice cores are like a big detective story.
We work with historians, archeologists, atmospheric chemists.
Locked in those ice cores is everything that happened in the atmosphere.
NARRATOR: Never before has an ice core been collected from this height.
MARIO (off-screen): It's like opening a new window for science for us.
It's absolutely unknown territory.
NARRATOR: Now into Everest's death zone,
above 8,000 meters, there is no margin for error.
DAWA: Yeah, it's windy here.
Very windy.
PAUL (off-screen): You'll have literally only a couple of hours.
In which you can exert yourself enough to, to drill down,
pull the sample back out again, get it into a container.
And there are a lot of places you can make a mistake.
MARIO (off-screen): Whenever you drill, it's never the same type of ice.
So, we didn't know really what we may expect.
Just very first bite in ice, when the drill start rotating,
and you see it's just going deeper and penetrating ice.
It's just like, phew yeah, it's going to work.
It was the most wonderful moment actually, because all stress just gone.
I remember, I just, like, took my mask off.
It's like, "Yes, it's going happen."
So, everybody's just happy, like, "Hey, Mario, it's good ice."
I was like, "Yeah, that's fantastic."
So, like everybody start work really fast.
(groans)
Two or three times more and we're finished.
NARRATOR: With every foot of ice drilled,
the core reaches further back into time.
Ten meters could mean Mario has reached ice that will reveal secrets
around 5,000 years old.
MARIO: I'm so extremely happy because it's going...
Well we may finish soon because it's
getting more and more difficult, but it's fantastic.
The ice quality is WOW!
Ok that's number 7.
Amazing! Whooo!
Awesome!
Thank you everybody!
PAUL (off-screen): In order to make better predictions for the future,
you need to go back in time to see under a
naturally colder climate,
were there more storms or fewer storms?
Was there more precipitation coming in, or less?
NARRATOR: In a valley below,
another team hopes to collect more information to fill in
the pieces of this ancient climate.
But their challenge isn't ice, it's water.
NARRATOR: Geologists Mary Hubbard and Ananta Gajurel
head up the effort to collect mud samples
containing lifeforms from centuries ago...
Ten meters deep in the lake.
MARY: So our project here is to take rafts and go out on this lake
to take a sediment core.
We've got two boats that we will raft together in catamaran style.
And then we'll go under the boat.
SHERPA: Under the boat?
MARY: Under the boat.
On an annual basis, streams are flowing into the lake, they bring sediment with them,
the sediment's deposited.
There's also wind-blown pollen that comes
from trees in the areas or plants in the area,
and that's deposited in the lake.
So that's all recorded.
BIBEK (off-screen): In this context of changing climate
everything we can get our hands on to figure out
how climate is behaving through the time is really important.
It gives you like a tape recording of the climate,
of the surrounding,
of almost everything in that time.
It's really important to understand the past to predict what's going to
happen in the future.
MARY: So can you, can you pick this up
and hold it vertical in the hole.
The core is just a weighted device with a plexiglass tube that will
collect the sediment, that we drop,
and gravity takes it to the bottom.
There's a small weight that sits on a pipe,
and you pull it up about eight to ten inches and
you drop it back down,
and you do that multiple times and it hammers that
core tube down into the mud.
BIBEK: Come on.
MARY: Yep, I can feel it going down.
BIBEK: Almost everything in the mountains is difficult...
(overlapping chatter)
BIBEK (off-screen): Cause you are not at your full strength at that altitude.
MARY (off-screen): Keep it vertical.
A little muddy.
Keep it vertical, vertical, vertical!
The sediment was much heavier than I anticipated.
You have to keep the sediment barrel,
the core barrel, vertical until you get it all capped and sealed,
which actually happens on shore.
Yeah, we're going to set it...
When we pulled the lake core up, you can't quite see what's inside.
It's a little bit like getting a Christmas present that's wrapped in paper.
It's not until we get it back to the laboratory that you then really see
those nice layers of the core.
DIRK: A lot of people up on the route!
NARRATOR: At 8,000 meters, the high-altitude team
is facing their one chance to enter the most
extreme reaches of the planet.
They'll only be able to spend a few hours here to install the final weather station.
A year of preparation all comes down to this.
MARIO (off-screen): Finished packing a drill.
We fill our bottles, because around 11:00 pm we are going to the summit, drill,
and put weather stations, the highest ones, both.
Fingers crossed.
TOM (off-screen): Suiting up.
Harness on. Crampons on.
I'm about to start the final 850 meters to the summit.
There's not a breath of wind, we couldn't ask for more at this stage.
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a bit nervous.
I am, I guess there's nothing left to do but face the music and dance.
MARK (off-screen): Yeah.
BAKER: Do me a favor and turn me up to two?
MARK: Yeah.
BAKER (off-screen): Just going into the unknown in the middle of the night, you know,
recognizing that we're totally dependent on our down suits,
on our crampons, on our oxygen to literally
keep us alive is, is a pretty humbling feeling.
CLIMBER: Let’s do it!
We’re ready!
TOM (off-screen): We're heading upwards, and we can already see
climbers ahead and we can even see some returning.
It feels like a bit you know,
kind of like heading into a war zone.
You're very much aware,
at least I was, that it's an alien environment,
that's not really built for us.
MARIO (off-screen): You lose your feeling of space pretty much,
and having headlamp and like blowing snow,
you see like tiny stars just passing just next to your eyes,
and then you see back of your climbing partner.
BAKER: Beautiful morning and a light snow.
BAKER (off-screen): There was a concern in the back of my mind about the number of climbers.
MARIO (off-screen): From the South Col to the balcony, even in the dark,
you see a like huge line of lights,
and pretty much no one's moving.
PETE (off-screen): The congestion on the climb was of the sorts that they realized it
was going to perhaps put the team in jeopardy
and/or put the objectives at jeopardy.
TOM: It’s fast and then slow
and so we’re in a big crowd now.
Otherwise, it feels tough. Tough going.
BAKER: Too many people. We’re at the balcony!
There’s a huge line of people. It’s slow going.
This is uh- I think the main thing it’s really cold. My hands and toes are cold,
‘cause we’re moving so slow.
TOM (off-screen): We were very well aware this was a problem that was unfolding around us.
Given how long it had taken us in that queue,
we would not have enough time because we would not have enough oxygen.
NARRATOR: Just 500 meters from Everest's summit, the team faces a decision...
Wait for the route to clear and hope they can make it to the top,
or build the weather station right here, on the balcony.
MARIO: I think the idea appeared in Panuru's head that we'll probably have
to work at the balcony.
PAUL: The ultimate decision was made by the lead Sherpa, Panuru,
and he was the most experienced person number one,
and number two he was there.
BAKER: Just... my mask totally iced up.
I couldn't breathe.
PETE (off-screen): They were feeling like they weren't going to get enough margin of safety
to have two to three hours to do an install of equipment up there,
and then get back down safely with the oxygen supplies
that they currently had.
NARRATOR: Knowing how much work they have ahead of them,
the team agrees:
this is where they'll put the highest weather station.
BAKER (off-screen): Part of me was certainly a bit disappointed not to have the chance
to go up a little higher.
But none of us was there solely to summit the mountain.
We had important scientific objectives to complete and that was our task.
MAN: Oh no.
TOM: Really we’re waiting for the drill battery to warm up.
They’re too cold.
BAKER (off-screen): We realized that the batteries were in fact too cold to operate the drill.
They just did not have enough power.
TOM: We’re trying to warm them up in down jackets,
stuffed under our armpits.
Hopefully that works.
Sun’s about to come up. That can help a bit too.
They’re too cold for it to work.
My guess is it’s about -25°.
And... you know we feel it, the batters feel it, so...
We’ll just have to wait.
BAKER (off-screen): A real sense of panic set in....
NARRATOR: The team waits for an hour...
And then, a battery sparks to life.
TOM (off-screen): So once the batteries have started working,
we're straight into installing the station.
And then we start doing the things we've been preparing for.
We start attaching the sensors in the order that makes most sense.
So, we're sliding them on, securing them,
and the Sherpa are doing this themselves,
because we've run through this so many times.
BAKER: Do you need to use the shovel?
I think this is it.
Yeah, it's good.
We have our wind.
TOM: Radio.
BAKER: Temperature?
TOM: Turning on... 3,2,1.
She's on!
Charging!
Brilliant job!
TOM: We just finished installing this weather station.
Undoubtedly the highest that's ever been installed.
On the balcony. Everest.
Fantastic work from the Sherpa team,
who put it up really quickly.
Really excited to start looking at the data that's coming from this.
It's transmitting now back to Washington, D.C.
TOM (off-screen): We wouldn't have been able to achieve anything like we did
without the help of that incredible Sherpa team.
This is their home.
And they allowed us into their home to conduct this science and allowed us
to come back out safely.
PAUL (off-screen): Everest is an amazing place.
It's iconic.
From our point of view scientifically, this was a great opportunity to make some
contributions that to the field of environmental change, and climate change,
that really couldn't be made anywhere else.
NARRATOR: The expedition has been a great success but the scientific work
is just beginning.
The samples and data collected will drive years of breakthrough research.
MARIO (off-screen): This ice at the South Col is different because it's been formed by
crystals that's rounded by very strong wind.
It's very neat ice.
I have never seen anything like that before.
NARRATOR: Early examinations of the ice core show something surprising.
The most recent layer,
on the very top of the core,
is already 2,000 years old.
This points to significant surface loss on the glacier,
even above 8,000 meters.
It's a signal that human activity has impacted the entire surface of the planet,
including its highest reaches.
In Montana, Mary Hubbard's lake core analysis indicates the same warming trend.
MARY (off-screen): Once you have it open, you can see the layers,
but you still have the question.
So how old is this?
How much time is represented in this bit of mud that I'm holding in my hands?
And we now have a sense that it's probably just shy of
2,000 years old that's represented there.
MARY: Ok, nice neat layering right straight all the way down...
NARRATOR: The different sections of the lake core reveal the region's plant and
animal life as it was hundreds and thousands of years ago.
PICO: Take a look at that one.
MARY (off-screen): The pollen samples indicate that more recent times have had a higher
abundance of tree species, whereas the older time period had more grasses and shrubs.
And the forests have been able to move a little bit higher up the valleys.
PICO: The forest is coming in.
MARY: So that's consistent with the retreat of the glacier.
PICO: Mmm-hmm.
MARY (off-screen): We want to understand where that might go in the future.
PICO: The trees are coming from lower elevation.
NARRATOR: Data is now streaming 24/7 from the highest mountain on Earth,
pointing the way to the future.
TOM (off-screen): So from what we've seen so far,
it looks like the snow and ice may be more sensitive to melt
and therefore declining more than we previously thought
before we went up there and put these weather stations in.
PAUL (off-screen): The bottom line is that if we understand what's in store for us,
where changes will occur, what sort of changes,
we can make better predictions and we can plan better.
And we can begin to organize our lives so that in some ways our
quality of life could be better in the future than it is now.
ANTON: 100 years ago, George Mallory,
the early mountaineer was famously asked, "Why go to the Everest?"
And he very famously answered,
"Because it's there."
I'm not satisfied with that.
I say go to Mount Everest because it's informative, it can tell us things,
it can tell us stories, it can help us understand the world we live in.
Captioned by Cotter Captioning Services.