The documentary chronicles Yuichiro Miura's wildly risky 1970 attempt to ski portions of Mount Everest, an expedition captured and produced by Crawley Films (producer Budge Crawley) and directed by Crawley and Bruce Nyznik. While the film centers on Miura's high-speed, parachute-assisted descent — a 2,000 m run completed in roughly two minutes and twenty seconds during which he tumbled some 400 m down the Lhotse Face from the Yellow Band and came to rest a hair-raising 76 m from the lip of a bergschrund — the production was marred by real tragedy on approach to the mountain. During the expedition's climb-in, a section of the Khumbu Glacier collapsed along the main route to base camp, killing six Sherpa porters in a single catastrophic accident; a Japanese team member also died of a heart attack. The fatalities cast a long shadow over the achievement captured on film, turning what might have been straightforward adventure footage into a record of danger, loss, and the human cost exacted by extreme mountaineering. The film later won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, and the Academy Film Archive preserved it in 2010 — but the deaths of the Sherpas and the on-camera near-miss of Miura’s descent remain central to the production’s legacy and ethical conversation.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1970s
Six Sherpas Killed in a Khumbu Glacier Collapse During the 1970 Everest Ski Expedition
The Man Who Skied Down Everest (Yuichiro Miura expedition) / 1970s
The documentary chronicles Yuichiro Miura's wildly risky 1970 attempt to ski portions of Mount Everest, an expedition captured and produced by Crawley Films (producer Budge Crawley) and directed by Crawley and Bruce Nyznik. While the film centers on Miura's high-speed, parachute-assisted descent — a 2,000 m run completed in roughly two minutes and twenty seconds during which he tumbled some 400 m down the Lhotse Face from the Yellow Band and came to rest a hair-raising 76 m from the lip of a bergschrund — the production was marred by real tragedy on approach to the mountain. During the expedition's climb-in, a section of the Khumbu Glacier collapsed along the main route to base camp, killing six Sherpa porters in a single catastrophic accident; a Japanese team member also died of a heart attack. The fatalities cast a long shadow over the achievement captured on film, turning what might have been straightforward adventure footage into a record of danger, loss, and the human cost exacted by extreme mountaineering. The film later won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, and the Academy Film Archive preserved it in 2010 — but the deaths of the Sherpas and the on-camera near-miss of Miura’s descent remain central to the production’s legacy and ethical conversation.
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