IMAX·IWERKS expedition

The IMAX/IWERKS expedition was a film-making team on Everest whose choices placed it both alongside and apart from the commercial teams caught in the 1996 disaster. Its members delayed their summit attempt when the weather remained unsettled, later shared oxygen with retreating Mountain Madness climbers, and joined the wider effort to evacuate survivors. Their caution and assistance give the expedition a recurring role in the book: a counterpoint to the pressure to continue upward, and a source of evidence in the contested reconstruction of what happened.

Purpose and summit strategy

The IMAX/IWERKS team had a specific reason to seek a summit day distinct from the commercial expeditions’ planned push. Ed Viesturs recalled that, for filming, the team wanted a lonely summit ridge; for safety, it also wanted to avoid being among roughly forty climbers crowding the ridge. They therefore initially planned to go a day before the other teams. Their decision-making was shaped not only by the goal of reaching the top, but by what kind of conditions and crowding they were willing to accept.

That plan changed after the team spent the night of May 7 at Camp III. The night was windy, and the wind remained strong at altitude in the morning. Viesturs and David Breashears concluded that the weather window they had been waiting for had not arrived. They chose to descend rather than make the May 9 attempt, reasoning that they had time and could return when conditions were more stable. The descent was deliberate, not a forced retreat: the team could wait, while the commercial teams below were already moving toward their planned summit bid.

The encounter with Boukreev

On the way down, members of the IMAX/IWERKS team met Anatoli Boukreev as he climbed toward Camp III. He stopped on the fixed rope to let descending climbers pass, and recognized Viesturs, an old acquaintance. Using a ski pole for balance, Boukreev spoke with him about conditions higher on the mountain. Viesturs explained that his team was descending because it disliked the unstable weather and intended to wait for a better opportunity.

The exchange carried the unease of a decision made against the visible momentum of the other teams. Viesturs remembered that the IMAX/IWERKS climbers felt sheepish as they greeted Boukreev and wished him luck: around them, the Fischer and Hall teams were going up with smiling faces, while they were heading down and questioning whether they had made the right call. They nevertheless held to their decision. Boukreev watched them descend as the other teams continued toward the summit, then only two days away.

Oxygen and evacuation after the storm

The expedition’s relationship with the other climbers became materially important during the retreat. On the morning of May 11, Mountain Madness’s oxygen supply had run out, and Neal Beidleman and the clients decided to descend. The few clients who needed oxygen for the descent were supplied by the IMAX/IWERKS expedition. In a situation where the remaining oxygen margin had become critical, the team’s equipment helped make the retreat possible.

By May 12, hope for Rob Hall, Doug Hansen, and Andy Harris had been abandoned, and the remnants of Hall’s Adventure Consultants expedition began descending. Beck Weathers and Makalu Gau were evacuated to Camp I through the efforts of Todd Burleson, Pete Athans, Viesturs, Breashears, and members of other teams on the mountain. A helicopter could land there and carry them to Kathmandu. The evacuation was a collective operation rather than the work of one expedition alone, but the IMAX/IWERKS team was among those who contributed to bringing the survivors down.

Evidence, memory, and disputed events

The expedition also figures in the book’s later examination of conflicting accounts. In a scene recounting Jon Krakauer’s article, Martin Adams interrupted the reading when Krakauer described meeting Andy Harris just above Camp IV and speaking with him about an icy slope. Adams said that the person Krakauer had encountered was not Harris but Adams himself. Krakauer had previously asked Adams whether the climber could have been him; after reconsidering the description and his own memory, Adams had called back convinced that he was the person in question. He offered to bet ninety-nine to one, but Krakauer wanted more evidence and declined the bet. The episode shows how identification in a storm and a later written account could become a point of dispute even among survivors.

A separate piece of evidence associated with the team bears on Harris’s disappearance. When IMAX/IWERKS climbers summited on May 23, they found Harris’s ice ax between the Hillary Step and the South Summit. The book presents the ax as physical evidence that prompted speculation: Harris may have stopped descending and climbed back up to help Hall, perhaps Hansen, before falling in the exposed, unroped area. It does not establish that reconstruction as fact. The object marks a possible route through the uncertainty, not a definitive answer.

The book also cites Viesturs’s interview in challenging an accusation that he had not been contacted or interviewed: the account says that he participated in an interview in Salt Lake City in January 1997, for which the interviewer retained an audiotape and transcript. Later, Breashears offered a more restrained judgment of Boukreev’s actions, saying he found it difficult to second-guess a situation he had not experienced. Together, these references make the IMAX/IWERKS expedition more than a supporting presence in the disaster narrative: its members appear as witnesses, helpers, and participants in the difficult work of distinguishing remembered experience from established fact.