Customer Reviews

Nova - Volcano's Deadly Warning [VHS]

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This Nova presentation is a first rate documentary which explores the mystery of the disappearance of Mallory and Irvine, chronicling their 1924 Everest summit attempt and the present day efforts made to find them on Everest. Archival footage of the 1924 Everest British Expedition, along with a montage of vintage photographs of these early gentleman explorers, as well as extracts from personal letters sent by Mallory to his wife, are interposed with modern day footage of Everest in order to frame the story. Commentaries by David Breashears, world class filmmaker and climber, and by various members of the 1999 Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition who discovered the remains of Mallory on Everest, add depth to this documentary which is narrated by Rebecca Mornay.

The efforts of the early Everest expeditioners were truly amazing, considering that they climbed in tweeds and hobnail boots, without fixed ropes, ironmongery, or other sophisticated equipment available to climbers today. A demonstration with a circa 1920s ice axe shows how they would chop steps and hand holds into the ice. It was a terribly painstaking process.

The discovery of Mallory's body on Everest seventy five years after his disappearance into the mists of Everest is truly amazing and wondrously memorialized on this film. The efforts that went into this search were highly organized, with the search area divined through simple cartography based upon anecdotal, second hand information about the sighting on Everest by a Chinese climber, long since deceased, of an "old English dead".

Mallory's marble like body, well preserved and intact, tells of the trauma that he had sustained before his eventual death. A review of the artifacts found with his body, an altimeter marked MEE2 (Mount Everest Expedition 2), personal clothing, a pocket knife, goggles, and personal notes, all add a certain poignancy to the discovery. The burial of Mallory's body on Everest finally puts to rest a chapter in Everest history. Now only Irvine is still left to be accounted for. Perhaps the discovery of his remains will answer the question that is yet to be answered. Did Mallory and /or Irvine summit Everest before their tragic deaths?

In 1924, dressed in little more than tweed climbing gear and possessed of a naive esprit de corp an expedition of English gentlemen adventurers made successive but abortive attempts upon the summit of Mount Everest. The fate of the last pair to attempt this feat, George Leigh Mallory and Andrew Irvine, has remained a mystery for seventy-five years as both ascended into a mist from which they were never seen again. This video captures the first moments of an historic day in 1999 when climbers found the remains of Mallory, perfectly preserved in its trans-alpine resting place. Despite the frequency of its conquest life on Everest is tenuous at best. Curiously, when life is at its most fragile, men of selfless heroism walk the razors edge when the safer path beckons. This video is a fitting requiem to two of Everest's early explorers and chronicles an age when achievements were less a public acclamation of the self than a personal celebration of it.

Nova needs to add more extras and to put out more of thier videos in the DVD format. Enjoyable, educational, and balanced. The searchers, with a discreet camera following them, walk about an area where climbers who fall off Everest seem to collect. I understand the need to be respectful, but I think it would be more (for a lack of a better word) 'scary' to see what the stakes of climbing Everest often are. Do I give away the ending? They find Mallory expecting to find Irvine, but do they find the answer? It was possible they made it, though not likely. But how often has 'not likely' not prevented people from accomplishing thier goal? Its incredible to think men in sweaters and skimpy boots climbed at the top of Everest, while they use space age materials now. They need to find Irvine! And the camera!

What a mystery. Did Mallory & Irvin summit before Sir Edmund Hillary in 1953? We will probably never know, so its up to the viewer to come to his or her own conclusion. This video has great information and detailed maps of where clues were left behind. Everest has always been a passion of mine and this video is an important part of my collection as far as the history of the mountain goes.The climbers on this expidition are on a mission to find the bodies of Mallory and Irvin and search a mountain were humans don't belong. I dont think Mallory made the top, but what do you think.......?

Great video of the search for the remains of Mallory and Irvine in an attempt to discover whether their expedition was a success! The viewer shares in the search and in the emotion of the discovery of Everest's secrets from the Mallory and Irvine expedition. The bits of information on the equipment and dress used by Mallory and Irvine is fascinating. The photos of the original expedition are also great. The graphics diagraming the route used by Mallory to climb Everest are good, too, although I would like to see them shown and discussed further.

Volcano's Deadly Warning is a near excellent entry in PBS's long-running and usually sterling NOVA series. USGS scientist Bernard Chouet's hypothesis concerning long-period seismic events as a reliable precursor for the prediction of explosive volcanic events is the focal point of the video. Folks who have read Stanley William's book 'Surviving Galeras' and/or Victoria Bruce's book 'No Apparent Danger' should already be familiar with the issues surrounding Chouet's hypothesis. I was worried that the video would take sides in a controversy that has gone beyond basic volcanology, but the video is accurate and even handed. The video follows 1 common scientific thread over a 15 year period [from Nevado Del Ruiz in Colombia to Popocateptl in Mexico] and would be a good video to use for a lesson in scientific thinking. Fans of rivers of red hot basaltic magmas should avoid this video because it focuses on explosive volcanic eruptions and the volcanologists. The one time I had a problem with the video is when it described the eruption at Galeras that killed half a dozen volcanologists. The video does a good job at telling about the conflicting data that the scientists had concerning Galeras and the choices that were made based on then incompletely understood data, but then goes on to say that information was 'disregarded' by the scientists. Despite that one small complaint, I would highly recommend Volcano's Deadly Warning to any earth science teacher or volcano enthusiast.

Lost On Everest tells the story of the 1999 expedition to find the bodies of George Mallory and Andrew Irvine who disappeared 75 years prior as they attempted to be the first to summit Everest. There are two stories here, both fascinating. The expedition team is made up of seasoned professionals led by Eric Simonson and while Jochen Hemmleb does not actually join the search high on the mountain, his research is the lynchpin to finding Mallory. But the more fascinating story is that of the 1924 expedition and George Mallory. British to their core, these men were determined to conquer Everest. How on earth they ever survived a night at base camp let alone the higher camps is beyond me. They had none of the modern technology in gear, shelter or clothing and yet they persevered despite the odds. Did Mallory and Irvine make it to the top? We may never know but the story is amazing. (Be sure to read Ghosts of Everest as a companion to this video. There are a few inconsistencies between the two but I am glad I read the book first because it does cover more details than the video.)

Lost On Everest tells the story of the 1999 expedition to find the bodies of George Mallory and Andrew Irvine who disappeared 75 years prior as they attempted to be the first to summit Everest. There are two stories here, both fascinating. The expedition team is made up of seasoned professionals led by Eric Simonson and while Jochen Hemmleb does not actually join the search high on the mountain, his research is the lynchpin to finding Mallory. But the more fascinating story is that of the 1924 expedition and George Mallory. British to their core, these men were determined to conquer Everest. How on earth they ever survived a night at base camp let alone the higher camps is beyond me. They had none of the modern technology in gear, shelter or clothing and yet they persevered despite the odds. Did Mallory and Irvine make it to the top? We may never know but the story is amazing. (Be sure to read Ghosts of Everest as a companion to this video. There are a few inconsistencies between the two but I am glad I read the book first because it does cover more details than the video.)