National Geographic: Cameramen Who Dared Page #5

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they can barely breathe.

They can barely move

their leaden feet.

But still they do move.

You become so single-minded,

the rest of the world

is just gone.

Nothing,

nothing matters any more.

I am going to get

there if I have to crawl.

So you just keep putting one

foot in front of the other

and breathing as well

as you can

and trying to stay as warm

as you can.

On the morning of May 22nd

they launch the final push,

as alone as two

human beings can be

on the face

of the earth.

And then, before them is

a sight to lift the heart

and bring tears to the eyes.

After three weeks

Jim Whitaker's maypole

still stands fast,

with Old Glory streaming

in the winds of space.

These are the first moving

pictures ever taken

from the summit of Everest.

Lute Jerstad has his

camera propped

on the head of his ice axe.

And the blur at the bottom

is his furry glove.

Now a blast of wind strikes.

The earth quakes:

Lute almost falls,

then steadies himself.

He completes his panorama.

They have won their victory.

They're filled with a great

surge of joy... and gratitude.

We probably spent 45 minutes

to an hour on top,

and all that was taken up

by filming, really.

And filming that long,

certainly you pay

a price for it.

And Barry's price was

that he lost parts of

both little fingers

and his fourth finger.

And then in the

bivouac that night,

as a result of that,

he lost all 10 of his toes and,

And part of his foot bone

in both feet

And we finally

were flown back to Washington

sometime at the end of July.

I guess, that year to get

medals and awards and things.

And part of this was to go

to the Geographic,

and they were gonna

show some raw footage.

And I walked into this room

not really paying a lot of

attention to it

and looking at the great

pictures that had been taken,

and all of a sudden on the

screen came my summit footage.

and I started to cry.

I couldn't believe

it had come out.

And then I remembered

what it looked like.

But I couldn't,

I hadn't remembered what it

looked like until I saw that,

and it's because of

that single-minded attitude of,

you know, get this job done,

forget everything else,

and then you can turn

around and go home.

Twenty years later

David Breashears reached

the summit and beamed

a television picture to

a satellite station

for broadcast

a week later

on an American network.

Twenty-five years later 1988

pictures from the summit

were seen live on TV

around the world.

Thus the dream

of Capt. John Noel

was fully realized

Captain Noel who carried

the first movie cameras on

Everest in the unsuccessful

British expeditions

of the early 1920s.

His film continues to amaze

mountaineering cameramen

not only for its clarity

and coverage

but also his pioneering ordeal.

He lugged heavy equipment.

He developed the film himself,

on the spot,

working in a mountainside tent,

filtering glacier water,

burning yak dung to provide

heat to warm his chemicals.

He worked on his own,

getting little cooperation

from other climbers

who resented his presence,

regarding his camera as

a vulgar intrusion

on the purity

of their sportsmanship.

And yet his film preserved

the memory of the climb

and made a legend

of its tragic climax

climbers George Mallory

and Andrew Irvine struggling

to within 600 feet

of the summit

before disappearing forever,

Noel and the others watching

through telescopes,

then waiting anxiously as a

search party led

by N.E. Odell went up.

Crossed blankets in the snow

was the visual signal

to those below that

there was no hope,

for Mallory and Irvine

were gone,

a signal first seen through

Captain Noel's long lens.

The emotion of

that moment 64 years ago

is still keenly felt

by Captain Noel.

Hi is 98 years old.

The top of the North Col

was a shelf of ice,

and Odell,

when he'd made the search

and determined after two days

and two nights

that the men were dead,

just lost, he went

and he found their tent,

and he found these pieces of

oxygen cylinder,

and he came back and he gave

a message by signal.

We had no wireless telephone

in those days;

they weren't known.

He put a signal out

of crossed blankets.

And the photograph I got,

the best photograph

I made in my life,

was a circle made by the,

this high-powered lens

at one-and-a-half-miles range

showing the crossed blankets

and showing the men

walking away.

And people asked me,

"What do you see?"

I couldn't tell;

I was overcome.

I couldn't tell them,

but you'll get the signal.

The crossed blankets meant

Mallory and Irvine were dead.

That is clearly shown.

Almost 30 years passed before

men reached the top of Everest,

almost 40 years till

Lute Jerstad fulfilled

Captain Noel's dream

of moving pictures

from the summit.

Captain Noel, filming a heroic

quest on a great mountain,

was one of the first

of his kind.

As the era of the action film

cameraman was just beginning,

he embodied explore

and adventurous spirit

and made lasting

contribution

to the tradition of cameramen

who dared.

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