Skiing Everest Film Event Benefits Jimmie Heuga Center Endowment
Posted Saturday, December 18, 2010
Edwards, Colo. – An exhilarating documentary about an elite group of skiers who scale the world’s highest mountain, and challenge its most dangerous slopes, Skiing Everest will screen in a limited theatrical benefit event -January 27, 2011. To view the trailer, visit www.SkiingEverest.net.
Filmed by co-director Mike Marolt over ten years, Skiing Everest follows a group of close friends, led by Marolt and his twin brother Steve, who grew up in Aspen taking on 14,000-ft. peaks with their father, 1960 Olympic skier Max Marolt. They would go on to ski the treacherous slopes of Alaska and the world’s highest volcanoes in South America before becoming the first Americans to ski above 8,000 meters (26,247 ft.), tackling the summit of Shisha Pangma in Tibet in 2000. This led them to the ultimate challenge – Mt. Everest – skiing without using supplemental oxygen, without employing Sherpas to carry their gear or hiring guides to help them up the peaks.
Skiing Everest follows the Marolts and their childhood friends, Jim Gile and Olympic cross-country skier John Calhoun, in what many people consider the toughest physical challenge on
Earth – climbing and skiing in the “Death Zone” without using bottled oxygen, under weather conditions as perilous as the thin air, with hidden crevasses and 10,000-ft. sheer faces that drop into Nepal and Tibet far below.
“It is hard to do anything at such altitudes,” wrote Forbes adventure columnist Jim Clash, “where death lurks at every turn, let alone ski and survive to tell the tale.”
Writer and co-director Les Guthman, who produced three of the “Top 20 Adventure Films of All Time” according to Men’s Journal magazine, was drawn to the Marolts’ story. “The reason I decided to make Skiing Everest with Mike was my deep respect for the skiers’ approach to these expeditions, which are magnificent human adventures in the purest sense,” says Guthman. “These guys remind us of what adventure really is, in an era when words and concepts have become cheap commodities.”
The film also tells the history of high-altitude skiing, dating back to the 1930s, and includes interviews with Hans Kammerlander, the first to ski from the summit of Everest; Laura Bakos, the first woman to ski from the summit of an 8,000-meter peak, and Chris Davenport, the two-time world extreme skiing champion and avid ski mountaineer.
Written by Les Guthman, and directed by Mike Marolt and Les Guthman, Skiing Everest is a production of Montezuma Basin Productions, XPLR Productions and West Post Digital. The executive producers are Jeanne Andlinger and Jack Jacobs. The producers are Mike Marolt, Les Guthman and Kenny Fields. The director of photography is Mike Marolt. The editor is Les Guthman. The composer is Richard Horowitz.
For more information on the event, visit the website www.jhceevents.com
For more information on the film, visit the website at www.SkiingEverest.net.
For STARZ FILMCENTER, visit the website at www.denverfilm.org/filmcenter/about/
January 27, 2010 Starz FilmCenter 303.595.3456
900 Auraria Parkway, Denver, CO 80204
VIP Cocktail Reception and Screening: 5:00 – 8:30 pm, screening at 6:15 pm
Evening Screening: 8:30 – 10:15 pm
Tickets: $20 for Evening Screening, $100 for VIP Cocktail Reception Screening
SPONSORS: Bessemer Trust HOST COMMITTEE: Chris Groll & Steve Villano
R & B Cellars Dick & Robin Kelly
Stella Artois Jeff & Toni Olson
REI Outreach Barbara & Chip Roehrig
Ellen and Makey Towne
All proceeds to benefit the Jimmie Heuga Center Endowment, supporting Can Do MS's lifestyle empowerment programs for people living with multiple sclerosis.
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