Aftershock: Everest and the Nepal Earthquake (2022) s01e01 Episode Script

[wind howling]
[man 1] Holy moly, look at this place.
Whew!
[he groans]
[soft music playing]
[he mumbles]
Okay.
Ohhh
It's a big crevasse.
Focus on the rungs,
not the drop.
Focus on the rungs,
not the drop.
Oh, boy.
Pretty wild.
[soft music slowly building]
[man 1] Ah!
Cha-cha! I'm okay.
[music stops]
[man 1] That's rain.
[deep, loud rumbling]
[loud, deep crashing]
[man 1] A fucking earthquake?
[foreboding music grows]
[loud, deep rumbling]
[man 1] Ah, fuck.
[foreboding music grows]
[man 2] Fuck. Everything is shaking.
- [man 3] Holy shit.
- [man 4] Fuck!
[crowd yelling]
- [man 5] Go!
- [man 6] Go!
[avalanche rumbling]
[man 1] Fuck!
Fuck! Fuck!
Fuck!
[loud rumbling]
[rumbling fades]
[soft melancholic music playing]
[wind howling]
[man 7] For people climbing Everest,
after trekking for ten days,
you come down off an escarpment,
and then you get to the beginning
of the Base Camp.
[soft melancholic music continues]
[more upbeat gentle music playing]
[man 7] As a mountaineer,
you're going there to start your journey.
[indistinct buoyant chatter]
[man 8] When you come
into Everest Base Camp,
the walking is done.
Basically, you've reached a dead end.
And to go in any other direction now,
you're gonna need to climb.
[Dave McKinley]
The Base Camp environment is a
It is a village, it's
It's beyond a village these days.
It's a town.
And the start of that season, it was busy.
[indistinct chatter]
[Dave McKinley] It was a busy year.
With all these people
on different expeditions,
with different expedition companies.
My smile was so big
when I got to the Base Camp.
I felt like I arrived somewhere.
You feel happy all of a sudden.
You're like, "I got to the Base Camp!"
And I was smiling.
There's so many tents.
Different colors, different brands.
And diversity of the people.
You see the whole world.
The whole United Nations
is in the Everest Base Camp.
Hey, buddy!
[man 9] Sha-pow!
[Dave Hahn] I think there are
some preconceptions
that people that would come
to climb Everest
are all rich
or privileged.
And that that doesn't really capture it.
There are also
some delightfully ordinary people.
[upbeat soft music continues]
[speaking Nepali] Reaching base camp
was a totally new experience for me.
I'm neither a professional climber
nor a member of the Sherpa people.
I was a single person with one Sherpa
and even less budget.
My first priority was my safety.
Because I didn't have
any training for this.
I didn't even know how to tie knots.
That was my situation.
I only had one thought in my mind,
which was that I must climb Mount Everest
at any cost, and also return back.
[Dave Hahn] Just getting
to Everest Base Camp,
that's already quite an accomplishment
for a number of people.
But then there is climbing
the mountain itself.
There are four camps,
and, uh, it's a process weeks long
of going progressively higher
on the mountain,
spending some nights to acclimatize.
And coming back down to Base Camp,
resting,
going a little bit higher still,
until one of those climbing rotations
involves going for the summit.
[Sara] To prepare my body
mentally and physically,
we did some acclimatization hikes.
But climbing Everest
was so out of my comfort zone.
[traditional Nepali bells ringing]
[Sara] When I was at UCLA,
my professor told me
that I'm too shy
and I need to start working on that.
You need to work on your self-confidence,
come up with a project,
something that
you can't even think of doing
in your wildest dreams.
Somebody behind me,
she was talking to her friend,
and they were talking
about Everest Base Camp,
and I felt like
[gasps] I really want to be there.
I really want to be there.
I want to climb Mount Everest.
I was so excited about Everest
that I went home and I googled,
"How to climb Everest." [chuckles]
And the very first link, I clicked on it.
There was a phone number.
I called them and I said, "Hi,
I want to climb Mount Everest.
What should I do?"
[indistinct chatter]
[Sara] And that's how I realized
there is a way to do it.
I have to have experience.
I have to climb so many other mountains.
It might take years for me to get there.
But there is a way.
- [Dave Hahn] It's got a red light on.
- [Sara] Okay, that's it.
[Sara] And I finally got to Everest
in 2015.
[Sara gasps]
[Sara] This one This one is even deeper
than the other one.
[Dave Hahn] No, it's a good ladder.
You're doing awesome.
[ladder creaks]
[Dave Hahn] Awesome job.
Wow. Perfect.
[Sara] This is longer.
[Dave Hahn] You got it. You got it.
- You got it.
- [woman 1] You got it, Sara.
[Sara] During the acclimatization,
we set up ladders
to get used to crossing ladders
because the next step
was the Khumbu Icefall.
The very first time that somebody told me
about Khumbu Icefall,
they said this is
the most dangerous part of Everest.
I thought
No, they just say that.
They want to scare me.
I decided to just google it
and maybe watch a little short video
of Khumbu Icefall.
After watching
that five-minute video of Khumbu,
I was really scared.
- [clock ticking]
- [mountain rumbling]
[Dave Hahn] It's a place where the glacier
is trying to get through
a narrow, steep path,
and it ends up just turbulent,
like the rapids in a river.
It's a little stunning to realize
that as you're standing there
at Everest Base Camp,
that's the easiest way to go.
[Sara] It's like pieces of ice
the size of a building
are hanging at 45 degrees and you're like,
this thing can break on me at any second.
And there are all sorts of ladders,
45 degrees, horizontal,
four attached together
over a big crevasse.
It's just it's really scary.
[speaking Nepali] When the sun comes out,
the main problem is
that it can melt the ice
and it can all collapse on you.
In all honesty, it scares the out of me.
Totally. Every single time
I've been through it,
I have really not enjoyed myself.
[dramatic music playing,
foreboding drumbeat grows]
[music stops]
[Sara] So we were all in the dining tent
and our guides announce
that in two days we're gonna go up.
[soft foreboding music playing]
[Sara] And, uh, I was kind of nervous,
and at the same time I was excited.
I'm like, okay, perfect.
All the things that we practiced,
I'm gonna use them.
[more upbeat soft music playing]
[Sara] It felt like I trained all my life
for that moment,
and I thought,
I am ready for the challenge.
[deep rumbling]
[man 10] Nepal, in general,
it's incredible.
It's it's such an extreme environment.
It's not just the Everest Base Camp.
There's so many different places
to go in Nepal.
And one of the highlights for me
is the Langtang Valley.
This place is really, really difficult
to get to.
There are no roads.
You can't drive a car up to Langtang.
You can't even drive a motorcycle
or a bicycle up there.
[river water rushing]
And that's one of the more
beautiful things about it,
is that it's so remote and so extreme
that you can only make it there by foot,
and one hell of a foot walk it is.
Eight months earlier,
before traveling,
I finished my military service
after five years.
And the first thing I want to do
was just get out.
And have a great time
with my two best friends, Shahar and Yaar,
three 25-year-old guys just
just having the time of our lives.
Going to Nepal sounded like
a perfect fit for us.
[Shahar] Like most Israelis my age,
I was looking for peace and quiet,
maybe a chance to find myself.
A chance for us young Israelis
to do something
before we start our real, adult lives.
[man 11] You know,
just being the three of us together
up on a gorgeous mountain
we had the best time of our lives.
[Yuval] After we finished hiking
the Annapurna trek,
we had five days left in Nepal.
And, uh, thinking what we could do
with the five days left,
that's when we first heard
about the Langtang trek.
I mean, it's a simple one.
You just go up the valley
to Langtang village
and then up to Kyanjin Gompa,
which is the last village of the valley.
[soft music becoming more dramatic]
[Yuval] After Kyanjin Gompa,
there's nowhere else to go up the valley
besides the viewpoint of the whole valley.
It's probably one
of the most beautiful places in the world.
And, uh a place where
we just wanted to be.
[epic music growing]
So, the first day of the Langtang trek
was perfect.
I remember it very, very good.
It felt like walking through
through kind of like a fairyland.
I don't know how to explain it,
but the energy
was extremely positive.
But we had no idea at the time
that we were in the wrong place
at the wrong time.
[foreboding drumbeat and music]
[wind howling]
[whooshing]
[foreboding deep drumming]
[man 12 speaking Nepali]
I'd always dreamed of making it big.
When I arrived in Kathmandu,
I realized something:
you could only survive there
if you were fearless.
If you showed any fear, you'd get whacked.
That's the world that created me.
[chuckles]
[horn honking]
[Arjun] People said,
"This guy's a gangster."
"He's a fighter, he stabs people."
"His name is the 'Golden Blade.'"
I would always carry two khukuri knives
stashed down my back.
[soft dramatic music playing]
[speaking Nepali] People said my dad
was a gangster. They said it all the time.
No one could touch me
because my dad was like this.
So I wasn't afraid of anything.
When I was a kid, we bought a hotel.
The hotel was right opposite
the bus station.
[Arjun speaking Nepali] It was eight
and a half stories high. It was very tall.
[ominous music crescendos]
[Arjun] Our guests were mostly
migrant workers waiting to go abroad.
I'd suffered as a kid,
and wanted a better life.
And now I felt like I could do something.
I was a boss.
I used to roam around Kathmandu
looking for work in these hotels.
But look at me now, owning a hotel.
My wife ran the hotel.
[Aashika] When guests came,
my mother would be at the counter.
She used to do
whatever was needed at the hotel.
[woman 3] I was always against the idea
of buying the hotel.
But no one listened to me.
So they bought the hotel
against my wishes.
Sangeeta said,
"Don't worry, I will run everything."
[horn honking]
[man 13] The thing you need to understand
about Kathmandu is
most of the building is unsafe,
poorly constructed,
in a very unstable landscape.
This highly vulnerable capital
is one of the most densely populated
cities in the world.
And most of those people are not prepared
for the incoming disaster.
[soft dramatic music playing]
[ceremonial chanting in Nepali]
[Sara] The day before we go up
the mountain, we had this ceremony
to ask permission from the mountain
to go up the mountain.
[chanting continues]
And we had a little ceremony at the end
for the people who passed the year before.
[chanting continues]
[Dave Hahn] The Khumbu Icefall
was on everybody's minds
because of, of
the disaster that had ended
the 2014 season.
[deep rumbling]
[Dave Hahn] There was an avalanche
into the icefall,
off the west shoulder of Mount Everest.
An ice avalanche that killed 16 Nepalis.
- [man 14 over radio] Base Camp.
- [man 15] Go ahead.
[man 14] We need help here.
Yeah, we need people
to dig out the bodies.
Everyone, please come up.
[man 16 in Nepali] In 2014,
I had gone to Everest to guide one
of my American clients up the mountain.
I was the lead guide
and I had two other assistant guides.
One of those guides was my brother,
and the other was a Sherpa.
[Dave Hahn] When we got up there,
yes, most of the rescue work,
it really turned out to be recovery work.
[melancholic music playing]
[Dave Hahn] As we were climbing up
through the icefall,
the helicopters were flying past us
with bodies
uh, slung from the the cables below.
[Tul in Nepali]
Twelve dead bodies were brought down,
but my cousin wasn't among them.
Finally they told us
they couldn't find the remaining bodies.
And those bodies
are still in the Khumbu Icefall.
[Sara] In 2015,
the guides wanted to give us
some confidence
that this is not gonna happen again.
"You are okay. You're safe."
"This year the path is really good.
You're gonna be fine."
But I didn't know if they are saying it
to calm us down,
or it's actually the truth.
[Gopal in Nepali]
I knew that there was a risk.
I was aware of it.
Lots of people, even my family,
told me not to climb it.
But I needed to do it.
I know I'm not an educated person
or an intellectual.
I'm HIV positive and an ex-drug user.
I'd almost died so many times,
so I wasn't afraid of death.
I wasn't frightened, I was excited.
I turned my HIV into a strength
to promote my country,
and to show everyone that HIV victims
are not physically weak.
[Dave Hahn] 2015,
that was my 21st Everest expedition.
Ended up being the the last.
I hadn't really planned on quitting it.
I think the mountain
planned my exit for me.
[mellow melancholic music
becoming more upbeat]
[Yuval] So we arrive at Langtang village.
I really loved being able to be
so distant from civilization.
I loved it that there's no internet
there in the valley.
And just a beautiful, beautiful place,
where it's just you,
the locals,
and this incredible valley.
[soft uplifting music playing]
[man 17 in Nepali] One of the reasons
we get a lot of foreign tourists
is they come to see the glaciers
and the mountains
and they are interested
in our lifestyle and culture as well.
2015,
24th April,
Friday.
That day, we had a ghewa in our village.
[traditional Nepali music and singing]
[Jhangbu] In Buddhism,
a ghewa is a ritual we perform
49 days after someone has died.
No one can stay home during a ghewa.
Everyone must come to the monastery,
everyone.
[traditional music continues]
We kind of, like, heard, I guess,
some sort of rumor
that something big
was happening in the temple.
And we were thinking, okay, I guess
this is something we really have to see.
[chanting in Nepali]
[Jhangbu] Everyone from
the Langtang Valley had gathered there.
Not only that,
but relatives had come from far away.
That night,
our monastery was full of people.
There were more than 300 of us,
including children and the elders.
The whole community came together.
We chant the mantra and dance.
[chanting continues]
We dance till the next afternoon.
[chanting continues]
[Jhangbu] That was the last ghewa.
[chanting grows louder]
[Yuval] It's such a tragedy that
such a ceremony suddenly becomes,
you know, the last living moment
of the village.
[chanting continues]
[chanting fades]
[wind howling]
[Dave Hahn] It was tough to sleep.
There's all this anticipation.
And you can hear the glacier
that you're sleeping on
and that you're gonna climb through,
you can hear it popping.
You can hear ice and rock crashing down
in various places around the valley.
[mountain rumbling, ice cracking]
[Dave Hahn] Our alarms went off.
Turned on our headlights
in our individual tents.
Uh, it was go time.
Put on the climbing harnesses.
Put on our packs.
Grab our ice axes.
And we're filing out of Base Camp.
The sherpas light juniper
and send up some of that smoke
as an offering to the gods.
And then we're walking out there,
one behind the other,
and making our way into the icefall.
It feels pretty good finally,
after all the build-up
and all the wondering about,
"Would this climbing season come off?
Was it gonna work?"
And there we were finally
walking uphill, making it work.
And we were on the way
to Camp 1 for the first time.
[Sara] When we woke about 4 a.m.,
I kicked my head out of my tent
and I saw lots of lights on the mountain.
I'm like, oh,
everybody's on the mountain already,
and we haven't even had breakfast yet.
And we were kind of a little bit concerned
about the crowd on the mountain.
Like, "This many people would go
up the mountain together?"
So I was really happy that my guides,
they decided to do it at 5 a.m.
The plan was to go up to Camp 1.
[Dave Hahn] Once you get to the corner,
don't waste time waiting.
Just grab the rope with your hands
and keep going.
[breathing heavily]
[Sara] Our guides wanted us to go fast
because the Khumbu Icefall is not safe.
[breathing heavily]
Everybody on the team,
we were all clipped into the rope,
which was the rope
that went all the way to Camp 1,
through the Khumbu Icefall.
[breathing heavily]
[Sara] And you have to walk through it
as fast as you can because at any point
any piece of ice can just break
and fall on you.
And you can fall into crevasses.
[Dave Hahn] Good job, Sara.
[Dave Hahn]
You're down within the glacier.
There's ice over your head.
[guide coughing]
You're stepping over these crevasses.
You're teetering across ladders.
[Dave Hahn] Good job, Sara.
No more than that.
- Good job.
- [man 18] Looking good, Sara.
[Dave Hahn] Big chunks of ice,
uh, towering around you.
There's more chance
of something coming off
the walls around you,
and it's real.
[coughing]
[indistinct chatter]
[heavy breathing]
[coughing]
[dramatic drumbeat]
[Yuval] We woke up Saturday morning,
it was 6 a.m.,
we were already ready to go.
And the weather was bad, it was terrible.
Our porter, he told us, um
that he has a bad feeling
and that we shouldn't go.
That's what he said.
"Listen, I have a bad feeling."
"Um, something's not right,
we shouldn't hike up."
[ominous music playing]
[Yuval] And, you know, there's always
the thought of why why push it?
We made it up to Langtang village.
This place is beautiful as well.
It's not necessary
to try and push our luck.
On the other hand, we really wanted a shot
of making it to Kyanjin Ri.
We wanted a shot.
We said, "Worst case scenario,
we'll walk up to Kyanjin Gompa,
the weather will stay bad,
we won't make it up to the Ri.
Okay, then we'll go back."
"Then we'll walk back down the valley
and out of the valley."
And that's when we made the decision
to leave Langtang.
At the time, we didn't know
it was a life-or-death decision.
We walk up to Kyanjin Gompa.
We take it pretty easy because it's
the altitude already is pretty high.
It wasn't as beautiful.
We couldn't see the mountains around us.
We couldn't feel the scenery.
And we make it to Kyanjin Gompa.
One of the guides says, "Listen,
I've found a good place for us to stay."
It was the tallest guesthouse
in the village,
four stories high.
Good price. We said,
"This is where we want to stay."
But reflecting on it,
we were completely unprepared
for what was about to happen.
[dramatic drumroll]
[menacing deep drumbeat]
[indistinct chatter]
- [Dave Hahn] Good job, Sara.
- [man 19] You're good.
[heavy breathing]
[Sara] We got to the bottom
of this big wall, big ice-wall.
[Dave Hahn] Awesome job, Sara.
[Sara] So you climb the wall one by one.
Whoever finishes the ladders,
you yell "Clear!"
So the next climber can unclip
and then can walk to the bottom
of the ladder and start climbing.
[Dave Hahn] You got it, girl. Go Irish!
Looking great.
Good job, Sara.
[heavy breathing, coughing]
[Sara] Ah, so I went off the ladder,
and the whole time I was telling myself,
"Oh, I got this. I'm so strong.
This is so good."
I finished the fifth ladder
And I yelled, "Clear!"
- [loud deep rumble]
- [Dave Hahn] Oh, fuck.
[rumbling continues]
[loud boom]
[birds screeching loudly]
- [loud commotion]
- [building crashes]
[woman yelling]
- [loud deep rumbling]
- [man yelling]
[people shouting]
[yelling and screaming]
[people yelling]
[Sara] My heart was pumping so fast.
I couldn't breathe. I was really
gasping for air, like [gasps]
[heavy gasping]
[Sara] And I thought
I guess this is it.
This is I'm gonna die.
[loud deep rumbling]
[indistinct chatter]
[man 20] Go! Go!
[rumbling]
[man 20] Straight ahead.
[man 21] Holy shit.
[panicked yelling]
[Gopal] Death was in front of me.
There was only one thing on my mind:
"Run, and save yourself."
[yelling]
[man 22] Fuck! Come on!