"It's pretty amazing, standing up there and looking around and everything is down," he added. "It's a selfish endeavour for a very humbling experience."
Director Campbell concurred, though he pointed out that at the time of Skreslet and Morrow's climb, their achievement was seen as a national accomplishment as much as a personal one. "It's similar to the type of achievement to even a more noble endeavour, like finding the cure to cancer. People push themselves to do those discoveries. It might be a more selfish one in the case of mountain climbing, but it's still the person pushing themselves to the extreme."
"It's why people tune into the Olympics. It's people pushing themselves to the extreme," Johnson continued. "It's really inspiring to watch that, even if it's just for a personal best time. It's still fascinating to watch that kind of determination at work, that ferocity and single-mindedness."
The 1982 expedition was very well funded and garnered significant media attention, attention that soured when the climb began to go wrong. Campbell explained the miniseries finds its heart in the fact that the group needed to learn how to gel as a team under that extreme pressure. "It wasn't just man against nature, it was man against himself."
Everest airs Sunday, August 31 and Monday, September 1 at 8 pm on CBC, and includes appearances by William Shatner, Jason Priestley, and Leslie Hope. The DVD will be available through CBC on September 16, along with an accompanying documentary called The Climb.
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