I climbed Mount Everest on my lunch break yesterday.
No, really—I did it from the safety and comfort of the Outside office here in Boulder. I tiptoed across sketchy ladder bridges in the Khumbu Icefall while Dave from accounting microwaved a frozen pizza in the lunchroom. After that, I inched my way up the icy Lhotse Face to the South Col, where I paused for a minute or so and then made my summit push, reaching Everest’s windswept top just as Ted from marketing Xeroxed documents. The most challenging part of my Everest journey was explaining to HR why I had just staggered around the office in a VR headset with an ice axe. I’m now eagerly awaiting Nepali officials to mail me my summit certificate. And no, I never had to poop in a plastic bag.
My Everest summit came while watching the new immersive virtual reality documentary The QUEST: Everest VR. The 26-minute video will be available to stream on May 21.
The film takes viewers on a condensed 52-day journey from the bustling streets of downtown Kathmandu, up through the Khumbu Valley villages of Lukla and Namche Bazar, and then on to Everest Base Camp. The documentary then captures one acclimatization round on Mount Everest before taking viewers on a push for the summit. All of the scenes provide 360-degree viewing in VR, and they capture the sights and sounds of the villages, trails, and high-altitude landscapes that climbers encounter along the ascent of the world’s highest peak.
Along the way, narration provides simple but effective storytelling about what you see on screen. Most of it focuses on the landmarks of Nepals’ South Col route and the hazards that climbers experience along the way. You can check out the trailer below.
The project is the brainchild of a filmmaker and actor named Alex Harz who climbed Everest in 2018 and used footage from five different expeditions to create the film. The QUEST: Everest VR is his adventure filmmaking debut. A mountaineer and avid outdoorsman, Harz told me he got the idea to film an Everest expedition in virtual reality after playing first-person-shooter video games like Halo and Doom.
“These types of games put you directly in the action, versus watching it unfold in front of you,” he told me. “Knowing that most people will never have the opportunity or desire to climb Mount Everest in person, I wanted to give a worldwide audience a real-life virtual reality experience that puts them in the boots of a 52-day expedition.”
I’m hardly a veteran VR user, and to be honest, I’ve often chalked the technology to up as the latest passing fad—a doohickey that tech bros say will be the next big thing, like Google Glass or those rolling hoverboards. But even a Luddite like me must admit that looking at the Himalayas through a VR headset is pretty sweet.
I was blown away by The QUEST: Everest VR, and I thoroughly recommend it to anyone who geeks out on Himalayan mountaineering. Hours after watching it, the dizzying images of Everest and Lhotse were still fresh in my mind, and the clank of yak bells and crunch of crampons on ice continued to ring in my ears. No, I never actually believed that I was ascending the peak during my The QUEST: Everest viewing. But the immersive imagery and magic of VR placed parts of my brain on the mountain.
I am a total Everest nerd, and over the years I have voraciously consumed the documentary films, drone videos, and digital 3-D models that claim to bring the peak to life. I can tell you with great confidence that The QUEST: Everest VR, when watched on a VR headset, surpassed anything I’ve seen on a traditional television.
The 360-degree video provides better spatial awareness of Everest and its surroundings than any 3-D model I’ve come across. The 3-D video quality also brings topographic elements to life in a way that even the highest-definition flat-screen television screen cannot. The magical tech inside a VR headset gives you depth perception, and this perspective made all of the famous landmarks of the South Col route—places I’ve read about for decades—appear in three dimension. Crevasses in the Khumbu Icefall appeared terrifyingly deep, and the frozen Lhotse Face seemed sheer and endless. The piles of trash and worn-down tents blowing around on the South Col became real.
So did the danger. While watching The QUEST: Everest VR, the ever-present hazards on Everest became very apparent. When I stood in the Western Cwm, the sheer walls of Everest’s west ridge and Nuptse towered above, and the seracs clinging to the rocks looked like bombs waiting to drop right on my head. While standing on the Hilary Step, I looked down on either side. The exposure of Everest’s summit ridge was staggering, and I felt my body tense up. Even though I knew I was actually standing next to a beanbag chair and ping pong table in the office common space, my eyes told a different story: one wrong step and you will fall thousands of feet straight down.
Harz called the film an “educational thrill-ride.” He’s right. I was absolutely thrilled.
While I am an Everest nerd, I’m also a complete VR newbie, and have only messed around with the headsets a few times before. Thus, I cannot tell you whether the video quality of the The QUEST: Everest VR is better or worse than what you might see in similar documentaries shot with the new technology. I watched mine on a Meta Quest 2 that I borrowed from my coworker Gregg, and I also have no clue whether or not an Oculus Rift or an Apple Vision Pro makes the tea houses of Gorakshep or the tent villages in Base Camp feel any more or less lifelike.
Here’s what I do know: if you are a passionate nerd for Mount Everest, then you should absolutely check out The QUEST: Everest VR. Do it at home, or at work. Just let your coworkers know what you’re up to. And be careful with your ice axe.