Film of the week: The Man Who Skied Down Everest

On 6 May 1970 the Japanese skier Yuichiro Miura skied down part of Everest from just below the South Col, using a parachute to slow himself. The Man Who Skied Down Everest, the film of that expedition, won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, the first sports film to win it.

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Two minutes and twenty seconds

The film follows the Japanese Everest Skiing Expedition from planning to the descent itself. Miura started from the Yellow Band below the South Col, at almost 8,000 metres, and dropped about 2,000 metres in two minutes and twenty seconds. He fell for 400 metres down the Lhotse Face, and stopped about 76 metres from the edge of a bergschrund.

The film does not hide the cost. Six Sherpas died when part of the Khumbu Icefall collapsed during the expedition, and a Japanese team member died of a heart attack.

Released in 1975. Produced by Budge Crawley and directed by Crawley and Bruce Nyznik for Crawley Films of Canada. The Academy Film Archive preserved it in 2010.

Yuichiro Miura

Miura was born in Aomori, in northern Japan, in 1932, and learned to ski from his father, Keizo, himself a skier. He studied veterinary medicine at Hokkaido University, turned professional at 26 and set a speed-skiing record in Italy in 1964. In 1966 he became the first person to ski Mount Fuji.

He has skied on all of the 7 summits. On Everest he kept coming back. He reached the summit at 70 in 2003, at 75 in 2008 and at 80 in 2013, each time becoming the oldest person to have stood on top. The last time came despite a broken pelvis a few years before and several heart operations.

The slope he fell down

Our Camp 2 to Camp 3 chapter climbs the Lhotse Face that Miura came down, and the Everest history chapter has the expeditions around his.