Everest - The Hardest Way

"A small team of British Mountaineers set off overland heading for the 21,000ft Mount Barnaj in the Kishtwar region of the Indian Himalaya. Featuring the great Paul Nunn, along with Geoff Tier and Bob Toogood, this quintessential 1970's film is a rare glimpse into a world that has changed so dramatically on a political level, yet remains very much in the hearts of today's Asian and Himalayan travellers. Part adventure film, part travel documentary and unashamedly a commercial for the long lost British motor industry, the star of the film is clearly the British Leyland Sherpa van. The climb, like many Himalayan peaks, proves hard, and the team fight cold, altitude, snow blindness, constant snow storms and flattened camps on their summit attempts."

In this documentary first broadcast in 1993, Chris Bonington looks back at the first ever expeditions to conquer Mount Everest and the effect that the achievement of climbing the mountain had on climbing as a whole worldwide.

In 1986 Steve Berry led an expedition to climb the highest unclimbed peak in the world. It also happens to be the highest peak in Bhutan. Two years of laborious preparations had led up to the attempt to get the climbers on the mountain in the limited weather window between the end of the monsoons and the onset of winter. Their team almost reached the summit but they were driven off by horrendous storms. Due to the climbing restrictions in Bhutan, the mountain remains today as the highest unclimbed peak.