They tried to climb Everest without acclimatizing. In two weeks. What could go wrong?
Less than two years after his serious road accident, Eric Escoffier brought together the "Turbo" team (Frédéric Ancey, Michel Fauquet, Christine Janin and Stéphane Schaffter) with whom he will attempt to climb Everest without oxygen and without prior acclimatization in the Himalayas, the project being to complete the Paris-Everest-Paris loop in two weeks. It is also a medical experiment: the athletes spend a week at Mont Blanc, at the Vallot observatory between 4000 and 4800m, then a week in a hypobaric chamber in Grenoble. Doctors (Dr. Richalet, Herry and Bittel) perform tests throughout this training, which will learn about how the body acclimatizes to altitude and allow applications in the management of mountain-related illnesses . On September 2, 1989, they arrived at Everest base camp in China. They attempted the ascent via the North Col but could not carry out their project, prevented by bad weather.
Direction
Germain captures clinical obsession with cold precision.
Practical Effects
Real hypobaric chamber footage — no faking the suffocation.
Director
Bernard Germain
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Eric Escoffier nearly died in a 1987 road accident; this Everest attempt was his comeback. The hubris is almost biblical.
The 1980s French extreme sports scene treated human bodies like sports cars — tune them, stress-test them, crash them.
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