Taller Than Everest. Documentary NOVA [12+]

[Music] mount everest beautiful dangerous and long believed to be the tallest mountain in the world but is it is rival k2 higher new technologies of measuring and mapping can finally provide a definitive answer is any peak taller than everest [Applause] [Music] funding for nova is provided by johnson and johnson the signature recognized around the world for commitment to quality care products for the entire family and lockheed a bold new force in systems engineering management and technology services for defense space and industry major funding for nova is provided by the corporation for public broadcasting and by the financial support of viewers like you [Music] mount everest the tallest mountain in the world for generations everest has stood as an irresistible challenge for explorers and adventurers the ultimate prize and the ultimate risk [Music] in the struggle to reach the summit many have died hundreds have turned back and only a hearty few have made it to the top [Music] in 1953 when sir edmund hillary became the first along with sherpa tenzing norgay they returned to a hero's welcome and worldwide fame but in 1987 hillary and the geographic community were shocked by reports that mount everest might not be the world's tallest peak 800 miles to the west in the karakoram range of pakistan stands another giant k2 a new measurement using satellites had indicated that k2 might be higher than previously thought even taller than everest [Music] could it be true that the mountain that hillary and tensing had climbed was not the world's highest the idea would have been unthinkable to the first men who tried to conquer everest in the 1920s the scale of the himalayas was completely outside the experience of these british climbers schooled in the swiss alps and at that time it was unclear whether a man could survive at such great height but in tweed jackets hobnailed boots and cotton windsuits they pushed the limits of human endurance perhaps the most inspirational figure in the quest to climb everest was george mallory who pioneered the route on the mountain's north face over the course of three expeditions mallory became obsessed with the challenge he was last seen climbing tantalizingly close to the summit before he disappeared the mountain's most famous victim [Music] in 1929 five years after mallory's death the duke of spaletto led an italian expedition to explore the region of k2 it was even more isolated than everest requiring a nine week journey up the gorge of the indus river to the baltoro glacier around which stand five of the tallest mountains in the world dominating the head of the glacier is k2 rising more than two miles above the valley floor its steep rocky terrain makes it a more challenging climb than everest but its ranking as the second highest mountain in the world kept k2 in relative anonymity overshadowed by the glamour and prestige of everest and so it was everest not k2 which captured the imagination of the world and inspired mallory's famous explanation of the quest to climb the great mountain because it's there but the world and mallory would not have known of everest had it not been for one of the greatest cartographic achievements in history and for the scientists surveyors and explorers who in their quest to define our planet mapped and measured the world's highest peaks the himalayas these extraordinary mountains were created 40 million years ago when the indian subcontinent crashed into the southern flank of asia thrust upwards more than twenty five thousand feet they form a massive wall fifteen hundred miles long in the united states they would stretch from new york to houston yet until the 19th century the himalayas were known only in the ancient kingdoms in which they lay to europeans these remote lands had always seemed the stuff of legends the mysterious east it was not until the advent of british rule in the 1700s that scientific exploration pressed inland from the coast the demands of administering an expanding empire created the need for better maps and surveys thus a young navy lieutenant james reynold initiated one of the great geographical efforts of history the survey of india [Music] dense tropical forests malarial swamps and attacks from leopards and marauding bandits confronted the surveyors despite these hardships reynolds managed to publish his bengal atlas in 1776 still the vast interior and the mountains to the north remained a complete mystery in 1801 william lamdon took charge of the survey which had expanded along with britain's indian empire lambda proposed to measure the entire length of the indian subcontinent using a system of huge triangles known as the great arc of india this was to be the most ambitious survey ever undertaken and would for the first time expand scientific exploration to the himalayas in often hazardous conditions lambda the survey northward into the heart of the subcontinent a thousand miles and seventeen years later he died in his tent exhausted by his efforts [Music] a young and ambitious captain succeeded lamdan as superintendent of the great trigonometrical survey his name was george everest everest undertook the task with an almost fanatic devotion personally directing the expeditions in their march through india though the surveyors traveled with an entourage of bearers and servants difficult terrain poisonous snakes and the hazards of the tropical forests conspired against them the main problem with the surveyors of those times were the hardships of the area hardships not only of communications but disease mainly malaria the mosquito was the deadliest enemy many expeditions have to be aborted because most of those men fell ill in various jungles in the terrain we had wild animals we still have them today elephants snakes and others everest extended the great ark through central india to dera dun in the foothills of the himalayas there he established the survey's headquarters and measured what is known as a baseline the most important measurement in a triangulation survey in 1989 geologist roger billum traveled to the site of the baseline to study the tools and methods used by everest and his team the east end of the base survey of india measure the price twice a year twice or twice a year this is the station and that is the uh west end of the base the measurement of a baseline is the fundamental building block of an entire triangulation survey it has to be measured as accurately as possible this baseline is about seven and a half miles long and it was measured to an accuracy of about half an inch any error in the measurement of this baseline would have put the whole survey in error at the beginning and end of a triangulation survey baselines are measured since all the triangles in the series are calculated against these measurements they must be made with the greatest care [Music] the measurement of a baseline was a very tedious process it involved measuring a long distance with a rather short object in this case a bar about 10 foot long and perhaps six of them would be used at any one time the first bar was placed directly over a point inside this little tunnel here and the next bar placed at the end of that and sequentially over this enormous distance these bars would be placed end to end in fact several thousand times for a baseline seven miles long the length of the bars was known to within a thousandth of an inch and to ensure the accuracy of the baseline they were carefully shielded from sun wind and dust but protecting the bars wasn't the only challenge facing the surveyors surveying in india was often hazardous but this particular baseline had its own special dangers and if i may quote from everest he says about this precise site as far as i can at present judge the valley of the dune is likely to afford the best ground for the measurement of the base but as the grass is very high there and the tigers numerous it is necessary that i and my assistants as well as all the followers whom i take with me to explore should be mounted on elephants and in fact in the hills not far from here tigers still roam to this day with the baseline complete masonry towers were erected at each end to provide longer lines of sight in creating the immense series of triangles many of the towers everest ordered built are still standing this is a stone pillar and on it is inscribed a dot with a circle directly above me on the top of this tower about 50 foot high would we place the theodolite the theodolite was precisely positioned over this with a plum bob that touched the central point of this circle um right at the top the field light would be pointing at another town perhaps 40 miles away and again about 50 feet high the theater light used for measuring angles was an elegant instrument part telescope part protractor this is the 36-inch theodolite that was used by lambton and everest to measure the great arc of india it was known as the great theodolite because of the immense size of this circle enabling thousands of tiny gradations on the outside rim that could be read by these microscopes it weighed approximately eleven hundred pounds and was moved by as many as eight men uh on a palanquin between towers the towers were 30 to 50 feet high and when the the uh theodolite was hoisted into position the it was carefully positioned and then pointed at a distant tower perhaps 30 miles away using the theodolite the angles between towers were measured when you know two angles of a triangle and the length of its base you can calculate the length of the other two sides one of these sides can then serve as the baseline for the next triangle this process repeated many times is known as a triangulation series it's astonishing to realize that this instrument was carried day after day year after year across india thousands of miles in unbearable weather conditions sometimes very hot sometimes very windy dusty and at every occasion the instrument was placed in position with the same fastidious care george everest was not only a great surveyor but he was a big scientist this must be realized and he was very much dedicated to his work everest was absolutely obsessed with accuracy on one occasion he was ill and paralyzed from the waist down unable to climb one of these 30-foot towers to take the measurements the the odd light was in position and then he ordered his man to hoist him into position in front of his machine so he could take the measurements he didn't trust anybody else to do it once everest had established his horizontal position latitude and longitude here in the himalaya it was necessary to precisely determine his height and height is determining using a very different type of process called spirit leveling spirit leveling starts at the coastline and proceeds day by day towards the same point but using a much smaller instrument the same method is still used an engraved rod is placed at sea level or a known elevation a second rod is then placed no more than 50 feet away [Music] by observing each rod through the spirit level the difference in elevation between the two rods can be determined the first rod and the spirit level are then moved forward this leapfrogging process is repeated thousands of times establishing the elevation of hundreds of points along the survey route accuracy of leveling is a summation of the accuracy of each individual transfer so there is accumulation of errors but it's usually random and that means that the accuracy would be about one foot over a distance across the whole of india so it was possible for him to get the height of the foothills of the himalaya to about six inches to a foot relative to the coast in calcutta [Music] though very accurate spirit leveling becomes impractical in steep mountainous terrain another technique must then be used vertical triangulation which calculates elevation by measuring the vertical angle to a distant point using the same instruments as horizontal triangulation with the snow-capped summits of the himalayas within view and the great ark completed everest's health finally faltered he retired to england never having seen an apparently minor peak on the horizon it was left to his successor andrew wall to extend the survey across northern india war intrigued by the height of the summits to the north instructed his survey teams to take careful observations but many of these mountains lay inside nepal where xenophobic authorities refused entry to the surveyors so the observation towers had to be placed south of the indian nepal border as a result the great peaks were more than a hundred miles away and often obscured by clouds or haze it wasn't until november of 1849 that captain james nicholson trained his theodolite on a distant summit this is the 24-inch theodolite that was used by nicholson to observe mount everest from his point of view on the planes mount everest only appeared as a tiny bump on the horizon it didn't look any different from smaller peaks that were in the foreground in fact it looked a lot smaller and certainly wasn't very conspicuous at the time it was just called peak 15. from positions previously established by the survey of india observers took numerous measurements of the himalayan range including peak 15. first the distance to the mountain was determined by horizontal triangulation then the vertical angles to the mountain were recorded so the elevation could be calculated [Music] captain nicholson observed peak 15 from six locations on the planes the observations were taken to a computing room in the survey offices and corrections made to the data to correct for the refraction effects in the atmosphere and for the curvature of the earth when the six observations for the summit were averaged it was determined that the height of peak fifteen was twenty nine thousand and two feet and it was clearly the highest mountain in the himalayan range and obviously the highest mountain on earth and the word has it that the young surveyor who came out with the altitude 2902 was impelled to dash into the office of the surveyor general of india and say sir i've discovered the highest mountain on earth [Music] after 50 years of painstaking work through 600 miles of challenging terrain driven by the ageless compulsion to reach out and chart the unknown the surveyors of india had made their most famous discovery [Music] after the highest peak of the world was discovered the question came as to how it should be named in all surveying it's a principle that the names of places peaks are given after the local version as to how that is called locally the nepalese government at that time did not give permission to enter nepal either for the service or to verify the highest mountain and what it was called so it was decided that it should be named after everest who has had a great hand in the great trigonometrical series both as a scientist and as well as an observer for years controversy surrounded the selected name on more than one occasion adventurers slipped into nepal and claimed to have learned the name of the mountain in its local dialect only to be refuted when it was proved that they were looking at the wrong peak but everest was only one peak among many and the survey pressed on from the everest region the himalayas sweep northwest to the rugged frontier between pakistan india and tibet where they join another great range the karakoram to the outside world this impenetrable area was virtually unknown once again the survey of india triangulated the major peaks from a distance of more than 100 miles and in 1856 a mountain with the unassuming designation of k2 was measured at hundred and 28 feet a close second to the accepted figure for everest [Music] but there was still much that remained unexplored many mountain passes and rivers were uncharted and the vast expanse of the tibetan plateau beyond the himalayas was the largest blank space on the world map since tibet and nepal remain completely closed to foreigners the survey of india recruited a group of indians to conduct clandestine surveys collectively they were known as the pundits [Music] trained in basic surveying techniques they traveled undercover throughout the forbidden lands if caught they risked prison or even execution none singh the most famous of these pundit explorers traversed tibet disguised as a buddhist pilgrim concealed in his robe he carried a sexton for astronomical readings a conch shell filled with mercury for creating a horizon line and a compass to maintain his direction of travel he calculated the distance of his travels by counting his uniform paces on a tibetan rosary his secret observations were recorded on a slip of paper concealed in the prayer wheel he carried after a year's journey through the desolate highlands nun singh finally arrived in lhasa tibet's ancient capital in january of 1866. astronomical sightings from the forbidden city established for the first time losses correct placement on the map still much of the himalayan region everest included remain closed to the outside world by the rulers of nepal and tibet keeping inaccessible the greatest collection of unclimbed peaks on earth it wasn't until 1920 that tibet's dalai lama relented and granted the british permission to explore everest from the north a grueling four-week journey to the mountain's base over the next 20 years scores of climbers struggled to be the first to scale the world's highest peak but the high altitude and brutal weather defeated all who tried claiming more than ten lives when tibet once again sealed its borders all climbing ceased until the kingdom of nepal permitted access to everest from the south in 1953 the british organized a large and well-equipped expedition their route took them through the notorious kumbu icefall an enormous wall of continually shifting blocks of ice and a formidable barrier to the upper slopes of the mountain ten tons of food and equipment were moved one load at a time over and around the countless crevasses fighting the extremes of altitude and weather the climbers spent a full month pushing a route up the lotsy face until finally a camp was established and stocked at 26 000 feet within striking distance of the top but never had 3 000 feet seem so long a distance the first bid for the summit fell short and the climbers returned to camp exhausted by their futile attempt [Music] a second summit team was forced to wait through two days of ferocious winds finally edmund hillary and tenzing norgay set out for the top mount everest has been conquered by members of the british expedition the news reached london in a message to the times from colonel h c j hunt the expedition's leader it said that mr e p hillary a new zealander and had reached the summit last friday may 29th [Music] the ascent of everest was hailed throughout the world one writer called it the last innocent adventure men had finally reached the highest point on earth or so they thought just as everest had fascinated the british its rival k2 has held the attention of italian explorers and one man in particular professor ardito desio now 93 had been a geologist with the duke of spaletto's expedition to the karakoram i have seen in 1929 the first time the k2 and i was very phoned for the very very surprised to see a big mouth is so big isolated too much more than the everest so from that time i planted every year to arrange one expedition to k2 for climbing it decio's plans to climb the mountain were delayed by world war ii but in 1954 a year after the ascent of everest he set off towards k2 with a large expedition the approach to k2 is vastly different than the one to everest up the valley of the indus river and through the steep mountains of baltistan k2's jagged contours make it more difficult to climb than everest but with patience and massive logistical support the italian alpinists cautiously advanced a series of camps up the mountain decio was too old to climb at extreme altitude but he directed every step of the assault from base camp laboring in the thin air climbers moved supplies higher and higher one man died when prolonged storms lashed the highest camps [Music] returning to the mountain they began the final assault and in improving weather the climbers established a high camp less than 1200 feet from the summit in base camp 11 000 feet below decio anxiously waited for news my best moment was when they was announced by walkie-talkie that the companion legendary arrived from the top and were safe [Music] only a year after hillary and tenzing's ascent of mount everest the italians had climbed what was thought to be the world's second tallest mountain [Music] [Music] with the opening of the himalayas in the 1950s surveyors at last had direct access to everest and re-measured the mountain at twenty nine thousand twenty eight feet remarkably only twenty six feet higher than the original calculations thirty years later as new technology promised ever-increasing accuracy and detail a new generation of map makers planned even more comprehensive surveys bradford washburn of boston's museum of science had produced the first topographical map of north america's highest peak mount mckinley but his greatest ambition was to create an equally detailed and up-to-date map of mount everest my mapping of everest rooted back almost exactly 50 years ago when a a hero of mine captain albert w stevens the greatest aerial photographer in my opinion of all time had failed to get permission to make a flight over mount everest and he said to me you gotta do it well now my whole life has been spent mapping exciting wilderness areas like mount mckinley or the grand canyon or mount kennedy so what could be a more logical conclusion of this sort of of of a life than mapping the highest mountain in the world in 1983 washburn began to assemble an international team of map makers in zurich switzerland he found experts in aerial mapping of mountainous terrain werner altair of swiss air photo and survey was a technical director of the project the challenge by this work was that it was everest and that it was really the first time that everest will be mapped with vertical aerophotography in planning the photo flights features visible from the air would be used to guide the plane in a precise pattern photographs of the entire himalayan region had been taken from space by the orbiting shuttle columbia in 1983 these were compared with existing maps to plot the exact positions from which the high resolution aerial photos would be taken washburn and his team traveled to nepal in 1984 where they mounted an aerial mapping camera on the underside of a lear jet on december 20th after four years of planning the jet took off from kathmandu to make good mapping shots in the himalaya good mapping photography you've got to go to great altitude and we worked at 39 000 feet which is silly altitude but it happens to be number one it's 10 000 feet exactly above everest but we were also doing everything metric it was 12 000 meters at that altitude you've got to fly into the so called the sub-tropical jet stream and this during the winter is flying most of the time westward at about 125 miles an hour and about 60 below zero and you might say well why do you have a tremendous wind why don't you go when there isn't a wind the only time in the year that everest is cloudless almost all the time is in the middle of the winter when there is this constant subtropical jet and we had to make seven flight lines each parallel to the next one each picture covering the next one with 80 percent overlap and each line overlapping the other line by 30 percent to cover the whole area with 160 pictures the last flight line was finished and the last picture of everest was done and barry bishop said let's just circle the summit once more because few if any people ever have looked down on the summit of the highest peak on earth at twilight not only was everest directly below the lit with the twilight but off 80 miles to the east was chang junga the third highest peak on earth makalo with lotsy and everest were all directly below [Music] [Music] the team returned to zurich with the aerial photographs and landmarks known as ground control points were located on the negatives the elevation and location of these places was known from previous ground-based surveys like the survey of india [Music] the negatives are then viewed stereoscopically in an elaborate machine known as a contour plotter this creates a three-dimensional image of the landscape viewed not from the side but from directly above the operator guides a tiny marker following the outline of the mountain's topography at a preset elevation the path of this point is then recorded on a plotting sheet forming contour lines it's painstaking it's meticulous it's tedious and it's almost endless and there are very few people who can do it and do it year after year and do it with the same expertise and enthusiasm that the team we had had [Music] the resulting contour lines provide an accurate record of the third dimension on a two-dimensional map experienced map readers can then envision the mountain shape [Applause] in bairn at the swiss office of topography work continued on the everest map studying the aerial photos a specialist scribes lines depicting physical features such as rock ice and snow [Music] to me the more beautiful a map is the more accurately it conveys the information on it the swiss less than 100 years ago began to use relief shading in mountain maps to make the map even though it was flattened in two dimensions to make it look like what it was what the original terrain appeared to be like an artist using an airbrush adds shading to give the terrain a three-dimensional look emphasizing the peaks and valleys the shading implies a light source falling from the top of the map which is north in reality the sun would never shine on everest from this direction but intuitively we expect a light source from above but with the map nearing completion something totally unexpected occurred my recollection it was in late january i picked up the paper and here was a headline saying that k2 which we'd all thought was the second highest mountain on earth was going to be the first number one well this was quite a shock a rule to us because we've been working on this project for nine years first politics then field work then years of the most intricate laboratory work in switzerland in 1986 an american expedition to the chinese side of k2 made new measurements they had heard rumors that the original survey of india calculations which placed k2 778 feet shorter than everest might be in error we had believed that the altitude of k2 was open to question and during the american k2 expedition in 1986 we determined that in addition to trying to climb the peak that we would take modern surveying equipment along to try to define precisely the altitude of the peak team member george wallerstein took elevation readings from the base camp in addition to traditional techniques he used radio signals from an early version of the network of orbiting satellites known as the global positioning system or gps in gps geodesy one receives signals from a series of satellites in the heavens there are approximately 10 up there at the moment there will eventually be 18 by knowing the positions of the satellites and at the times that they broadcast messages we can determine where we are anywhere on the earth's surface a gps operates something like triangulation or trilateration measuring distance basically what we need is several satellites in the sky whose positions we know several receivers on the ground whose positions we don't know by measuring the time of arrival of signals from several satellites simultaneously we can determine the relative distance and relative height of the instruments on the ground we were quite surprised to find out that based on the information we got from the box that this whole range this whole area of the karakoram range might be about 247 meters or about 800 feet higher than previously suspected that would mean that not only k2 but some of the other peaks in the surrounding area might be much higher and indeed if k2 or 247 meters higher than the accepted elevation it would rival or possibly be higher than mount everest editors was very excited because the united is different to climb the highest peak in the world than the second peak in the world decio wished to settle the controversy quickly and immediately set about organizing a new expedition the team traveled through the passes of nepal up to the tibetan plateau whereas everest had been measured with the old methods of spirit leveling and triangulation the new k2 figures had been derived from satellite technology decio felt that an accurate comparison required that both mountains be measured with the same method the everest base camp was set up at 16 000 feet near the ancient wrong book monastery two gps receivers were then placed at different locations using a number of satellites simultaneously it took several days to fix the receiver's precise position and elevation the team then used lightweight modern theodolites to triangulate the peak from the receiver locations they measuring everest with very good weather it was the moon soon but for four days fine weather i was obliged to go to pakistan for arranging better the question because it was necessary to go by helicopters if no they are spending too much time since the team was already acclimatized to the thin air of the high altitudes they could travel quickly to the other mountain the pakistani army provided helicopters to fly up the baltoro glacier to concordia the first point from which the summit of k2 can be seen [Music] once again the team set up its gps receivers and took readings from the passing satellites as with everest a vertical triangulation network was created to measure the summit of k2 [Music] fortunately the weather cooperated and the surveyors needed only three days to make all the observations needed to compare with the everest data by using the same gps receivers and the same satellites for both peaks they ensured that their measurements would be more complete than wallerstein's four weeks after setting out decio's team returned to milan with the answer everyone had been waiting for essentially although decio's measurements weren't the most precise measurements of the height of the mountains k2 and everest that have ever been made they at least determined that everest was higher than k2 according to space geodesy not disappointed because when the wellstein measured announced it that the k2 was reported more high than everest it has many doubts many many doubts the most precise way to measure the height of a mountain is still the traditional way of using leveling and theodolites the indians did it from the south the chinese have measured everest from the north and one of the remarkable things is that these traditional measurements agreed so closely the chinese measurements from the gulf of bohai thousands of miles to the east gave the same height within a few feet as the indian measurements a few thousand miles from the south and this is like drive driving a tunnel four thousand miles long and meeting in the middle these measurements are really very good indeed this year's work that summer of basically confirmed what we were all pretty sure would be the fact that everest was indeed substantially higher than k2 but we also know that changing the altitude of everest a little bit on our map would make no difference in how the map looked that the the all it would have done would have been to raise or lower the whole map a certain amount and it wouldn't change the appearance of the map at all so we were delighted that it all worked out the way it did and the following fall of the map was finished and we were thrilled to have it made available to the public [Music] in a gesture of thanks to the nepalese government washburn and werner altair traveled to kathmandu where he presented a special copy of the map to the king of nepal it's the first time a map has been made of both sides of mount sagrama both tibet and nepal at the same time brad washburn had achieved his dream and everest had been mapped with an accuracy that would have impressed the original surveyors of india but there was one more step to take using the same data collected for the map washburn commissioned a large-scale model of the mountain which was unveiled at the royal geographical society in london in celebration of george everest's 200th birthday the purpose of a model like this an exquisite and beautiful model is first and foremost naturally to let everybody on earth have a chance to see everest because very very few of us can ever see mount everest number two is that it gives geologists to superb opportunity to study everest in three dimensions the way you couldn't otherwise do it unless you had a magic carpet recent innovations in three-dimensional mapping have made washburn's magic carpet more than a fantasy engineer howard burdick has completed a 3d map of the world's tallest mountain using the same aerial photographs as washburn the transition that we're making from two-dimensional to three-dimensional maps is very exciting with a two-dimensional map you would see contour lines you see shading shaded relief but you have to imagine what the actual 3d perspective view of that is with a 3d map as we're seeing now you no longer have to imagine what that looks like you can actually see it on the screen [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] for me personally it's like i've already been to mount everest i've viewed it from all possible angles i've gone up the slopes i've gone up the ridges i almost think gosh why do i have to go there the same technology can be used on a much broader scale geologist tom parr is developing a computer map of the entire himalayan region i'm preparing a new flight path through the himalayas using this graphics workstation to simulate the flight in wireframe graphics we can step through the sequence frame by frame just as the flight animation will go except that the actual flight animation will simulate many many more frames in between each of these waypoint using this technology we can we can travel through the entire himalayas region a distance of many hundreds of kilometers in a matter of seconds [Music] but no matter how sophisticated the technology no matter how accurately we can measure these mountains today there will always be a need for surveyors to brave the elements yet again [Applause] [Music] no matter how high we think everest is at any given moment it's always changing because after all the himalaya as a range are having india shoved under them and as india is shoved under up goes everest so everest is going to be a little bit higher every year it's going to keep right on getting higher for a long long time [Music] i've always thought that a quote from aristotle focuses wonderfully on what i think is most exciting about mapping and exploration each one of us adds a little to our understanding of nature and from all the facts assembled arises a certain grandeur it was a wonderfully satisfying experience when you realize that we've worked on this map either politically or actually for just about exactly 10 years to fly in and land at the tangbocce monastery with that map and unroll it in front of us and sit there in this heavenly beautiful spot and look right up at what we've met that was i guess in the way the most satisfying and exciting moment of the whole enterprise [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] funding for nova is provided by lockheed a bold new force in systems engineering management and technology services for defense space and industry and johnson and johnson the signature recognized around the world for commitment to quality health care products for the entire family major funding for nova is provided by the corporation for public broadcasting and by the financial support of viewers like you [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Survivor's Stories

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Keywords: taller than everest, mountain taller than everest, k2 peak, surveying, k2 mountain, mount everest, NOVA, documentary, nova documentary, satellite data, china and nepal, pbs, science, pakistan, karakoram highway pakistan to china, karakoram, climbing, alpinism, everest documentary, everest film

Id: 3M_KmiGxHlg

Length: 57min 4sec (3424 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 06 2022