In 1996, 57 climbers with permits reached the top of Mount Everest. Last year, 379 did, by the Himalayan Database's count. In 2019 a photo of the line to the summit went viral. Two new films, out this fall, try to look past that line. The Wall Street Journal's Esther Zuckerman asked their makers why the mountain still has a hold on us.
Everest: The Other Side is in theaters now. Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin co-directed it. The film follows ski mountaineer Jim Morrison after his partner, Hilaree Nelson, died on a training run on another mountain in Nepal. He went on to become the first person to ski down Everest's direct north face. Vasarhelyi told the Journal the mountain is "like a crucible of every human emotion and psychology put together."
Danger sold the mountain
Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air is about the 1996 blizzard that killed eight climbers. It got a special anniversary edition this year. Krakauer says his book, first out in 1997, helped turn Everest into a destination. He says the danger was part of the pull. "It's like this true-crime fascination," he told the Journal. The 1998 IMAX documentary grossed nearly $128 million worldwide. The 2015 drama Everest went back to the same 1996 storm. Will Cockrell, who wrote Everest, Inc., says the drama and sensation are what pushed the mountain into pop culture.
Tenzing is the quieter film. It's on Apple TV, from Apple (AAPL), and retells Edmund Hillary's 1953 climb through the eyes of Tenzing Norgay, the guide who reached the top beside him. Director Jennifer Peedom made Sherpa in 2015, about an avalanche that killed 16 people from the Sherpa community. Her new film ends with a title card. After 1953, Norgay never felt the need to climb Everest again. Peedom hopes her viewers won't feel the need either.
Our read
This is a Behavioral story. A book about eight deaths made a mountain famous. Fame brought a line. By last year, 379 people stood where 57 once did, and the photo of the queue became the story. Crowds work the same way in markets. The thing everybody is photographing is the thing everybody already owns. We watched a version of that line in the chip and AI stocks on Friday, Oct. 30. Nobody in it was wrong to climb. They just weren't alone.
Here's the check for this week. Open your 401(k) or brokerage app and find your single biggest holding or fund. Work out what share of the whole it is. If it's the one everyone at the party is talking about, you're in the summit photo. You don't have to come down. You do have to know you're standing in the line, and how much of your money is standing there with you. Norgay climbed it once and was done. A plan should be able to say the same about a crowded trade. Climbed it, sized it, no need to go back for more. We'd rather check your pack with you at base camp than on the ridge when the wind picks up.