Qomolangma: The reel challenge

Stills from the documentary Captain Qomolangma show how Sula Wangping, 39, from Aba Tibetan and Qiang autonomous prefecture in Sichuan province, guided a team of eight climbers and six cameramen to the summit of Qomolangma in 2019. CHINA DAILY

Intrepid Tibetan mountaineer from Sichuan province led a team of 14 to film the arduous trek up and down the world's tallest peak in 2019. The drone-aided documentary is now earning rave reviews, report Wang Qian and Wang Kaihao.

Its incredible height of 8,848 meters is just one of the many perils that plague the journey to Qomolangma. The weather at high altitude is dynamic and vicious. The very low atmospheric pressure can trigger hypoxemia and cause hallucination. Plenty of crevasses make the Khumbu icefall a death trap. Navigating seracs (fragile glacial ice columns) is like a suicidal mission. The list of challenges is endless.

And yet, according to the US-based Himalayan Database, in its 2021 update, more than 6,000 mountaineers have successfully scaled Qomolangma－known as Mount Everest in the West－since New Zealander Edmund Hillary and his Nepalese guide Tenzing Norgay first reached the summit in 1953.

The number of climbers from China who made it to the top is 500.In 2019, Sula Wangping not only became one of them, he also guided a team of eight climbers and six cameramen to the peak, bringing their adventure to the big screen in a breathtaking documentary.

Captain Qomolangma premiered in cinemas on Saturday and earned critical acclaim. "I hope our film allows people to feel the glory of Qomolangma. It is an experience of a lifetime," the 39-year-old climber tells China Daily in an exclusive interview.

"As a documentary on mountaineering, it has the power to educate and influence, bringing Qomolangma and the sport of climbing close to people who are curious about the world's tallest peak," says Sula Wangping, who hails from Aba Tibetan and Qiang autonomous prefecture in Southwest China's Sichuan province.

Captain Qomolangma is a film of many firsts. It recorded the first team in the world that reached the summit in that year, 2019. It is said to be the first domestic documentary made using drones at such a high altitude.

Scaling Qomolangma is as much a test of mental strength as it is of physical endurance, which makes documenting the climb "the most difficult and dangerous thing" that Sula Wangping has ever done. A brainchild of the intrepid Tibetan climber, the project cost him nearly 10 years of his life and over 10 million yuan ($1.49 million). To finance the film, he had to mortgage his house. "Looking back, I realize how crazy the whole thing was, but I don't regret it," he says.

A member of the daredevil expedition, 48-year-old Cui Zhouping from Nanjing, East China's Jiangsu province, says it was the sheer willpower of a seasoned climber that saw the film through. "For Sula Wangping, the documentary was like another mountain he needed to climb; a challenge much tougher than Qomolangma itself," Cui adds.

Qin Xiaoyu, the film's producer, says Sula Wangping is the kind of person who can motivate others in the face of adversities. "The documentary is a tribute to one's confidence to overcome hardships. It will resonate with people fighting against the pandemic for more than two years," he said after a prescreening of the documentary in Beijing last month.

Most acclaimed mountaineering documentaries usually end with the climax of successful summiting. "This one traces the journey home too. For ordinary people, climbing Qomolangma may be an impossible dream, but returning home after meeting everyday challenges may strike a chord. And that's what makes the documentary special," Qin adds.