Podcast: Guy Cotter on Making Tenzing, and the Lessons of a Hard Year in the Mountains
If you follow mountaineering, you know Guy Cotter. He summited Everest as a guide with Rob Hall and Gary Ball in 1992, has run Adventure Consultants for thirty years, and has quietly helped bring mountains to the big screen since Vertical Limit. On October 16, Tenzing premieres on Apple TV. Jennifer Peedom’s film is about Tenzing Norgay, with Genden Phuntsok as Tenzing and Tom Hiddleston as Edmund Hillary; Guy was the alpine production supervisor. He scouted locations in Nepal and New Zealand, then kept up to 150 actors, stunt doubles, and crew safe on Aoraki Mt Cook and the Tasman Glacier in mid-winter, with temperatures as low as -23C/-9.4F.
In this conversation, Guy explains why he called himself terrified for the entire shoot, and walks through his “status light” approach to risk. He describes bolting a camera crane to a cliff while a helicopter held it to recreate the Hillary Step, and pulling 60 people off the Grand Plateau just before a three-day storm closed in. We also talk about what history got wrong about 1953, and why Tenzing’s story matters for every Sherpa and mountain worker today.
Then we turn to the proposed 7,000-meter rule for Everest. We close with this year’s accidents on Broad Peak, Himlung, and Manaslu, and what all of us should learn from them about snow, patience, and turning around.
I’ve known Guy for more than two decades, and he’s one of the few people I can ask anything. He’s candid, thoughtful, and, as always, funny. I hope you enjoy our chat, and enjoy the movie.
Climb On!
Alan
Memories are Everything
The Podcast on alanarnette.com
You can listen to my podcasts on Spotify, Apple, Breaker, Pocket Casts, Anchor, and more. Just search for “alan arnette” on your favorite podcast platform.
Receive Publication Notification of Alan Arnette’s Memoir
A surge of debilitating fatigue overtook me. My shoulders drooped. I stared at my yellow boots, crushed by disappointment. I had trained hard for K2 and tried to anticipate every scenario, but now I was failing, and there was nothing I could do.
Closing my eyes, I was powerless, hopeless, and ready to surrender to the mountain. Everything I wanted—the summit, a safe return, my vow to my mother—was slipping away.
My ice axe fell onto the snow.
Staring at the small yellowish spot illuminated by my headlamp on the snow, it was over, and, oddly, I didn’t care.
It was 12:30 a.m. on July 27, 2014—my fifty-eighth birthday.
If you would like to be notified when my memoir, “Hard or Impossible? Summiting K2 for Ida,” is available, I’m still looking for an agent or a direct publisher. Complete the form at the bottom of this introduction page.