Hillary Step

Yeah.

Yeah, but, but, but when we're filming the Hillary Step-

Yeah

... that's the really small space we have to move-

I've got that on them.

Um-

But the Hillary Step was amazing, wasn't it? Like-

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I keep reading in the reviews that just how people are just amazed that you feel like you are literally immersed in the climb.

And one of the key scenes, I'm assuming, again, I haven't seen it, but is on the Hillary Step when they're trying to climb that.

And you had to recreate that in the Remarkables, which is a beautiful mountain range on the South Island of New Zealand.

So tell us about how you anchored cranes there.

on some slope.

Tell us how that worked out and how to keep it safe.

The Hillary Step was a location that we kept having to look for.

And Jen had very high expectations of what that might look like.

were not negotiable?

One of them was the Hillary Step.

Luke said, well, from screenwriting terms, it would be better for Tenzing to climb the Hillary Step.

I'm like, yeah, Luke, it's the Hillary Step.

Because we can't.

He can't.

He scales the South Summit, Everest's false peak, before edging along the razor blade that is the cornice traverse.

Finally, he clambers up the Hillary Step, a 40-foot rock face that requires technical climbing.

And then at last, it's there.

The sole purpose of all the training, all the acclimatizing, all the exertion.

Like, am I broken? Like, I think I'm okay.

Incredibly, Brian is in one piece.

It's not the most elegant way to descend the Hillary Step, but it's one difficult obstacle complete.

He takes a drink of water and moves on to the next one, the cornice traverse.

The, the kind of conditions when you very quickly, very easily die.

You have to come back down over a steep step known as the Hillary Step, and I almost collapsed at the bottom of that, right on this sort of edge with 12,000 feet of air dropping away beneath you.

Put one foot in front of the other.

Do it again.

Unfortunately, it never occurred to either of them to ask the question, what if Rob never came back? Around noon, Beck saw three climbers from his group descending toward him.

Apparently, there had been a slowdown at Hillary Step, a natural obstacle on the ridge leading directly to the summit.

Realizing there was no way they could make the summit on time with the traffic, they decided to return to camp.

And now seeing Beck all on his own, offered for him to join them.

And he kind of had to like shimmy in and like shimmy up it the entire way.

And so Tenzing followed shortly after, and they both got to the top of what now is called the Hillary Step.

And as they looked up, they saw the peak of Mount Everest.

It was like 50 feet away.

And maybe they just don't want to do Hope Pass again.

But I saw a few people drop out there, which I was kind of sad about.

But I think that this really relates to the Hillary step.

I think it relates to leadership because leadership can really be a lonely place.