The Himalayas from 20,000 ft: TGR's Aerial Film of Everest and Lhotse

In March 2015 Teton Gravity Research released The Himalayas from 20,000 ft., a short film of ultra-HD aerial footage of Mount Everest, Ama Dablam and Lhotse. Shot from a helicopter with a gyro-stabilised camera, it glides past ridges and ice faces that most people only ever see from far below.

How Teton Gravity Research filmed the Himalayas

Teton Gravity Research (TGR) is a film and media company founded in 1996 in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, by brothers Steve and Todd Jones with Dirk Collins, Rick Armstrong and Corey Gavitt. It is best known for ski and snowboard films such as Deeper, Further and Higher, the last of which was partly filmed in Nepal.

For this film the crew took off from Kathmandu, at about 4,600 feet, and climbed in a helicopter to as high as 24,000 feet, breathing supplemental oxygen. The camera was a GSS C520, a gyro-stabilised system mounted on the aircraft that keeps the image steady despite vibration and wind. Sound design and mix were by Jeff Cormack at Play+Record.

Watch The Himalayas from 20,000 ft.

Watch how nearer ridges slide past the more distant peaks. That parallax is what makes the footage feel three-dimensional, and the stabilised camera lets you read the texture of snow, rock and hanging ice as the helicopter moves.

Everest, Lhotse and Ama Dablam

Mount Everest, 8,848.86 metres, the height announced jointly by Nepal and China in 2020, stands on the border between Nepal and Tibet. Nepalis call it Sagarmatha and Tibetans Chomolangma. Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay made the first ascent on 29 May 1953 via the Southeast Ridge.

Lhotse, 8,516 metres, is the fourth-highest mountain on Earth and is joined to Everest by the South Col. Climbers of both peaks share the route up the Lhotse Face, a 1,125-metre wall of blue glacial ice, as far as the Yellow Band above Camp 3; there Everest climbers turn left over the Geneva Spur while Lhotse climbers keep heading up. The Swiss climbers Fritz Luchsinger and Ernst Reiss first reached the summit on 18 May 1956.

Ama Dablam, 6,812 metres, is far lower but is often called one of the most beautiful mountains in the world. Its Sherpa name means "mother's charm box": the long ridges look like a mother's arms around a child, and the hanging glacier like the dablam pendant worn by Sherpa women. It was first climbed on 13 March 1961 by Mike Gill, Barry Bishop, Mike Ward and Wally Romanes.

Seeing the Khumbu for yourself

All three peaks rise above the Khumbu region of Nepal. Most visitors see them on the trek to Everest Base Camp, which usually begins with a flight from Kathmandu to Lukla. Ama Dablam towers over the trail for days, while Everest and Lhotse appear at the head of the valley. Mountain sightseeing flights from Kathmandu are another way to see them from the air.

The best trekking seasons are spring and autumn, when skies are clearest. Build in rest days to acclimatise as you gain height.

For a ground-level view of the same mountains, explore Freya’s Everest Base Camp photographs. For another aerial sense of scale, see the Ruth Glacier and Great Gorge in Alaska.

Related reading

• Everest Waste: The 2014 Rule and the Work beyond the Summit
• Everest’s Mountain Workers: The Sherpa’s Story
• The Khumbu Icefall through Theodore Fairhurst’s Helmet Camera

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