EVEREST.

• Position: Review

EVEREST MIRAMAX HOME ENTERTAINMENT 45 MINUTES, $19.99

As narrator Liam Neeson describes it, "the top of the world where the wind is fiercest is a desolate, deathly place where humans cannot live." What, then, possesses people to endeavor to climb to the summit of Mt. Everest, the tallest mountain in the world? This breathtaking video follows an expedition led by American Ed Viesturs, who already had scaled Everest three times; Jamling Norgay, son of Tenzing Norgay, the Sherpa guide who accompanied Edmund Hillary in the first successful climb to the summit in 1953; and rock-climber Araceli Segarra, trying to become the first Spanish woman to reach the top of the 29,028' Himalayan peak. By the video's end, the question remains unanswered, leaving viewers to conclude that some human beings simply must test themselves to extreme limits.

The challenge of Everest is so difficult because of the myriad obstacles it throws at climbers. To combat altitude sickness, they must ascend gradually so the body can adjust to low oxygen levels, pausing at a base camp for more than a week to wait for the number of red blood cells to double so that the blood can carry more oxygen to the brain and other organs. The weather at the top is abysmal except for a very brief window in May. This fact is brought home vividly when an expedition just ahead of Viesturs' runs into a sudden severe storm with hurricane-force winds and a wind chill factor of 100...