Seventy-five-year-old Japanese skier Yuichiro Miura has started his latest bid to climb Mount Everest. Famed as the skier in the 1970s flick, The Man Who Skied Down Everest, Miura hopes to summit Everest again May 26 to become the oldest person to climb the world’s highest peak.
Miura scored international fame in 1970 when he became the first person to ski down the South Col of Mount Everest, using a parachute as a brake. Canadian Budge Crawley produced the film that won an Academy Award in 1975.
Miura again set a record in 2003 as the oldest person to conquer the 8,848-metre (29,028-feet) peak at the age of 70 from the Nepalese side.
As shown in the film, in his first decent, Miura skied 6,600 feet (2000 m) in two minutes and 20 seconds, and fell 1320 feet down the steep Lhotse face from the Yellow Band just below the South Col.. According to Wikipedia, he used a large parachute to slow his descent. He came to a full stop just 250 ft. from the edge of the crevasse. Eight died during the expedition’s ascent.
