Hisashi Ishiguru

Episode of the TV series 'The Explorers' about the Yuichiro Miura ski descent from South Col of Mount Everest in 1970. The series, narrated by Leslie Nielsen, collected documentary footage of human challenges to the perils of nature. They included a man sailing solo around the world, expeditions into the New Britain jungle or across a glacier in Greenland, and a descent into the pit of the volcano Mt. Mihara.

Yuichiro Miura, a Japanese skier ultimately dreamed of literally skiing Mt. Everest. He planned to ski some 8,000 feet down an icy glacier at a 40 to 45 degree angle, from the 26,000 foot level near the summit. The documentary chronicles this incredible feat and the tremendous task of climbing Everest itself. The narrator reads from the diary that the skier personally kept. The film was produced by Canadian film maker Budge Crawley with the footage made for the original 1970 Japanese documentary (Eberesuto dai kakko). Crawley won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for this picture.

Original documentary of the 1970 Japanese expedition which set out for Mount Everest with the purpose of having ace skier Yuichiro Miura ski down an upper stretch of the mountain. Miura skied 6,600 feet (2000 m) in 2 minutes and 20 seconds and fell 1320 feet down the steep Lhotse face from the Yellow Band just below the South Col. He used a large parachute to slow his descent. He came to a full stop just 250 ft. from the edge of the crevasse. The footage of the film was later used by the Canadian film maker Budge Crawley to produce a different documentary titled The man who skied down Everest (winner of an Academy Award).