When permission was eventually granted, the seven member crew traveled to Khumjung and the Gompa Lodge, owned by Jackson’s friend Pema, who put together a kitchen staff and porters to help transport their gear.

Despite the balky start and an aborted try to reach a higher summit, the crew eventually staged a successful high-altitude launch. Although the film features candid discussion about the unforeseen difficulty of the ascent as well as video of some touch-and-go landings, Jackson says the trip was never really dangerous — not by his standards, that is. “A lot of the flying in the film was what we normally do,” he says, discounting his own tricky take-off from Luza — their fallback choice for the high launch — during which he risks being dragged by inconstant winds into a thousand-foot abyss.

And while nothing in the film is more arresting than the high-flying spectacle of four brilliantly colored gliders skimming the clouds down the mountain pass from Luza, nothing is more compelling than the lower-flying tandem flights with anxious but always-game Sherpas.

“Trying to film tandem flights, most with launches over 14,000 feet, with people who can barely understand the commands, was a challenge.”

Jackson piloted Pema on his first tandem glide, and other Sherpas were treated to similar flights over their village. “When it came to flying local people, it was actually more dramatic,” says Jackson. “We were much more focused on making sure we captured the looks on their faces, the kinds of things we don’t normally pay too much attention to.”

Upshot

Paying strict attention was cameraman Pickell, who, because he is not a pilot, needed to be extra resourceful to cover the action: “Trying to film tandem flights, most with launches over 14,000 feet, with people who can barely understand the commands, was a challenge.”

Pickell met the challenge with home-built, extendable camera mounts borrowed from paragliding pilots that shot directly back at the passenger and pilot, as well as POV pencil cams bound to the end of a ski pole. “Sometimes they worked,” says Pickell. “Occasionally we destroyed some gear.”

But while the technology workarounds generally held up, natural conditions were less dependable. “I did a few tandem flights to get some air-to-air shots, but in the high mountains, certainly for morning flights, the air is very still, so you sink out really fast,” he says. “They call it a ‘sled ride.’ I’m 180 pounds, so while trying to film someone else with a much lighter Sherpa passenger, we’d sink a lot faster and all of a sudden they’d be just above me.”

Grounded shooting was less tricky, but more arduous. “Once the pilots took off, they flew for about 30 minutes each and landed maybe 6000 feet down in the valley,” says Pickell. Though the irony of chasing flying Sherpas up and down steep slopes while loaded down with gear escaped him, the results registered physically. “I’d climb down off the summit and walk 4 hours downhill to meet up with them. Carrying all those extra lenses was a chore.”

Next page: Cut and Finish