“For a while you put the emotional healing aside because the physical demands have to be dealt with,” said Peach Weathers, who is played in “Everest” by Robin Wright. Recovering psychologically took even longer. His nose was reconstructed with skin and cartilage from other parts of his head and neck and, for months, grew on his forehead until doctors could safely attach it to the middle of his face. His right arm was amputated below the elbow, and his left hand was surgically reshaped into the rough shape of a mitten. It took Weathers many months and nearly a dozen operations to physically recuperate from his experience on Everest. “I’ve seen it three times, and each time it basically runs me over,” Weathers says. Still, even after two decades and numerous recountings of those tragic events in documentaries and books such as Jon Krakauer’s “Into Thin Air” and Weathers’ “Left for Dead,” for him and the others who survived, watching “Everest” is difficult. “The things some fathers will do to keep their daughter from going out with some grubby-mitted boy.”Ĭlearly Weathers has held on to his sense of humor.

“That was going to be the day of my daughter’s first date,” he says dryly. “My guess is the sun warmed me up just enough that it triggered consciousness.” Or maybe, he suggests, there was another, even more mundane explanation. Weathers, now 68, is not a particularly spiritual man, so he doesn’t explain his “resurrection” in terms of miracles or destiny.

Into thin air beck weathers