SUBMITTED NEWS RELEASE
Atlantis Casino Resort Spa will host a film screening of an exhilarating documentary about an elite group of skiers who scale the world’s highest mountain, and challenge its most dangerous slopes, Skiing Everest will screen in a limited theatrical benefit event on February 1, 2012 at 6:30PM. All proceeds will benefit the Jimmie Heuga Center Endowment Fund, supporting Can Do MS Lifestyle Empowerment Programs for people living with Multiple Sclerosis.
Filmed by co-director Mike Marolt over ten years, Skiing Everest follows a group of close friends, led by Marolt and his twin brother, who grew up in Aspen taking on 14,000-ft. peaks with their father, 1960 Olympic skier Max Marolt. Skiing Everest follows the Marolts and their childhood friends, Jim Gile and Olympic cross-country skier John Calhoun, in what many people consider the toughest physical challenge on Earth – climbing and skiing in the “Death Zone” without using bottled oxygen, under weather conditions as perilous as the thin air, with hidden crevasses and 10,000-ft. sheer faces that drop into Nepal and Tibet far below.
“It is hard to do anything at such altitudes,” wrote Forbes adventure columnist Jim Clash, “where death lurks at every turn, let alone ski and survive to tell the tale.”
The film also tells the history of high-altitude skiing, dating back to the 1930s, and includes interviews with Hans Kammerlander, the first to ski from the summit of Everest; Laura Bakos, the first woman to ski from the summit of an 8,000-meter peak, and Chris Davenport, the two-time world extreme skiing champion and avid ski mountaineer.
Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 at the door. Purchase tickets at the Atlantis Gift Shop or by calling (888) 551-7007, or online at www.mscando.org. Must be at least 21 years old to participate. For more information about the film, please visit www.SkiingEverest.net.
