Morning Light

In the spring of 1982, 68-year-old George Griffiths sailed solo from Britain to Barbados, where he was met by his two sons. The younger son, Mark, joined his father to sail home to Canada by way of the Panama Canal and up the Pacific coast. Mark's older brother, Blair, flew home to begin work as a CBC cameraman documenting the Canadian Mount Everest Expedition Team, with its 26 climbers, 30 Sherpas and more than 200 porters. Six months later, Blair Griffiths was dead, crushed by a six-storey wall of Everest ice. Through heroic efforts the team finally managed to recover Blair's remains, and there followed a heartbreaking cremation on a pyre of rhododendron boughs. Eventually two of the team succeeded in summiting the mountain. In 1985, George Griffiths trekked with his grandson to Everest Base Camp, where Blair's ashes were laid, in order to say goodbye. In this place of awe and majesty among mountains and sky, father and adventurer found peace. Written from taped accounts, diaries, letters and reports, Morning Light: Triumph at Sea & Tragedy on Everest is a poignant saga of adventure and high emotion that celebrates the human spirit and its need to explore.