CANMORE – Two-time Everest summiter Dave Rodney was one of the last people to see Michael Matthews alive.
On May 13, 1999, Michael became the youngest Brit to ever summit Mount Everest at age 22, but three hours after reaching the top of the 29,035-ft peak, he disappeared and was never found.
“Michael and I climbed together every day of the expedition, except on summit day,” said Canmore’s Rodney, the first Canadian to summit the world’s tallest mountain twice, who has an unbreakable bond and friendship with Michael.
“We only met up once as I was descending from the summit, and he was on his way up the Hillary Step… I learned of his disappearance only the day after.”
Now 24 years later, a new Disney+ feature-length documentary called Finding Michael sees Spencer Matthews, Michael’s younger brother, attempt to find and recover his late brother’s body from Mount Everest.
Just 10 years old when Michael went missing, Spencer, a British reality TV star who is part of a high society British family, including brother James who is married to Pippa Middleton – the sister of Kate Middleton, Princess of Wales – always struggled to come to terms with his brother’s death.
But more than 20 years after Michael’s disappearance, the Matthews family was sent a photo of a body on Mount Everest in 2017, providing a glimmer of hope that it could possibly be that of Michael, based on the same red and black summit suit he was wearing and the location of the body.
The film tells the story of Spencer heading to Nepal and retracing his older brother’s steps. He enlisted the help of adventurer Bear Grylls and record-breaking mountaineer Nims Purja on his quest to find Michael.
Once at an extreme altitude of more than 26,000 ft – the so-called death zone where the oxygen pressure is insufficient to sustain human life for an extended time span – the team relies on a 10-member search crew, armed with drones and the skillset to go off the summit lines.
As the weather closes in and with time racing against them, the film documents a series of unexpected challenges faced by the search expedition, taking Spencer and the team on a physical and emotional journey.
In a recent podcast in which he interviews Rodney, Spencer said taking the difficult decision to document the journey and include people in the story, such as Rodney, was in the hope of giving Michael a legacy, allowing people to get to know him.
“Part of my irritants, I suppose, around his death at such a young age was that nobody knows his courage, nobody knew of his bravery," said Spencer.
"He was the youngest Brit to reach the summit, age 22, and that’s where he stayed forever afterward."
Rodney along with video footage he captured throughout that fateful 1999 Everest expedition, including climbing footage of Michael, plays a key role in the new one-hour, 40-minute documentary, which was released worldwide last week. He was interviewed over several days in Canmore.
Rodney encourages everyone to take the time to watch the film, which he calls “beautifully filmed” and “heart-wrenching”, trusting that audiences will be genuinely moved by the images, music and stories that were 24 years in the making.
“It is humbling to be included in this film, and I am honoured that my expedition footage is well used to tell Michael’s remarkable story,” he said.
“Hopefully, we will do justice to Michael as we share his legacy with people around the world.”
During the 1999 expedition, Rodney and Michael became best buddies, sharing a tent and climbing every day together, but as it turned out, they did not end up climbing together as they had wished when the day arrived for them to make the final push to the top of the world’s highest mountain.
“We absolutely enjoyed each other’s company. We were literally on a lifeline with each other climbing every single day, and at night we were constantly making jokes or having serious conversations about family, friends and futures,” he said.
“We literally became like brothers on that trip so it was heart-breaking when the night before the summit push … we learned that we’d be climbing separately on summit day.”
The friends met up once on summit day as Rodney was descending after making the summit of Everest for the first time in his life, and Michael was on his way up the Hillary Step – back then a nearly vertical 12-metre rock face located near the summit that was altered by an earthquake in 2015.
When they met, Michael asked Rodney if he made it to the summit, to which Rodney replied: “I sure did buddy. Now it’s your turn.”
With his bottled oxygen having depleted at the top, Rodney then proceeded to the South Summit and for some unexplained reason was compelled to look back.
“A lot of things happened up there that are hard to explain or defy normal understanding,” he said.
“Something told me to turn and I did, and we both gave each other a thumbs up, and we waved, and I thought ‘hey, see you down at Camp Four’, but I had no idea that was goodbye.”
From the South Summit, Rodney had to help two people back to Camp Four – a Canadian doctor who was climbing without supplementary bottled oxygen and who did not make it all the way to the top, and the first Dutch woman to summit Everest.
“It was my duty and honour upon descent to assist two others who were in horrible condition,” said Rodney.
“People collapsed in their tents and it was my job to brave those horrendous elements, chop out ice, bring it back, melt it down, so they would both have water as would I.”
At about 6 p.m. that May 13 night, Rodney thought he heard Michael’s voice outside his tent. It is one of his biggest regrets that he never unzipped his tent to see if it was in fact Michael.
“I was positive I heard Michael’s voice outside of the tent saying, ‘sorry guys’, and I thought he meant ‘sorry that I took so long, or sorry if you were worried about me’,” he said.
“Either it was someone else’s voice who had just come off the mountain or maybe it was a message from up high.”
At about midnight, Rodney said something happened that he still can’t explain to this day.
“I woke up with a start, I was sweating, and I started ripping off my goggles and oxygen mask… and I honestly have no idea if that’s the last time that Michael took a breath or not,” he said.
“But at six in the morning the next day, one of the other team members unzipped our tent and announced Michael is still on the mountain.”
At a place on earth where there is one-third the amount of air to breathe, and after expending his body on summit day like never before, it took a while for the tragic news to settle in.
As soon as it did, though, Rodney immediately started preparing to go back up the mountain.
“My tent mate looked at me like I was crazy and said, ‘you do realize that if you go up in some sort of vain attempt to rescue, you’re simply going to feed that mountain with another body. Mike wouldn’t want that, and there’s no way he could have survived the night’.”
Now, minus 40 C temperatures had bottomed out at 50 below, strong winds turned to hurricane force and with vertical drops of many thousands of feet on both sides, mounting a search and rescue attempt at that point was impossible.
“They said your job is a very serious one – you’re to save your life today if you can and help us if that’s at all possible … and I hated them for saying it but I knew they were right,” said Rodney.
“I would have done anything if I had found out the day before and went back to help my friend.”
Returning to Mount Everest in 2001, Rodney became the first Canadian to summit the world’s tallest mountain twice.
“After that dream come true had turned into a nightmare in 1999, I thought I would never ever even want to look at the mountain again,” he said.
However, Rodney was approached by a Canadian father-son team who knew he had learned to climb Everest in 1997 and summit in 1999, asking him to help them in their quest to get safely to the top.
While his first reaction was “absolutely not”, Rodney said he decided to go to help get the two to the summit safely.
“If that was an excuse to return, another real reason was to hopefully find Michael’s body so that his family and I could give him a proper burial,” said Rodney.
“In many ways, 2001 was actually much more difficult on summit day because every step that I took during daylight, I was scanning the entire mountain in every direction hoping for a sign that never came.”
It wasn’t until about 18 months ago that Rodney first learned that a documentary was being made about his friend. A call from a British filmmaker asking him if he would be interested in assisting in a film was followed up by a call from Spencer Matthews.
“It seemed almost surreal, but in other ways, I had been expecting that call since about 1999,” he said, adding he briefly saw a young Spencer when he was about 10 or 11 years old during a visit with his parents after the 1999 tragedy.
“I instantly knew there was going to be a day where I was going to talk to this young man. I didn’t know where or when, but I was hoping I’d be gifted with the opportunity of sharing what an inspirational person his brother was,” he said.
“I was hoping that there might be an opportunity someway, somehow that I might be able to assist him through the grieving process that he would have to experience when it really sank in with him that his superhero did not come home.”
Until Rodney shared his 1999 expedition footage, Spencer had never seen any video of his brother.
“I know this process has been very helpful for him in terms of learning more about who his brother truly was, and I am very happy to have played a role in that,” said Rodney.
The 1999 expedition was mired in controversy and high drama, with allegations of best practices being ignored, and inadequate team logistics, communications and oxygen systems, which have resulted in legal actions over the years.
But, according to Rodney, the Finding Michael documentary delves deeply into the timeless and emotional themes of brotherly love, tragic loss, and the long road to recovery – “universal motifs we can all intimately relate to.”
He said he hopes the film will be of comfort to others on their journeys to find peace in their own grief and mourning processes.
“I trust that everyone who watches this film will be truly touched and moved to the point where it will actually make a difference in their life,” said Rodney.
“It’s just not about high society London and extreme adventure at altitude, but sincerely, it’s about family and brotherly love and helping each other through that grieving process.”
Is this the final closure Rodney was hoping for?
“I am not sure if that’s possible, but I do know that all of us took huge steps forward when it comes to progressing along the spectrum of dealing with death and dying, and turning confusion and anger to some sort of understanding and even peace,” he said.
“Something still inevitably reminds me of him every single day – and I believe his indomitable spirit lives on in all of us who loved him.”
