The year 2008 sees the 30th anniversary of the first ascent of Mount Everest by Austrians. On 3 May 1978, Wolfgang Nairz, Robert Schauer and Horst Bergmann, together with Ang Phu, stood on the summit of the highest mountain on Earth. On 8 May, Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler reached the summit without the help of supplemental oxygen. ‘The Wild Seventies’ is a film on this pioneering era, a decade in which a small mountaineering elite learned together, went on expeditions, researched the medical foundations of high-altitude mountaineering, and put Alpine sponsoring on its way. During those years these men laid the foundations for professional mountaineering. In the film they look back on those days and talk about how they have fared the three decades since.