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Eventually, at 7:22 A.M. on the morning of May 26, 1998, with tears still pouring down my frozen cheeks, the summit of Mount Everest opened her arms and welcomed me in.
As if she now considered me somehow worthy of this place. My pulse raced, and in a haze I found myself suddenly standing on top of the world.
Alan embraced me, mumbling excitedly into his mask. Neil was still staggering toward us.
As he approached, the wind began to die away.
The sun was now rising over the hidden land of Tibet, and the mountains beneath us were bathed in a crimson red.
Neil knelt and crossed himself on the summit. Then, together, with our masks of, we hugged as brothers.
I got to my feet and began to look around. I swore that I could see halfway around the world.
The horizon seemed to bend at the edges. It was the curvature of our earth. Technology can put a man on the moon but not up here.
There truly was some magic to this place.
The radio suddenly crackled to my left. Neil spoke into it excitedly.
“Base camp. We’ve run out of earth.”
The voice on the other end exploded with jubilation. Neil passed the radio to me. For weeks I had planned what I would say if I reached the top, but all that just fell apart.
I strained into the radio and spoke without thinking.
“I just want to get home.”
The memory of what went on then begins to fade. We took several photos with both the SAS and the DLE flags flying on the summit, as promised, and I scooped some snow into an empty Juice Plus vitamin bottle I had with me.*
It was all I would take with me from the summit.
I remember having some vague conversation on the radio--patched through from base camp via a satellite phone--with my family some three thousand miles away: the people who had given me the inspiration to climb.
But up there, the time flew by, and like all moments of magic, nothing can last forever.
We had to get down. It was already 7:48 A.M.
Neil checked my oxygen.
“Bear, you’re right down. You better get going, buddy, and fast.”
I had just under a fifth of a tank to get me back to the Balcony.
I heaved the pack and tank onto my shoulders, fitted my mask, and turned around. The summit was gone. I knew that I would never see it again.
*Years later, Shara and I christened our three boys with this snow water from Everest’s summit. Life moments.
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