Everest Day Quotes

A day might be just twenty-four hours but sometimes getting through just one seems as impossible as scaling Everest.

If you dread tomorrow it's because you don't know how to build the present, and when you don't know how to build the present, you tell yourself you can deal with it tomorrow, and it's a lost cause anyway because tomorrow always ends up being today don't you see ... We have to live with the certainty that we'll get old and that it won't look nice or be good or feel happy. And tell ourselves that it's now that matters: to build something now at any price using all our strength. Always remember that there's a retirement home waiting somewhere and so we have to surpass ourselves every day, make every day undying. Climb our own personal Everest and do it in such a way that every step is a little bit of eternity. That's what the future is for: to build the present with real plans made by living people.

sometimes courage isn’t climbing Mount Everest or changing the world. Sometimes your mountain to climb is made up of weekdays and months, made up of pushing yourself forward even when you want to nestle into the past. Sometimes changing the world means changing your world as gradually as you need to, as gently as you heal, because sometimes courage isn’t made up of war and bloodshed; sometimes courage isn’t made of combat. Sometimes courage is a quiet fight, a dim softness within you, that flickers even on your darkest days and reminds you that you are strong, that you are growing—that there is hope.

...we have to surpass ourselves every day, make every day undying. Climb our own personal Everest and do it in such a way that every step is a little bit of eternity. That's what the future is for: to build the present, with real plans, made by living people.

I wake up feeling like I spent the last three days in a massage parlor. My muscles are relaxed, and I feel refreshed, like I could climb Mount Everest or build an ark or cure the world of minivans.

It seems more than a little patronizing for Westerners to lament the loss of the good old days when life in the Khumbu was so much simpler and more picturesque. Most of the people who live in this rugged country seem to have no desire to be severed from the modern world or the untidy flow of human progress. The last thing Sherpas want is to be preserved as specimens in an anthropological museum.

Food for thought: Every dead body on Mount Everest was once a highly motivated person. Stay lazy my friends. It may save your life one day.

How to get the best of it all? One must conquer, achieve, get to the top; one must know the end to be convinced that one can win the end - to know there's no dream that mustn't be dared. . . Is this the summit, crowning the day? How cool and quiet! We're not exultant; but delighted, joyful; soberly astonished. . . Have we vanquished an enemy? None but ourselves. Have we gained success? That word means nothing here. Have we won a kingdom? No. . . and yes. We have achieved an ultimate satisfaction. . . fulfilled a destiny. . . To struggle and to understand - never this last without the other; such is the law. . .

Every day we’re bombarded with information and images—with adolescents in heavy makeup pretending to be grown women as they advertise miraculous creams promising eternal beauty; with the story of an aging couple who climbed Mount Everest to celebrate their wedding anniversary; with new massage gizmos, and pharmacy windows that are chockablock with slimming products; with movies that give an entirely false impression of reality, and books promising fantastic results; with specialists who give advice about how to succeed in life or find inner peace. And all these things make us feel old, make us feel that we’re leading dull, unadventurous lives as our skin grows ever more flaccid, and the pounds pile on irrevocably. And yet we feel obliged to repress our emotions and our desires, because they don’t fit with what we call “maturity.” Choose what information you listen to. Place a filter over your eyes and ears and allow in only things that won’t bring you down, because we have our day-to-day life to do that.

My entire body is shaking. I’m losing it. A day might be just twenty-four hours but sometimes getting through just one seems as impossible as scaling Everest.

What's all this, I expect you're thinking, about "the tallest mountain in the world"? Everest, surely, deserves at least an honourable mention in this category? Well, it all depends on your point of view. Certainly, Everest stands a sturdy 29,028 feet above sea level, which is, in its way, impressive. But if you were going to climb Everest, you would probably start, fi you were using a reliable guide, somewhere in the Himalayas. Anywhere in the Himalayas is pretty damn high to start with, and so, to hear some people tell it, it's just a smartish jog to do the last little bit to the actual top of Everest. The way to keep it interesting these days is to do it without oxygen or in your underpants or something.

Solitude was a rare commodity on Everest, and I was grateful to be granted a bit of it on this day, in such a remarkable setting.

We climb Everest twice,” Chhiring explained. “First, Sherpas go up to set the ropes and camps, then we go down to collect our clients and take them to the top.

At Tom's back, receding from view, lay State Street's Victorian brick facades, where lobbyists and trade associations housed their offices, like a Mount Everest base camp for professional influence peddlers.

As I write these words, half a year has passed since I returned from Nepal, and on any given day during those six months, no more than two or three hours have gone by in which Everest hasn’t monopolized my thoughts. Not even in sleep is there respite: imagery from the climb and its aftermath continues to permeate my dreams.

I do understand. Every day we’re bombarded with information and images—with adolescents in heavy makeup pretending to be grown women as they advertise miraculous creams promising eternal beauty; with the story of an aging couple who climbed Mount Everest to celebrate their wedding anniversary; with new massage gizmos, and pharmacy windows that are chockablock with slimming products; with movies that give an entirely false impression of reality, and books promising fantastic results; with specialists who give advice about how to succeed in life or find inner peace. And all these things make us feel old, make us feel that we’re leading dull, unadventurous lives as our skin grows ever more flaccid, and the pounds pile on irrevocably. And yet we feel obliged to repress our emotions and our desires, because they don’t fit with what we call “maturity.” Choose what information you listen to. Place a filter over your eyes and ears and allow in only things that won’t bring you down, because we have our day-to-day life to do that. Do you think I don’t get judged and criticized at work? Well, I do—a lot! But I’ve decided to hear only the things that encourage me to improve, the things that help me correct my mistakes. Otherwise, I will just pretend I can’t hear the other stuff or block it out.

I am convinced that life's cruelest tragedy is that grandparents don't live forever

Believe it or not time does pass and time does heal

What is life other than the adventure of a lifetime?

Time doesn't exist when in love or when in grief

The weirdest thing about Tibet is that the most popular beer is Pabst Blue Ribbon. Everywhere, even on the slopes of Everest, cans of Pabst lay alongside the road labeled, 'Established in Milwaukee in 1849'.

On the third day they were there, Tenzing Norgay came to see Chatral Rinpoche. It was Tenzing Norgay who, a few years earlier, together with the New Zealander Edmund Hillary, was the first to scale the highest peak in the world, Mount Everest.

After Guru Rinpoche subdued Tseringma, he pursued her four younger sisters. One by one, they repented and became Buddhist deities, moving to mountains of their own. Miyolangsangma patrols the summit of Everest on the back of a tigress. Now the goddess of prosperity, her face shines like 24-carat gold. Thingi Shalsangma, her body a pale shade of blue, became the goddess of healing after galloping on a zebra to the top of Shishapangma, a 26,289-foot peak in Tibet. Chopi Drinsangma, with a face in perpetual blush, became the goddess of attraction. She chose a deer instead of a zebra and settled on Kanchenjunga, a 28,169-foot peak in Nepal. The final sister—Takar Dolsangma, the youngest, with a green face—was a hard case. She mounted a turquoise dragon and fled northward to the land of three borders. In the modern Rolwaling folklore, this is Pakistan. Guru Rinpoche chased after her and eventually cornered her on a glacier called the Chogo Lungma. Takar Dolsangma appeared remorseful and, spurring her dragon, ascended K2, accepting a new position as the goddess of security. Although Guru Rinpoche never doubted her sincerity, maybe he should have: Takar Dolsangma, it seems, still enjoys the taste of human flesh.

Evenings were peaceful, smoke settling in the quiet air to soften the dusk, lights twinkling on the ridge we would camp on tomorrow, clouds dimming the outline of our pass for the day after. Growing excitement lured my thoughts again and again to the West Ridge…. There was loneliness, too, as the sun set, but only rarely now did doubts return. Then I felt sinkingly as if my whole life lay behind me. Once on the mountain I knew (or trusted) that this would give way to total absorption with the task at hand. But at times I wondered if I had not come a long way only to find what I really sought was something I had left behind.

. . .There is nothing to complain of. . .we had a gorgeous day for the climb, almost windless and brilliantly fine, yet we were unable to get to the summit. So we have no excuse - we have been beaten in fair fight; beaten by the height of the mountain, and by our own shortness of breath. But the fight was worth it, worth it every time, and we shall cherish the privilege of defeat by the world's greatest mountain.

       If this isn't a guidebook, what is it? A book of sermons, perhaps.        I preach that air travel be scaled back, as a start, to the level of twenty years ago, further reductions to be considered after all the Boeing engineers have been retrained as turkey ranchers.        The state Game Department should establish a season on helicopters — fifty-two weeks a year, twenty-four hours a day, no bag limit.        Passenger trains must be restored, as a start, to the service of forty years ago and then improved from there.        The Gypsy Bus System must not be regularized (the government would regulate it to death) but publicized cautiously through the underground.        I would discourage, if not ban, trekking to Everest base camp and flying over the Greenland Icecap. Generally, people should stay home. Forget gaining a little knowledge about a lot and strive to learn about a little.

How much more interior can you get, after all, than the interior of bones? It's the center of the center of things. If marrow were a geological formation, it would be magma roiling under the earth's mantle. If it were a plant, it would be a delicate moss that grows only in the highest crags of Mount Everest, blooming with tiny white flowers for three days in the Nepalese spring. If it were a memory, it would be your first one, your most painful and repressed one, the one that has made you who you are.

For the first time in months almost no wind blasted the summit, but the snow on the upper mountain was thigh deep, making for slow, exhausting progress. Kropp bulled his way relentlessly upward through the drifts, however, and by two o’clock Thursday afternoon he’d reached 28,700 feet, just below the South Summit. But even though the top was no more than sixty minutes above, he decided to turn around, believing that he would be too tired to descend safely if he climbed any higher. “To turn around that close to the summit …,” Hall mused with a shake of his head on May 6 as Kropp plodded past Camp Two on his way down the mountain. “That showed incredibly good judgment on young Göran’s part. I’m impressed—considerably more impressed, actually, than if he’d continued climbing and made the top.” Over the previous month, Rob had lectured us repeatedly about the importance of having a predetermined turnaround time on our summit day—in our case it would probably be 1:00 P.M., or 2:00 at the very latest—and abiding by it no matter how close we were to the top. “With enough determination, any bloody idiot can get up this hill,” Hall observed. “The trick is to get back down alive.

In addition to these international climbers, we were supported by a climbing team of Nepalese Sherpas, led by their Sirdar boss, Kami. Raised in the lower Himalayan foothills, these Sherpas know Everest better than anyone. Many had climbed on the mountain for years, assisting expeditions by carrying food, oxygen, extra tents, and supplies to stock the higher camps. As climbers, we would each carry substantial-sized packs every day on Everest, laden with food, water, cooker, gas canisters, sleeping bag, roll mat, head torch, batteries, mittens, gloves, hat, down jacket, crampons, multitool, rope, and ice axes. The Sherpas would then add an extra sack of rice or two oxygen tanks to that standard load. Their strength was extraordinary, and their pride was in their ability to help transport those life-giving necessities that normal climbers could not carry for themselves. It is why the Sherpas are, without doubt, the real heroes on Everest. Born and brought up at around twelve thousand feet, altitude is literally in their blood. Yet up high, above twenty-five thousand feet, even the Sherpas start to slow, the way everyone, gradually and inevitably, does. Reduced to a slow, agonizing, lung-splitting crawl. Two paces, then a rest. Two paces, then a rest. It is known as the “Everest shuffle.

I'm a victim of penis envy (said Laura) so I can't ever be happy or lead a normal life. My mother worked as a librarian when I was little and that's not feminine. She thinks it's deformed me. The other day a man came up to me in the bus and called me sweetie and said, "Why don't you smile? God loves you!" I just stared at him. But he wouldn't go away until I smiled, so finally I did. Everyone was laughing. I tried once, you know, went to a dance all dressed up, but I felt like such a fool. Everyone kept making encouraging remarks about my looks as if they were afraid I'd cross back over the line again; I was trying , you know, I was proving their way of life was right, and they were terrified I'd stop. When I was five I said, "I'm not a girl, I'm a genius," but that doesn't work, possibly because other people don't honor the resolve. Last year I finally gave up and told my mother I didn't want to be a girl but she said Oh no, being a girl is wonderful. Why? Because you can wear pretty clothes and you don't have to do anything; the men will do it for you. She said that instead of conquering Everest, I could conquer the conqueror of Everest and while he had to go climb the mountain, I could stay home in lazy comfort listening to the radio and eating chocolates. She was upset, I suppose, but you can't imbibe someone's success by fucking them.

A personal credo can help you stay true to yourself and to your beliefs even in extreme circumstances, when risks to your physical and mental well-being might threaten your values. What’s your credo? What is your purpose? What do you strive to do daily? How do you think people would currently describe you as a person? As a leader? How do you want people to describe you? What values are most important to you? Know what you stand for. And know what you would fight for. How do you want to be remembered when you leave this earth? Here’s another question to ask yourself: What are you are doing right now to work toward that personal credo? A credo isn’t about writing a few words down. It’s about taking action. It’s about living those words every day.

Balloons have taught me to reflect more. On earth, my life is fast and hectic, each moment full. It can be too busy. We all need our own space and it’s good to pause and do nothing. It gives us time to think. It recharges our bodies as well as our minds. I often think of the fishermen I watched that Christmas in Japan. It’s in our nature to strive – so I wondered what they looked for in life? They seemed content fishing and feeding their families. They didn’t seem driven to set up fish-canning empires. As far as I knew, they didn’t want to cross the Pacific in a balloon or climb Mount Everest. They took each day as it came. They lived in the moment, and perhaps this is what gave them peace of mind. My grandmother lived life to the full. At the age of

One of the hardest things for me to accept about having anxiety and depression is the two contrasting versions of me that seem to co-exist in me. I can go from happy to angry to suicidal in 0.01 seconds. One moment I’m fine, and before I blink, I go into self-destruct mode. One version is hell-bent on destroying myself, while the other version dreams of conquering Mount Everest, and these two versions are in a continuous power struggle with one another, as if I live a double life, where some people know one version, and others another altogether; few in my closest inner circle will get to see both versions. I fight daily to reconcile the two vastly different personas and this often makes me feel like a counterfeit. Some days I’m not even sure which version will wake up the next day and I hope for the ‘good’ version’ to greet dawn.

Many people find it hard to understand what it is about a mountain that draws men and women to risk their lives on her freezing, icy faces--all for a chance at that single, solitary moment on the top. It can be hard to explain. But I also relate to the quote that says: “If you have to ask, you will never understand.” I just felt that maybe this was it: my first real, and possibly only, chance to follow that dream of one day standing on the summit of Mount Everest. Deep down, I knew that I should take it. Neil agreed to my joining his Everest team on the basis of how I’d perform on an expedition that October to the Himalayas. As I got off the phone from speaking to Neil, I had a sinking feeling that I had just made a commitment that was going to change my life forever--either for the better or for the worse. But I had wanted a fresh start--this was it, and I felt alive. A few days later I announced the news to my family. My parents--and especially my sister, Lara--called me selfish, unkind, and then stupid. Their eventual acceptance of the idea came with the condition that if I died then my mother would divorce my father, as he had been the man who had planted the “stupid idea” in my head in the first place, all those years earlier. Dad just smiled. Time eventually won through, even with my sister, and all their initial resistance then turned into a determination to help me--predominantly motivated by the goal of trying to keep me alive. As for me, all I had to ensure was that I kept my promise to be okay. As it happened, four people tragically died on Everest while we were there: four talented, strong climbers. It wasn’t within my capability to make these promises to my family. My father knew that.

Over the next few days we spent every waking moment together. We made up silly dances, did puzzles in the evening, and she stood smiling on the beach waiting for me as I took my customary New Year’s dip in the freezing cold North Atlantic. I just had a sense that we were meant to be. I even found out she lived in the next-door road along from where I was renting a room from a friend in London. What were the chances of that? As the week drew to a close we both got ready to head back south to London. She was flying. I was driving. “I’ll beat you to London,” I challenged her. She smiled knowingly. “No, you won’t.” (But I love your spirit.) She, of course, won. It took me ten hours to drive. But at 10:00 P.M. that same night I turned up at her door and knocked. She answered in her pajamas. “Damn, you were right,” I said, laughing. “Shall we go for some supper together?” “I’m in my pajamas, Bear.” “I know, and you look amazing. Put a coat on. Come on.” And so she did. Our first date, and Shara in her pajamas. Now here was a cool girl. From then on we were rarely apart. I delivered love letters to her office by day and persuaded her to take endless afternoons off. We roller-skated in the parks, and I took her down to the Isle of Wight for the weekends. Mum and Dad had since moved to my grandfather’s old house in Dorset, and had rented out our cottage on the island. But we still had an old caravan parked down the side of the house, hidden under a load of bushes, so any of the family could sneak into it when they wanted. The floors were rotten and the bath full of bugs, but neither Shara nor I cared. It was heaven just to be together. Within a week I knew she was the one for me and within a fortnight we had told each other that we loved each other, heart and soul. Deep down I knew that this was going to make having to go away to Everest for three and a half months very hard. But if I survived, I promised myself that I would marry this girl.

I have always loved the quote from John F. Kennedy: “When written in Chinese, the word crisis is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.” Looking back on my life, I can see that I have never had a crisis that didn’t make me stronger. And here was all that I loved before me: great risk, but also great opportunity. I had never felt so excited. Neil was already preparing to come back up. Mick, so fortunate to be alive, was staying firmly, and wisely, at base camp. But for me, my time had come. That evening, camp two was again full of friends. Neil and Geoffrey were there along with Michael and Graham, Karla and Alan. But the weariness of coming back up to camp two again oozed painfully from Karla’s gaunt face. She was utterly exhausted, and you could see it. Who wouldn’t be after three months on Everest, and having got within four hundred feet of the summit only days earlier? Tomorrow the biggest battle of our lives would begin.

On the contrary, we absolutely mustn’t forget it. We mustn’t forget old people with their rotten bodies, old people who are so close to death, something that young people don’t want to think about (so it is to retirement homes that they entrust the care of accompanying their parents to the threshold, with no fuss or bother). And where’s the joy in these final hours that they ought to be making the most of? They’re spent in boredom and bitterness, endlessly revisiting memories. We mustn’t forget that our bodies decline, friends die, everyone forgets about us, and the end is solitude. Nor must we forget that these old people were young once, that a lifespan is pathetically short, that one day you’re twenty and the next day you’re eighty. Colombe thinks you can “hurry up and forget” because it all seems so very far away to her, the prospect of old age, as if it were never going to happen to her. But just by observing the adults around me I understood very early on that life goes by in no time at all, yet they’re always in such a hurry, so stressed out by deadlines, so eager for now that they needn’t think about tomorrow . . . But if you dread tomorrow, it’s because you don’t know how to build the present, and when you don’t know how to build the present, you tell yourself you can deal with it tomorrow, and it’s a lost cause anyway because tomorrow always ends up becoming today, don’t you see? So, we mustn’t forget any of this, absolutely not. We have to live with the certainty that we’ll get old and that it won’t look nice or be good or feel happy. And tell ourselves that it’s now that matters: to build something, now, at any price, using all our strength. Always remember that there’s a retirement home waiting somewhere and so we have to surpass ourselves every day, make every day undying. Climb our own personal Everest and do it in such a way that every step is a little bit of eternity. That’s what the future is for: to build the present, with real plans, made by living people.

I look back now and can see how much my father also found his own freedom in the adventures we did together, whether it was galloping along a beach in the Isle of Wight with me behind him, or climbing on the steep hills and cliffs around the island’s coast. It was at times like these that I found a real intimacy with him. It was also where I learned to recognize that tightening sensation, deep in the pit of my stomach, as being a great thing to follow in life. Some call it fear. I remember the joy of climbing with him in the wintertime. It was always an adventure and often turned into much more than just a climb. Dad would determine that not only did we have to climb a sheer hundred-and-fifty-foot chalk cliff, but also that German paratroopers held the high ground. We therefore had to climb the cliff silently and unseen, and then grenade the German fire position once at the summit. In reality this meant lobbing clumps of manure toward a deserted bench on the cliff tops. Brilliant. What a great way to spend a wet and windy winter’s day when you are age eight (or twenty-eight, for that matter). I loved returning from the cliff climbs totally caked in mud, out of breath, having scared ourselves a little. I learned to love that feeling of the wind and rain blowing hard on my face. It made me feel like a man, when in reality I was a little boy. We also used to talk about Mount Everest, as we walked across the fields toward the cliffs. I loved to pretend that some of our climbs were on the summit face of Everest itself. We would move together cautiously across the white chalk faces, imagining they were really ice. I had this utter confidence that I could climb Everest if he were beside me. I had no idea what Everest would really involve but I loved the dream together. These were powerful, magical times. Bonding. Intimate. Fun. And I miss them a lot even today. How good it would feel to get the chance to do that with him just once more. I think that is why I find it often so emotional taking my own boys hiking or climbing nowadays. Mountains create powerful bonds between people. It is their great appeal to me. But it wasn’t just climbing. Dad and I would often go to the local stables and hire a couple of horses for a tenner and go jumping the breakwaters along the beach. Every time I fell off in the wet sand and was on the verge of bursting into tears, Dad would applaud me and say that I was slowly becoming a horseman. In other words, you can’t become a decent horseman until you fall off and get up again a good number of times. There’s life in a nutshell.

Arnold," she said one day after school, "I hate this little town. It's so small, too small. Everything about it is small. The people here have small ideas. Small dreams. They all want to marry each other and live here forever." "What do you want to do?" I asked. "I want to leave as soon as I can. I think I was born with a suitcase." Yeah, she talked like that. All big and goofy and dramatic. I wanted to make fun of her, but she was so earnest. "Where do you want to go?" I asked. "Everywhere. I want to walk on the Great Wall of China. I want to walk to the top of pyramids in Egypt. I want to swim in every ocean. I want to climb Mount Everest. I want to go on an African safari. I want to ride a dogsled in Antarctica. I want all of it. Every single piece of everything." Her eyes got this strange faraway look, like she'd been hypnotized. I laughed. "Don't laugh at me," she said. "I'm not laughing at you," I said. "I'm laughing at your eyes." "That's the whole problem," she said. "Nobody takes me seriously." "Well, come on, it's kind of hard to take you seriously when you're talking about the Great Wall of China and Egypt and stuff. Those are just big goofy dreams. They're not real." "They're real to me," she said. "Why don't you quit talking in dreams and tell me what you really want to do with your life," I said. "Make it simple." "I want to go to Stanford and study architecture." "Wow, that's cool," I said. "But why architecture?" "Because I want to build something beautiful. Because I want to be remembered." And I couldn't make fun of her for that dream. It was my dream, too. And Indian boys weren't supposed to dream like that. And white girls from small towns weren't supposed to dream big, either. We were supposed to be happy with our limitations. But there was no way Penelope and I were going to sit still. Nope, we both wanted to fly:

The best advice came from the legendary actor the late Sir John Mills, who I sat next to backstage at a lecture we were doing together. He told me he considered the key to public speaking to be this: “Be sincere, be brief, be seated.” Inspired words. And it changed the way I spoke publicly from then on. Keep it short. Keep it from the heart. Men tend to think that they have to be funny, witty, or incisive onstage. You don’t. You just have to be honest. If you can be intimate and give the inside story--emotions, doubts, struggles, fears, the lot--then people will respond. I went on to give thanks all around the world to some of the biggest corporations in business--and I always tried to live by that. Make it personal, and people will stand beside you. As I started to do bigger and bigger events for companies, I wrongly assumed that I should, in turn, start to look much smarter and speak more “corporately.” I was dead wrong--and I learned that fast. When we pretend, people get bored. But stay yourself, talk intimately, and keep the message simple, and it doesn’t matter what the hell you wear. It does, though, take courage, in front of five thousand people, to open yourself up and say you really struggle with self-doubt. Especially when you are meant to be there as a motivational speaker. But if you keep it real, then you give people something real to take away. “If he can, then so can I” is always going to be a powerful message. For kids, for businessmen--and for aspiring adventurers. I really am pretty average. I promise you. Ask Shara…ask Hugo. I am ordinary, but I am determined. I did, though--as the corporation started to pay me more--begin to doubt whether I was really worth the money. It all seemed kind of weird to me. I mean, was my talk a hundred times better now than the one I gave in the Drakensberg Mountains? No. But on the other hand, if you can help people feel stronger and more capable because of what you tell them, then it becomes worthwhile for companies in ways that are impossible to quantify. If that wasn’t true, then I wouldn’t get asked to speak so often, still to this day. And the story of Everest--a mountain, like life, and like business--is always going to work as a metaphor. You have got to work together, work hard, and go the extra mile. Look after each other, be ambitious, and take calculated, well-timed risks. Give your heart to the goal, and it will repay you. Now, are we talking business or climbing? That’s what I mean.

A month after the Watson-Crick structure was published, Britain crowned a new queen and a British expedition conquered Mount Everest on the same day. Apart from a small piece in the News Chronicle, the double helix did not make the newspapers. Today most scientists consider it the most momentous discovery of the century, if not the millennium.

If the fitter climbers had been able to move at their own speed that day there would probably have been a process of natural selection. The front runners could have summited early, within an acceptable time frame and it would have become obvious that those who were at the back of the line were not going to get safely to the top and back. What, in fact, happened was that the climbers, particularly in Rob Hall's team, were forced to stay together, which held back the faster climbers. Everyone was now moving at a slow, dangerous pace. It inevitably meant there would be bunching at the choke points.

This quote from T.E. Lawrence means a lot to me: All men dream; but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible. Our job is to be the dangerous type. The one who dreams by day and acts to make those dreams come alive and actually happen. So take some time to get this right. Go for a long walk. Think big. Think about what really makes you smile. Ask yourself what you would do if you didn’t need the money. Ask yourself what really excites you. Ask what would inspire you to keep going long after most people would quit. Find those answers and therein lies your dream. We all have our own personal Everest, and if we follow its calling, that is when life truly becomes an adventure. Now, obviously your dream needs to be realistic and achievable, so use your common sense and exercise good judgement - but don’t confuse realism with pessimism! Think big, make sure it is physically possible, and as long as the key ingredients to achieving it are vision and hard work, then go for it. Write it down. Pin it on your wall - somewhere you will see it every day. Words and pictures have power. Got it? OK, we have begun…

23. Honour The Journey, Not the Destination As a team, when we came back from Everest, so often the first question someone would ask us was: ‘Did you make it to the summit?’ I was lucky - unbelievably lucky - to have reached that elusive summit, which also allowed me to reply to that summit question with a ‘yes’. My best buddy Mick found the question much harder, as a ‘no’ didn’t tell even part of his incredible story. He might not have made it to the very top of Everest, but he was as near as damn it. For three months we had climbed alongside each other, day and night. Mick had been involved in some real heroics up high when things had gone wrong, he had climbed with courage, dignity and strength, and he had reached within 300 feet (90 metres) of the summit. Yet somehow that didn’t count in the eyes of those who asked that ironically unimportant question: ‘Did you reach the top?’ For both of us, the journey was never about the summit. It was a journey we lived through together; we held each other’s lives in our hands every day, and it was an incredible journey of growth. The summit I only ever saw as a bonus. When we got that question on our return, I often got more frustrated for Mick than he did. He was smart and never saw it as a failure. He’d tell you that he was actually lucky - for the simple reason that he survived where four others that season had died. You see, Mick ran out of oxygen high up on the final face of Everest at some 28,000 feet (8,500 metres). Barely able to move, he crawled on all fours. Yet at that height, at the limit of exhaustion, he slipped and started to tumble down the sheer ice face. He told me he was certain he would die. By some miracle he landed on a small ledge and was finally rescued when two other climbers found him. Four other climbers hadn’t been so lucky. Two had died of the cold and two had fallen. Everest is unforgiving, especially when the weather turns. By the time I was back with Mick, down at Camp Two a couple of days later, he was a changed man. Humbled, grateful for life, and I had never loved him so much. So when everyone at home was asking him about the summit, or sympathizing with him for narrowly missing out, Mick knew better. He should have died up there. He knew he was plain lucky to be alive. ‘Failure had become his blessing, and life had become a great gift to him. And those are great lessons that many never learn - because you can only learn them through a life-changing journey, regardless of the destination. Consider the billionaire who flies into the South Pole for an hour to ‘experience’ it, compared to the man who has toiled, sweated and struggled across hundreds and hundreds of miles of ice, dragging a humble sledge. You see, it is the journey that makes the man. And life is all about our growth, not our trophies.

Someone asked me the other day, why haven't I won any awards! To which I say - how do you award the Everest! You may designate it as the tallest peak and all that, but how does that make any difference in the greatness of the Everest! Or how do you award the sun and the trees and the birds and the ocean? You simply cannot! You know why? Because the greatest forces of good are beyond recognition.

As I stood looking out at the view, the answer was so clear I couldn't believe I hadn't seen it before. Everest was not about me. I wasn't supposed to be doing it alone. I wasn't supposed to be scaling mountains and staking my flag at their peaks like some modern-day conquistadora. It was about what I had to offer, what I had to give to a community--to women, to girls, like me. I had to keep my promise to climb Everest, but I was supposed to bring others with me. Other women like me. Survivors. That had been the message all along.

It’s impossible to know if you like something until you try doing it. So do it! Make a list of things you think you might enjoy and start trying them out. And don’t tell me you don’t have the energy. There are people who escaped prison by digging tunnels with a spoon, there are people who climbed Mount Everest, people who run the marathon (and have a day job), so don’t give me that crap about energy. Have you noticed that the more you sleep, the more you want to sleep? It’s the same with watching TV. The more you watch it, the more you slump into the cozy couch syndrome, your skin and your muscles liquefy against the soft surface, and you melt into uselessness. So get up! Start doing things. You’ll see, once you’re up, all you need to do is put one foot in front of the other, go to the store, buy some fitness gear, or buy a camera, or buy some tools, or some books, and start using them.

school. The

On summit day especially, the dilemma you face was to be ambitious, but not greedy; to be bold, but not reckless; to be confident, but not arrogant.

Through poorly managed drag or friction, we waste two-thirds of the energy we produce and, by so doing; we're destroying our environment and atmosphere three times the rate than if we didn't waste energy. The United States burns two billion dollars' worth of oil every day. The world burns four cubic miles of nonrenewable fossil fuels every year. That's a mound four miles long, four miles wide, and four miles high, equivalent to 21,120 feet-the highest mountain in the Andes or three-quarters the height of Mount Everest. We're very clever and resourceful extracting and processing more and more fossil fuels but we're pouring that energy into a bucket full of holes. We're wasting a large part of this energy by trying to force flow into straight lines.

But this decision—to climb on the same day—was unexpected, unlikely, illogical, and irrational. Bells rang. Alarm bells.

Neil’s feet were still numb from the frostbite. Long exposure up high, sat waiting in the snow for all those hours at the Balcony, had taken their toll. At base camp, we bandaged them up, kept them warm, and purposefully didn’t discuss the very real prospect of him losing his toes. He didn’t need to be told that he was unlikely ever to feel them again properly. Either way, we realized that the best option for them was to get him proper medical attention and soon. There was no way he was going to be walking anywhere with his feet bandaged up like two white balloons. We needed an air-evacuation. Not the easiest of things in the thin air of Everest’s base camp. The insurance company said that at dawn the next day they would attempt to get him out of there. Weather permitting. But at 17,450 feet we really were on the outer limits of where helicopters could fly. True to their word, at dawn we heard the distant rotors of a helicopter, far beneath us in the valley. A tiny speck against the vast rock walls on either side. In a matter of sixty short minutes, that thing could whisk Neil away to civilization, I thought. Hmm. My goodness, that was a beautiful prospect. Somehow I had to get on that chopper with him. I packed in thirty seconds flat, everything from the past three months. I taped a white cross onto my sleeve, and raced out to where Neil was sat waiting. One chance. What the heck. Neil shook his head at me, smiling. “God, you push it, Bear, don’t you?” he shouted over the noise of the rotors. “You’re going to need a decent medic on the flight,” I replied, with a smile. “And I’m your man.” (There was at least some element of truth in this: I was a medic and I was his buddy--and yes, he did need help. But essentially I was trying to pull a bit of a fast one.) The pilot shouted that two people would be too heavy. “I have to accompany him at all times,” I shouted back over the engine noise. “His feet might fall off at any moment,” I added quietly. The pilot looked back at me, then at the white cross on my sleeve. He agreed to drop Neil somewhere down at a lower altitude, and then come back for me. “Perfect. Go. I’ll be here.” I shook his hand firmly. Let’s just get this done before anyone thinks too much about it, I mumbled to myself.

Pretty soon after returning from Everest, I was asked to give a lecture on the Everest expedition to my local sailing club in the Isle of Wight. It would be the first of many lectures that I would eventually give, and would soon become my main source of income after returning from the mountain. Those early talks were pretty ropey, though, by anyone’s standards. That first one went okay, mainly due to the heavy number of family members in the audience. Dad cried, Mum cried, Lara cried. Everyone was proud and happy. The next talk was to a group of soldiers on a course with the SAS. I took one of my old buddies along with me for moral support. Huge Mackenzie-Smith always jokes to this day how, by the time I finished, the entire room had fallen asleep. (They had been up all night on an exercise, I hasten to add--but still--it wasn’t my finest hour.) We had to wake them--one by one. I had a lot to learn about communicating a story if I was to earn any sort of a living by giving talks.

So much happened, though, in our early, prechildren days, that served to turn our life around irretrievably. Much of it came from small, serendipitous, unlikely turns of events--like driving for many hours to do a small Everest talk for a charity and finding out afterward that the young son of the head of Channel 4 (the large UK TV network) was there. He then told his dad that I should do a TV show for the network. Kids, eh? Or getting spotted by the Discovery Channel, after having been chosen out of many climbers to be the subject of a big worldwide “Sure for Men” deodorant TV campaign. (Ironically, this one came just days after Dad died--which always felt like his little spark of a parting gift to me. And, wow, there were so many little gifts from him throughout his life.) But would I ever have done the bigger TV shows without minibreaks like those? I doubt it. But from small acorns grow big oaks.

Shara met me at the airport in London, dressed in her old familiar blue woolen overcoat that I loved so much. She was bouncing like a little girl with excitement. Everest was nothing compared to seeing her. I was skinny, long-haired, and wearing some very suspect flowery Nepalese trousers. I short, I looked a mess, but I was so happy. I had been warned by Henry at base camp not to rush into anything “silly” when I saw Shara again. He had told me it was a classic mountaineers’ error to propose as soon as you get home. High altitude apparently clouds people’s good judgment, he had said. In the end, I waited twelve months. But during this time I knew that this was the girl I wanted to marry. We had so much fun together that year. I persuaded Shara, almost daily, to skip off work early from her publishing job (she needed little persuading, mind), and we would go on endless, fun adventures. I remember taking her roller-skating through a park in central London and going too fast down a hill. I ended up headfirst in the lake, fully clothed. She thought it funny. Another time, I lost a wheel while roller-skating down a steep busy London street. (Cursed skates!) I found myself screeching along at breakneck speed on only one skate. She thought that one scary. We drank tea, had afternoon snoozes, and drove around in “Dolly,” my old London black cab that I had bought for a song. Shara was the only girl I knew who would be willing to sit with me for hours on the motorway--broken down--waiting for roadside recovery to tow me to yet another garage to fix Dolly. Again. We were (are!) in love. I put a wooden board and mattress in the backseat so I could sleep in the taxi, and Charlie Mackesy painted funny cartoons inside. (Ironically, these are now the most valuable part of Dolly, which sits majestically outside our home.) Our boys love playing in Dolly nowadays. Shara says I should get rid of her, as the taxi is rusting away, but Dolly was the car that I will forever associate with our early days together. How could I send her to the scrapyard? In fact, this spring, we are going to paint Dolly in the colors of the rainbow, put decent seat belts in the backseat, and go on a road trip as a family. Heaven. We must never stop doing these sorts of things. They are what brought us together, and what will keep us having fun. Spontaneity has to be exercised every day, or we lose it. Shara, lovingly, rolls her eyes.

The rope I was dangling off wasn’t designed for a long impact fall like mine. It was lightweight, thin rope that got replaced every few days as the ice, on the move, tore it from its anchor point. The rope was more of a guide, a support; not like proper, dynamic climbing rope. I knew that it could break at any point. The seconds felt like eternity. Then suddenly I felt a strong tug on the rope. I kicked into the walls with my crampons again. This time they bit into the ice. Up I pulled, kicking into the walls a few feet higher, in time with each heave from above. Near the lip I managed to smack my ice axe into the snow lip and pull myself over. Strong arms grabbed my wind suit and hauled me from the clutches of the crevasse. I wriggled away from the edge, out of danger, and collapsed in a heaving mess. I lay there, my face pressed to the snow, eyes closed, holding Mick’s and Nima’s hands, shaking with fear. If Nima had not heard the collapse and been so close, I doubt Mick would ever have had the strength to haul me out. Nima had saved my life and I knew it. Mick helped escort me the two hours back down the icefall. I clutched every rope, clipping in nervously. I now crossed the ladders like a different man--gone was the confidence. My breathing was shallow and labored, and any vestiges of strength or adrenaline had long left me. That thin line between life and death can make or break a man. And right now I was a mess. Yet we hadn’t even begun on Everest proper.

My Everest story would be incomplete if I didn’t give final credit to the Sherpas who had risked their lives alongside us every day. Pasang and Ang-Sering still climb together as best friends, under the direction of their Sirdar boss--Kami. The Khumba Icefall specialist, Nima, still carries out his brave task in the jumbled ice maze at the foot of the mountain: repairing and fixing the route through. Babu Chiri, who so bravely helped Mick when he ran out of oxygen under the South Summit, was tragically killed in a crevasse in the Western Cwm several years later. He was a Sherpa of many years’ Everest experience, and was truly one of the mountain’s greats. It was a huge loss to the mountaineering fraternity. But if you play the odds long enough you will eventually lose. That is the harsh reality of high-altitude mountaineering. You can’t keep on top of the world forever. Geoffrey returned to the army, and Neil to his business. His toes never regained their feeling, but he avoided having them amputated. But as they say, Everest always charges some sort of a price, and in his own words--he got lucky. As for Mick, he describes his time on Everest well: “In the three months I was away, I was both happier than ever before, and more scared than I ever hope to be again.” Ha. That’s also high-altitude mountaineering for you. Thengba, my friend, with whom I spent so much time alone at camp two, was finally given a hearing aid by Henry. Now, for the first time, he can hear properly. Despite our different worlds, we shared a common bond with these wonderful Sherpa men--a friendship that was forged by an extraordinary mountain. Once, when the climber Julius Kugy was asked what sort of person a mountaineer should be, he replied: “Truthful, distinguished, and modest.” All these Sherpas epitomize this. I made the top with them, and because of their help, I owe them more than I can say. The great Everest writer Walt Unsworth, in his book Everest: The Mountaineering History, gives a vivid description of the characters of the men and women who pit their all on the mountain. I think it is bang on the money: But there are men for whom the unattainable has a special attraction. Usually they are not experts: their ambitions and fantasies are strong enough to brush aside the doubts which more cautious men might have. Determination and faith are their strongest weapons. At best such men are regarded as eccentric; at worst, mad… Three things they all had in common: faith in themselves, great determination, and endurance. If I had to sum up what happened on that journey for me, from the hospital bed to the summit of the world, I tend to think of it as a stumbling journey. Of losing my confidence and my strength--then refinding it. Of seeing my hope and my faith slip away--and then having them rekindled. Ultimately, if I had to pass on one message to my children it would be this: Fortune favors the brave. Most of the time.

The first oversees tour Then it was make-or-break time for me. We went to [Australia] New Zealand, Alice Springs. This was the real hard crunch, the hard end of being the Princess of Wales. There were thousands of press following us. We were away six weeks and the first day we went to this school in Alice Springs. It was hot, I was jet-lagged, being sick. I was too thin. The whole world was focusing on me every day. I was in the front of the papers. I thought that this was just so appalling, I hadn’t done something specific like climb Everest or done something wonderful like that. However, I came back from this engagement and I went to my lady-in-waiting, cried my eyes out and said: ‘Anne, I’ve got to go home, I can’t cope with this.’ She was devastated, too, because it was her first job. So that first week was such a traumatic week for me, I learned to be royal in inverted commas in one week. I was thrown into the deep end. Now I prefer it that way. Nobody ever helped me at all. They’d be there to criticize me, but never there to say ‘Well done.

You’re an idiot, Julian Haites.” I swallow, concentrate on making sure my face doesn’t show I’m disappointed she said no. “One of these days you’re going to say yes . . .” She pulls a big, apologetic smile. “I don’t think I will . . .” Put my hands on my head and breathe out. “You are my Everest.” She gives me a little look and shakes her head. “People die trying to climb Mount Everest.” I stare over at her. “Not afraid of dying.

Sarah thought the choir were very brave to stand outside singing on such a chilly day. The sky was threatening snow too. If it hadn’t been for an interview for a sales assistant position at Woolworths, she’d have stayed home with Nan. A weather-worn man, a row of medals across the chest of his overcoat, patted her arm. He was the one who’d held the collection tin in front of her as she stopped amid the bustle of Christmas shoppers

Whenever I plan for a Hike or Trekking to mountains or forests, generally I go alone without anyone's help but if it is high altitude then I arrange for helping people or locals to bring the tents and all. It is not fear or underestimation of myself but over confidence might sometime be dangerous, for example to trek up and down on mount Everest takes 52 days and even highly trained hikers use oxygen supplements, acclimatization kits, ropes, settling zones and even they return back after some point of time, My trekking experience so far were never failure stories but for low altitudes such as shenbhagathoppu or Rajgir, I do not need any ones help, but for higher altitude, I should not be over confident but meanwhile trekking is not only for health and challenge reason but also spiritual and scientific reasons. I am thinking to complete the higher altitude trek without spending single rupees, I will spend for eating downside not for bringing my luggage, I will try to do it myself - Trekking high altitude by myself stories.,

Energy is the most penetrative force, focus on the main thing and you will climb Everest without a breathing mask.

Working in an unhealthy, unbalanced culture is a lot like climbing Mount Everest—we adapt to our surroundings. Even though the conditions are dangerous, climbers know to spend time at base camp to adapt. In time, their bodies will get accustomed to the conditions so that they can persevere. We do the same thing in an unhealthy culture. If the conditions were violent or shocking, with a threat of layoffs every single day, we would never stay. But when the conditions are more subtle, things like office politics, opportunism, occasional rounds of layoffs and a general lack of trust among colleagues, we adapt.

Everest Base Camp Trek -14 Days is in the foothill of the world’s highest mountain, Mt. Everest expedition (8848m). The route leading to Everest Base Camp is simply fascinating. Moreover, the trek also explores the Sagarmatha National Park. Everest base camp is a fantastic opportunity to enjoy the Sherpa habitat and culture. Apart from Mount Everest (8848m), Everest Base CampTrek features the Sagarmatha National Park. The park is home to several rare species of plants and wildlife. The trek boasts merry villages like Namche Bazaar, Tengboche, Dingboche Island Peak, Mount Lobuche East Peak, and Mount Ama Dablam Expedition.

Everest Base Camp Trek -14 Days is in the foothill of the world’s highest mountain, Mt. Everest expedition (8848m). The route leading to Everest Base Camp is simply fascinating. Moreover, the trek also explores the Sagarmatha National Park. Everest base camp is a fantastic opportunity to enjoy the Sherpa habitat and culture. Apart from Mount Everest (8848m), Everest Base CampTrek features the Sagarmatha National Park. The park is home to several rare species of plants and wildlife. The trek boasts merry villages like Namche Bazaar, Tengboche, Dingboche Island Peak, Mount Lobuche East Peak, and Mount Ama Dablam Expedition. Read more Article

You become a better writer by being fortunate enough to be a good writer who writes every day, who edits ferociously, who worries over every word as if you are laying a path with diamonds. There are no tricks. No short cuts. No magic course or tutor or how to guide. Each book is climbing Everest without oxygen and, if you are talented enough or lucky enough to get published, it is unlikely that your book will sell enough copies to pay you royalties equivalent to a teacher's annual salary. And if you write another book, you start again, you reinvent the wheel, you take another bag of diamonds and lay them one at a time in a new direction. Those who cannot write have as much chance of learning to write as those who can't fly are drawn to clifftops to try and fly.

I later learn it’s called an altitude-simulation tent, and when the generator is hooked up it sucks the O2 out of the tent and helps the body produce more red blood cells. It makes your cardio system work like you’re sleeping on top of Mount Everest. I’d have to bet I’m the only guy on the Upper West Side of NYC with an inflatable raft, an oxygen deprivation tank, a tent, and a SEAL in his apartment. I get into my bed and open the window in our room. I suck in the cold NY air coming into my apartment off Central Park. It feels great. As I fall asleep I think about the lack of oxygen in SEAL’s tent and again think to myself… I’m such a pussy.

WHAT HAPPENED ON that day—when the Cretaceous ended with a bang and the dinosaurs’ death warrant was signed—was a catastrophe of unimaginable scale that, thankfully, humankind has never experienced. A comet or an asteroid—we aren’t sure which—collided with the Earth, hitting what is now the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico. It was about six miles (ten kilometers) wide, or about the size of Mount Everest. It was probably moving at a speed of around 67,000 miles per hour (108,000 kilometers per hour), more than a hundred times faster than a jet airliner. When it slammed into our planet, it hit with the force of over 100 trillion tons of TNT, somewhere in the vicinity of a billion nuclear bombs’ worth of energy. It plowed some twenty-five miles (forty kilometers) through the crust and into the mantle, leaving a crater that was over 100 miles (160 kilometers) wide.

Having the right equipment is often the difference between success and failure. To insert a screw, a carpenter doesn’t use a knife. When you’re under anesthesia, you don’t want your surgeon using a chainsaw. A climber on Mount Everest won’t use dollar store equipment. Professionals are picky about using the right equipment as they know it can be dangerous if they aren’t. Life can be dangerous, too, so it’s essential that you use the right equipment.

The tallest mountains generally get the most attention. Fourteen of the world’s peaks are more than 26,247 feet high. The region about 25,000 feet is known as a mountain’s “death zone,” an altitude the human body can only endure for a few days…when Tenzing Norgay reached the summit of Mount Everest in 1953, he reverenced the mountain as Chomolungma, the “Mother Goddess of the World.” By contrast, after finished the ascent, Edmund Hillary wisecracked to a member of the team, “well, we’ve knocked the bastard off.” Some folks seem tone-deaf to mystery.

I have climbed up Everest Mountain to put up your flag. Do you see my voice? I practiced four hours daily for three years to win you. Do you see my voice? I worked less and studied more to receive you. Do you see my voice? I put a smile on my face every time I come to you. Do you see my voice? I come early every day to you and I was never late because I like you. Do you see my voice? I feel worried when you are away because you are the source of protection. Do you see my voice? I curse you not because of you but because no one asked me to stop. Do you see my voice? I hate you because I feel I do not belong to you. Do you see my voice? My face never greets you because of your actions. Do you see my voice? I took a day off work to celebrate your birthday. Do you see my voice? I do not know everything about you but I trust you. Do you see my voice?

The Gilkey Memorial is a grisly necessity because corpses rarely make it down the mountain in one piece. For Everest losses, families sometimes send a recovery team. This doesn't happen on K2. The Savage Mountain devours its victims during the long winter beteween climbing seasons. It encases the torsos in ice and grates them against the rocks, only to spit out the digested remains decades later, scattering limbs among the avalanche debris. When Art Gilkey's team gathered stones to honor their friend in 1953, they started a morbid tradition. To keep the campsites sanitary, climbers began using the memorial as a place to dispose of the fingers, pelvic bones, arms, heads, and legs found in the glacial melt. Burying these scraps under the Gilkey Memorial felt more respectful than leaving them to the ravens. For more than half a century, the memorial has been a place to caution the living and consecrate the dead. Mountaineers attempting K2 visit the site to remind themselves of what they are getting into......On hot days, the cairn stews with the scent of defrosting flesh, and the odor clings to mourners' hair and clothing.” (Buried in the Sky, p. 102).

YOUNG HAD BEEN AT ZERMATT climbing with Herford during the soft summer of 1914, when all of Europe glowed with weather so beautiful and fine that it would be remembered for a generation, invoked by all those who sought to recall a time before the world became a place of mud and sky, with only the zenith sun to remind the living that they had not already been buried and left for dead. Stunned by a mix of emotions—horror, incredulity, morbid anticipation, fear, and confusion—Young returned to London to find “the writing of madmen already on the wall.” He recalled, “I attended the peace meeting in Trafalgar Square, the last protest of those who had grown up in the age of civilized peace: and then the dogs of war were off in full cry.” Forty years later, near the end of his days, he would write, “After the hardening effects of two wars it is difficult to recall the devastating collapse of the structure of life, and all its standards, which the recrudescence of barbarous warfare denoted for our generation.

Here's Tuukka: better than six foot tall, got that rangy Nordic thing, like he skis and shoots and he can do that all day and still make the hot tub a real special place for a group of inclined ladies and then get up the next morning eat a bear for breakfast and log cabin motherfucker his way up Everest or what the fuck you want.

uppermost

I don’t want anyone to have to fall into a crevasse, see people die on Everest or in Antarctica, or have to amputate their own arm to feel like they’ve had a good time.

[Everest’s] fatality rate - the percentage of climbers who went above Base Camp and died - had averaged 0.7 the previous decade [1998 - 2008]…In 2008, the fatality rate of those leaving [K2] base camp for a summit bid was 30.5%, higher than the casualty rate at Omaha Beach on D-Day.

I fell into climbing, so to speak, a willy-nilly response to a crushing bout of depression that began in my mid-thirties. The disorder reduced my chronic low self-regard to a bottomless pit of despair and misery. I recoiled from myself and my life, and came very close to suicide. Then, salvation. On a family vacation in Colorado, I discovered the rigors and rewards of mountain climbing, and gradually came to see the sport as my avenue of escape. I found that a punishing workout regimen held back the darkness for hours each day. Blessed surcease. I also gained hard muscle and vastly improved my endurance, two novel sources of pride.

Climbing down a mountain is a lot more dangerous than climbing up. If you’re going to get yourself killed, that’s generally when it happens. In this case, we had the added problem of exhaustion and blindness and one other little detail, my crampons. They were so-called switchblade crampons, good for technical climbing but prone to clog up in wet or sticky snow. Pretty quickly, the accumulated snow extends down beneath the blade tips and suddenly you’re better equipped for skiing than clinging to the mountainside. So here goes. I move, commit and plant my weight on what I believe to be that hill. Wrong. I step onto nothing but air and come whipping off the front of the face. The rope snaps taut, and pulls Mike right off his feet. Both of us start to slide. We take our ice axes, jam them into the hill, and both of us roll our body weight on top of them to stop the fall. We do this another two or three times before we get all the way down. Mike later described the experience as “somewhat unnerving.” Little did he guess what lay dead ahead. Except for some rips in my down suit and a whole lot of wounded pride, I was fine, and heartily relieved. We were back on the South Col—practically home free. In less than an hour of easy traverse we were going to be in those tents, in those sleeping bags, drinking hot tea and putting the long, exhausting day to bed.

Neal, Mike and Klev somehow did find High Camp that night, but were on their hands and knees by the time they did. None of them had anything left. They weren’t going to return for us; they couldn’t. The Sherpas in camp wouldn’t. There was no one else to try, except for the Russian, Anatoli Boukreev. That day, Anatoli had forsaken his duty as a guide. While everyone was struggling up and down the ridge to the summit, or stacked up like cordwood at the Hillary Step, Anatoli climbed for himself, by himself, without oxygen. He just went straight up, tagged the summit, and came straight back down. Because he lacked oxygen, he couldn’t persist in the cold, and was forced to retreat to the shelter of his tent. So Boukreev had been in his tent recovering for hours, and if that was where his story had ended that night, the climbing community would have stripped the flesh right off his bones. They are not a forgiving bunch. But Anatoli did what no one else could, or would do. He went out into that storm three times, searching both for Scott Fischer, who froze to death on the mountain, about twelve hundred feet above the South Col, and for us. Boukreev twice was driven back to camp by the wind and cold. The third time he located our little huddle by the face and brought in each of the three Fischer climbers—Tim, Charlotte and Sandy. He left behind Yasuko and me, the Hall climbers.

Of the eight clients and three guides in my group, five of us, including myself, never made it to the top. Of the six who summited, four were later killed in the storm. They included our thirty-five-year-old expedition leader, Rob Hall, a gentle and humorous New Zealander of mythic mountaineering prowess. Before he froze to death in a snow hole near the top of Everest, Rob would radio a heartbreaking farewell to his pregnant wife, Jan Arnold, at their home in Christchurch. Another sad fatality was diminutive Yasuko Namba, forty-seven, whose final human contact was with me, the two of us huddled together through that awful night, lost and freezing in the blizzard on the South Col, just a quarter mile from the warmth and safety of camp. Four other climbers also perished in the storm, making May 10, 1996, the deadliest day on Everest in the seventy-five years since the intrepid British schoolmaster, George Leigh Mallory, first attempted to climb the mountain.

Just as we received the radio message, a group of Sherpas came running down the valley toward us. They were dragging something, which turned out to be Makalu Gau, whose feet had been destroyed by the cold. He could not stand. Now we had a problem. We talked about it, and I told the others that I couldn’t get on the helicopter and leave Makalu. I think that was the right thing to do, but that wasn’t why I said it. I didn’t want to second-guess myself every day for the rest of my life. Then we saw the Squirrel. The shiny green machine rose directly above us, and moved up the valley, ascended toward us and then just disappeared off the face. I thought to myself, This guy is not stupid. This was a supremely dumb idea. If he puts the machine down for any reason and cannot take off, he is a dead man. He’s got to know that. He was up there in civilian clothes. He was not a climber. He did not have the clothing. He did not have the experience. He did not have the skills. He’d be trapped above the Khumbu Icefall, two thousand of the most vicious feet of real estate on earth. Altitude sickness would kill him before he could walk out of there.

On clear days you can see a steady plume of ice and snow streaming for a mile or so off Everest’s summit. This is the mountain’s distinctive white banner, highlighted against the cobalt sky, and a signal that the jet stream, with its winds of 150 to 200 miles an hour, is screaming right over Everest, as it does for most of the year. No one tries to reach the top in these conditions. But at one time in the spring, and once more in the fall, the banner fades. The ferocious winds lift off Everest, offering a brief window of opportunity for you to go up there, try to tag the top and then hope that you get back down alive.

For entertainment there was a stereo. Each morning after the Sherpas had burned juniper and chanted their Buddhist prayers, Robin Williams roared “Good Morning, Vietnam!” across the camp, blasting us from our sleeping bags. The rest of the day was rock and roll, plus Indian music from the cooking tent. We had a couple of parties, for which we broke out the beer. Some people ended up dancing on our dining tent’s stone table. It wasn’t a mosh pit, exactly, but not unlike one. There were also theme-night dinners, when the food and its preparation and everyone’s dress were supposed to complement one team member’s salient characteristic.

It can get extremely warm around Base Camp on a sunny day in May. A thermometer left out in the afternoon sun by the Hillary expedition reportedly registered a high temperature of about 150 degrees.

One of the body’s most important physiological adaptations to high altitude is the millions and millions of extra oxygen-bearing red blood cells that your bone marrow produces in response to chronic oxygen deprivation. The extra oxygen-carrying capacity is critical. Still, you thirst for air when high on the big mountains. Breathing is such hard work that 40 percent of your total energy output is devoted to it. Each day you can blow off an amazing seven liters of water through your lungs alone. That leaves you constantly dehydrated. Also, you can no longer sleep or eat. Once in the Death Zone, above 25,000 feet, the thought of food becomes repugnant to most people. Even if you can force yourself to chew and swallow something, your body will not digest it. Yet you are burning about twelve thousand calories a day, which means you’re consuming your own tissue—about three pounds of muscle a day—in order to stay alive.

That season there’d been heavy snow on the trail up to Everest Base Camp, about seven miles beyond Lobuje. Yaks still couldn’t negotiate the final stretch, meaning that all gear, equipment and food had to be carried the last few miles on human, mostly Sherpa, backs. Even beneath Lobuje the path was steep and deep with snow. At one turn we saw a bloody yak leg sticking straight out of a snowbank. We were told the limb simply had snapped off as the animal had struggled through the snow. In Lobuje, we received word that one of our Sherpas had fallen 150 feet into a crevasse and broken his leg while scouting trails on the mountain above us. We all spent an extra day in Lobuje while Rob Hall and one of his guides went ahead to help manage the Sherpa’s rescue and evacuation.

By far the predominant physical feature of Base Camp is the great Khumbu Icefall, which begins just a quarter mile away and stretches up the mountain for two miles and almost two thousand vertical feet. The Icefall is the midsection of the Khumbu Glacier. It starts above Base Camp at a declivity where the glacier pushes itself out over a precipice, creating giant blocks of ice that tumble downward with an ear-splitting roar. These so-called seracs are the size of small office buildings. They can weigh hundreds of tons. Once inside the Icefall, they continue to groan and thunder along. The whole dangerous mess moves downhill at about four feet a day in the summertime.

Our plan was simple. We were going to get up with the sun and climb all day to get to High Camp on the South Col late that afternoon. We would then rest for three or four hours, get up again and climb all night and through the next day to hit Everest’s summit by noon on May 10, and absolutely no later than two o’clock. This point had been drilled into us over the preceding week: Absolutely no later than two. If you’re not moving fast enough to get to the summit by two, you’re not moving fast enough to get back down before darkness traps you on the mountain.

By noon, three climbers from our group descended toward me: Stuart Hutchison, Lou Kasischke and John Taske (Frank Fischbeck already had turned back). They said there was a slowdown at the uppermost part of the mountain at Hillary Step, a natural obstacle on the ridge leading directly to the summit. Because of the bottleneck of climbers, the three of them realized there was no way they could make the summit by two. So Stuart, Lou and John decided to come down, and as they came by me, standing alone, getting colder and colder on the Balcony, they said, “Well, come on down with us.” “Uh, I’ve really put myself in a box here,” I answered. “I’ve promised Hall I will stay put. We have no radio, so I have no way to tell him that I’m leaving. It would be as if I never honored that commitment at all. I just don’t think I can do that now.” They said good-bye and continued on down. Three wise men. In retrospect I clearly should have joined them. But I didn’t then sense I was in any imminent danger. It was a perfect day. Also, even though I knew that I was not going to climb the mountain that day, I still hated to give up. To go down with them would be to absolutely concede I’d failed.

About four in the afternoon, Everest time—twenty-two hours into the storm—the miracle occurred: I opened my eyes. Several improbable, if not impossible, events would follow in succession. I would stand and struggle alone back to High Camp. Next day I’d stand again and negotiate the Lhotse Face. Then there would be the highest-altitude helicopter rescue ever. Those were the big things. The miracle was a quiet thing: I opened my eyes and was given a chance to try. In my confused state, I at first believed that I was warm and comfortable in my bed at home, with Texas sunlight streaming in through the window. But as my head cleared I saw my gloveless hand directly in front of my face, a gray and lifeless thing. I smashed it onto the ice. It bounced, making a sound like a block of wood. This had the marvelous effect of focusing my attention: I am not in my own bed. I am somewhere on the mountain—I don’t know where. I can’t see at any distance, but I know that I am alone. It would take a while to recapture the previous night in my mind. When I did, I assumed the others all were rescued and that for some reason I was overlooked, left behind. Was it something I said? Innately, I knew that the cavalry was not coming. If they were going to be there, they already would have been there. I was on my own. One mystery still unsolved is why I no longer was lying next to Yasuko. She remained where Stuart Hutchison and the Sherpas found, and left, us that morning. But I awoke from the coma alone and a good distance away that afternoon. I can only surmise that sometime between morning and late day I semi-revived and somehow made my way (perhaps fifty yards) in the direction of High Camp before collapsing again.

Both my hands were completely frozen. My face was destroyed by the cold. I was profoundly hypothermic. I had not eaten in three days, or taken water for two days. I was lost and I was almost completely blind.

Try climbing Mt. Everest with skates on. Typical day to day.

Before 2008, only 278 people had stood on K2’s summit. Everest’s summit roll was 4,115, and its fatality rate—the percentage of climbers who went above Base Camp and died—had averaged 0.7 for the previous decade. Although the Himalayan Database crunches the numbers for Everest, no accurate statistics exist for K2. Climbers of the Savage Mountain can’t reliably approximate their chances of survival and don’t want to. In 2008, the fatality rate of those leaving Base Camp for a summit bid was 30.5 percent, higher than the casualty rate at Omaha Beach on D-day. Among high-altitude climbers if not statisticians, there’s no comparison: K2 is more lethal than Everest.

The Gilkey Memorial is a grisly necessity because corpses rarely make it down the mountain in one piece. For Everest losses, families sometimes send a recovery team. This doesn’t happen on K2. The Savage Mountain devours its victims during the long winter between climbing seasons. It encases the torsos in ice and grates them against the rocks, only to spit out the digested remains decades later, scattering limbs among avalanche debris. When Art Gilkey’s team gathered stones to honor their friend in 1953, they started a morbid tradition. To keep their campsites sanitary, climbers began using the memorial as a place to dispose of the fingers, pelvic bones, arms, heads, and legs found in the glacial melt. Burying these scraps under the Gilkey Memorial felt more respectful than leaving them to the ravens. For more than half a century, the memorial has been a place to caution the living and consecrate the dead. Mountaineers attempting K2 visit the site to remind themselves of what they are getting into.