By the acclimatization climb to Nyanang Ri, at 7,071 meters, two of the original six team members were on their way out. "I'm sorry, but charity ends at 5,000 meters," McIntyre tells Nick Prescott, the least experienced of the climbers. Indeed, McIntyre is on a summit mission to be stalled by no one, and Scott, in his trademark philosophical approach to mountaineering, tries to make peace between the group's remaining members. But a second acclimatization climb on 7,445-meter Pungpa Ri hastens the division, as Scott questions his own age and lack of ice skills, while McIntyre and Baxter-Jones leave him in their frozen dust. It isn't until their summit attempt that harmony seems possible and the three set out in ideal conditions. By morning, however, Scott is coughing up blood, Baxter-Jones is vomiting his meal of rotten fish, and McIntyre, who is irrepressibly itchy to move ahead, barely dodges a falling rock (an ominous omen, as he would die from a rock strike only two months later). But the trio still manages to summit flawlessly in light alpine form, lending support to Prescott's wise summation: "Mountains are all about decisions. The climbing is the easy part."

Anyone looking for an Annapurna-style drama may be disappointed with this straightforward account told in interchanging entries by McIntyre and Scott, but readers who savor a realistic description of the misery, personal discord, and sudden catharsis that define high-altitude climbing will feel duly sated by Scott's wizened reflections and McIntyre's technical detail. --Lolly Merrell