My left hand ached from supporting most of my body weight as my right hand sought purchase among the cracks in the craggy surface. The toes of my crampons dug into the ice as my heels hovered out over nothing. Extreme fatigue and a howling icy cold wind battered all of us as we inched our way up the cliff face towards the summit. I glanced to my left to check on Christobal Slater from New York. He was the only other American on the climb, but this was his third climb up K2. I was relying on his experience to fill in the gaps of my own.
Some thirty feet above us Anders was dangling from a line he'd just set. He'd been pulled from his purchase when Yvgeniy Chevryn slipped and lost his hold on the cliff. Chevryn was no rookie, but fatigue had let him make a rookie mistake.
We had begun our
