00, Base Camp · Before the Mountain

5,364 metres. The last altitude where the body still agrees. Tents, rope, oxygen, and a wall of ice standing three vertical kilometres above the moraine.

01, Icefall · The Moving Labyrinth

The glacier walks downhill about a metre a day. Seracs, crevasses and ladders. You cross it before it notices you are there.

02, Cwm · Valley of Silence

Above the icefall the world opens into a flat white basin held between two enormous walls. No wind. Only light, and the sound of your own lungs.

03, Face · Above the Clouds

Blue ice at fifty degrees. A single fixed line, anchor to anchor, with the weather sitting far below your boots.

04, Death Zone · Above 8,000 m

Dark rock, hard snow, stars. Nothing lives at this altitude. You are only borrowing the time.

05, Summit · Top of the World

8,849 metres. Sunrise on a sea of cloud, and every other mountain on earth beneath you. There is nothing above. Only the long way down.