Midnight · Eleven Steps From the Edge · Pulse Beat
They left at eleven, in a line of headlamps along the fixed ropes, into the dark. The wind had not dropped as forecast. It came in gusts, hammering the ridge, and at the first of the steep snow the…
They left at eleven, in a line of headlamps along the fixed ropes, into the dark.
The wind had not dropped as forecast. It came in gusts, hammering the ridge, and at the first of the steep snow the Texas brothers turned back, a clean, sensible decision, and Tashi felt a flicker of admiration. By one in the morning there were nine of them left, spread out over four hundred metres of rope, and Peter, the German, was last.
At two, Tashi stopped on a ledge and looked down the line of tiny lights, and saw that one of them was not moving.
He went down. Peter was sitting in the snow with his oxygen mask off, his face grey in the beam. "I can't," he said, in a voice like a child's. "I can't."
"You can go down," said Tashi. "It's nothing. A good decision."
"It's not nothing," whispered Peter. He began, in a terrible quiet way, to cry. "I wanted so much."
Tashi knelt and put the mask back on him, very gently. Above them, in the wind, a voice called down the rope: Dorje, cheerful and far away. "Tashi! We have the Hillary Step! Come, come!"