The Summit · Eleven Steps From the Edge · Pulse Beat
They reached the top at 5.40, in the first grey light, and for ten minutes it was the most beautiful place in the world. The curve of the earth lay below them, rose and violet. The whole Himalaya…
They reached the top at 5.40, in the first grey light, and for ten minutes it was the most beautiful place in the world.
The curve of the earth lay below them, rose and violet. The whole Himalaya spread out to the horizon, ridge on ridge, in a silence so deep that Anjali, standing at the very top in her red suit, put both hands over her mouth and wept without a sound. Helen took off her mitten and laid a hand flat on the snow. Marc, the schoolteacher, stood with his eyes closed and his lips moving, saying something in French.
Tashi stood a little apart and did what he always did, the thing he had never told anyone: he thanked the mountain, very quietly, in his grandfather's language, for letting them stay, and asked it to let them go.
Then the radio crackled. A voice he did not at first recognise: Mingma, from Camp Four, high and wrong. "Tashi. Tashi, come in. Dorje... Dorje has not come back. And the German is on the Col. By himself."
He stood very still.