Sublime

Because most of our gear was carried by yaks and human porters, my own backpack held little more than a jacket, a few candy bars, and my camera.

Hornbein and Unsoeld arrived on the summit at 6:15 P.M., just as the sun was setting, and were forced to spend the night in the open above 28,000 feet—at the time, the highest bivouac in history.

A 20-knot breeze raked the ridge, blowing a plume of spindrift far over the Kangshung Face, but overhead the sky was an achingly brilliant blue. Lounging in the sun at 28,700 feet inside my thick down suit, gazing across the roof of the world in a hypoxic stupor, I completely lost track of time.

Viesturs has not only mastered the death zone of Everest, but also the death zone of power. He knows how to stay aware, to keep his priorities straight and his ego in check. He doesn’t let fame, fortune, or success tempt him otherwise. He doesn’t let the goal obscure his values, even when victory seems within reach.

was not even wearing a Gore-Tex jacket and oversize

In the aftermath of Seema’s solo rescue, I’d learned a serious lesson: by using oxygen during my expedition, it had been possible to save her. Without it, the chances of me summoning up enough energy to conduct a rescue would have been slim to none. For that reason, from now on, I was climbing above the higher camps on an 8,000-er with bottled air,

Then Breashears offered his expedition’s supply of oxygen—fifty canisters that had been laboriously carried to 26,000 feet—to the ailing climbers and would-be rescuers on the Col. Even though this threatened to put his $5.5 million film project in jeopardy, he made the crucial gas available without hesitation.

Robert O’Neill’s The Operator: Firing the Shots That Killed Osama Bin Laden and My Years as a SEAL Team Warrior (O’Neill 2017).