"Just under the South Summit I could make out the shape where Rob Hall lay. He had died up here some twenty-four months earlier. His body, half covered in drift-snow, remained unchanged. Frozen in time. A stark reminder that those who survive the mountain do so because she allows you to. But when she turns, she really turns. And the further into her grasp you are, the greater the danger. Right now, we were about as far into her grasp as it was possible to venture. And I knew it. Rob's last words to his wife, Jan, had been: "Please don't worry too much." They are desperate words from a mountaineer who bravely understood he was going to die. I tried to shake his memory from my oxygen-starved brain. But I couldn't. "