High Altitude Leadership: What the World's Most Forbidding Peaks Teach Us About Success

Chapter 1. Danger #1 FEAR OF DEATH

Remember not to have a fatal accident, because the community will think climbing is a dangerous thing, your friends will be bummed . . . and you'll be dead.

—Kitty Calhoun, America's top female mountaineer in the 1990s, closing remarks at an American Alpine Club lecture

Time: July 20, 2007, Summit Day Location: K2, Pakistan

4:45 A.M.: Vapor from my breath immediately freezes on my beard. At twenty-five degrees below zero and 26,500 feet above sea level, I'm lucky to be breathing at all. The three members of our team are not using bottled oxygen, and at this altitude, there is barely one-third the oxygen at sea level. With so little oxygen reaching our brains and fingertips, we struggle to stay warm, think straight, ...