This is the human paradox of altitude: that it both exalts the individual mind and erases it. Those who travel to mountain tops are half in love with themselves, and half in love with oblivion.

The unknown is so inflammatory to the imagination because it is an imaginatively malleable space: a projection-screen onto which a culture or an individual can throw their fears and their aspirations. Like Echo's cave, the unknown will answer back with whatever you shout at it.

As de Saussure said, risk-taking brings with it its own reward: it keeps a "continual agitation alive" in the heart. Hope, fear. Hope, fear - this is the fundamental rhythm of mountaineering. Life, it frequently seems in the mountains, is more intensely lived the closer one gets to its extinction: we never feel so alive as when we have nearly died.

Those who travel to mountain-tops are half in love with themselves, and half in love with oblivion.

Keeping in mind the old mountain adage that the longer you take to set up your bivy site, the shorter the bivy you have to endure, we ended up taking two hours to dig the snow cave.

The altimeter had been damaged along the way, but the few bottles that we brought along to wash down the ordinary expedition rations were fine. True, a bottle gives only a vague indication of altitude, but can you drink an altimeter?