ABSTRACT
‘To my joy and relief there was nothing but a little crest, a short snow slope only a few yards long, easier now, easier … I was on the highest point of the mountain, the summit of Nanga Parbat, 26,620 feet above sea-level. Nothing went up further anywhere. There was a small snow-plateau, a couple of mounds, and everything fell away on all sides from it. There I was on that spot, the target of my dreams. I was the first human being since creation’s dawn to set foot there … I felt as if I were floating high above everything, out of all relationship with the earth, severed from the world and all humanity. To the north, a hundred miles away, great ranges melted into the distance; to the east a similar sea of peaks, innumerable, ice-clad, unapproached….’
