Siguniang, 2004

The approach took ten hours: yak trails, grassy slopes, then scree, firn and rock glazed with ice. Higher up, the rhythm became very simple. A step and an in-breath, a step and an out-breath, fifteen or twenty steps, then a pause with my forehead resting on the ice axe. Kirill and I hardly spoke; up there every word costs a breath.

That evening, in the tent, I wrote in my notebook that two minutes leaning on an ice axe can mean more than a month of holiday, that tea had never tasted so good, and that my whole body seemed to have turned into lungs.