'He appeared, without a word, in the tent's entrance, covered in ice. He looked like anyone would after spending over twenty-four hours in a hurricane at over 8,000 metres. In winter. In the Karakoram. He was so exhausted he couldn't speak.'
Of all the games mountaineers play on the world's high mountains, the hardest – and cruellest – is climbing the fourteen peaks over 8,000 metres in the bitter...