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If we had been climbing only for our own reasons, to get to the Shoulder and establish Camp IV, Scott and I would not have pushed the head-wall in the conditions that now engulfed us. It was the very real possibility that Chantal—and perhaps Thor, as well—might die without our help that drove us to such an extreme and dangerous effort.

Scott and I were roped together with a fifty-foot line I had scrounged at Camp III. By now, I had a foreboding sense of imminent disaster. “Man,” I said to Scott, “let’s not get ourselves killed doing this.” The slope we were climbing seemed triggered to avalanche at any moment. Scott, who was above me, sat down on the slope, facing out. Almost in a panic, I started digging frantically with my ice ax, trying to excavate a hole I could hunker down in if the avalanche came. My thought was that this pocket in the snow would protect me from the brunt of the blow if the slope cut loose.

And then, sure enough, it came. Scott never saw it. I had time just to look up and see a wave of snow swallow him before he disappeared from sight. I quickly tucked my head and upper body into my hole, thrust the pick of my ax into the slope, and put all my weight on top of it. The slide took so long to carry Scott down the slope and then past me that I began to think, Wow, I got away with it!

Then—boom! The rope came tight in a wrenching jolt, and I was plucked out of my little hole like a knife out of butter. I started careening down the slope fifty feet above Scott. There was just enough time for me to anticipate the 8,000-foot fall to the glacier—and to oblivion.

The instincts born of my years of RMI training clicked in. Arrest! Arrest! my brain screamed. Even as I cartwheeled down the slope, I flipped onto my stomach and got my head uphill, with the ax held in both hands under my chest. I dug and dug with the pick, only to feel it slice through soft snow. Scott, I later learned, had been unable to get in position even to attempt a self-arrest.

We had probably fallen a couple of hundred feet when all of a sudden my ax bit into some ice and we came to a stop. My self-arrest had finally done the job. I rolled over and yelled out, “Scott, are you okay?”

I couldn’t have been more relieved by his answer. “Yeah, but my nuts are killing me!” he screamed. If Scott was together enough to complain about his harness jamming his balls, he had to be all right.

All the same, we had come within inches of taking the big plunge. That was by far the closest brush with death I had experienced in my sixteen years of mountaineering.

Scott and I pulled ourselves together. I got Thor on the radio and warned him not to come down the slope that had just avalanched. “Go over to your left,” I pleaded, “toward this ice-cliffy area, and maybe rappel.” Then we climbed up, still hoping to guide Thor and Chantal down. Finally, at 25,500 feet, we closed the gap. “Man,” Thor exclaimed, “am I glad to see you guys!”

We laid Chantal on her back, right there in the snow. I managed to pry her eyelids open and douse her eyes with anesthetic drops. Then we tied in as a rope of four, with Scott going first and myself in the rear as anchor. Late that afternoon, we at last made it down to Camp III. We got Chantal into a sleeping bag. I checked her feet; they weren’t frostbitten, just terribly cold. We melted pot after pot of snow to nurse both Thor and Chantal with hot drinks.

Throughout the retreat, Chantal never thanked us once. Instead, over and over again, she pealed, “I made the summit! I’m so happy!” It would not be the last time this strong and beautiful Frenchwoman would use up all her reserves getting to the top of an 8,000er only to collapse and depend on other climbers to get her down the mountain.

Scott and I knew what the rescue had cost us. Our summit attempt was now on indefinite hold. The more pressing duty was to get Chantal, still exhausted, and Thor, in only marginally better shape, safely down the mountain.

By midnight on August 6, all of us had made it back to base camp in one piece.