Nick Rice still hadn’t left his tent. He had spilled a pot of snowmelt on his gear and was drying a soggy sock over a burner. By the time he had finished, Nick decided that August 1 wasn’t going to be the day he would reach the summit of K2. He’d lost too much time. The mountain would still be there next season. “I wanted to make sure I would be, too,” he recalled. A simple mistake—sloshing a pot of water—probably saved his life.
