And I smashed it. Having left Makalu’s base camp twenty-four hours later, brutally hungover, I blasted to the peak, all 8,485 metres of it in one hit, leading from the front with my small team and trailblazing through heavy snow, high wind, and disorientating cloud cover until I’d reached the top. This in itself was an achievement. Nobody had climbed Makalu that season, though a number of teams had tried, only to be pushed back by the treacherous conditions.
