From the beginning, Hall had planned that May 10 would be our summit day. “Of the four times I’ve summitted,” he explained, “twice it was on the tenth of May. As the Sherpas would put it, the tenth is an ‘auspicious’ date for me.” But there was also a more down-to-earth reason for selecting this date: the annual ebb and flow of the monsoon made it likely that the most favorable weather of the year would fall on or near May 10.
