It was 4:00 a.m., and I was sure I was getting close to the top. The wind had pelted my face with snow and ice for the past three hours. Every few steps, the train of people stopped. Below me, hundreds of specks of light from climbers' lamps clung to the mountainside in a zigzag pattern. At each pause, I shut my eyes. When I opened them again, I was looking down at the half-metre between my feet and the heels of my former college roommate. The short respite hardly counteracted the fact that each breath contained less than half of the oxygen I am used to back at home.
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