Any blisters on your shoulder blades would weep painfully, as the weight of the pack went back on. Then somehow your mind would shut out the pain, fo… - Bear Grylls

At the end of the ridge we leaned on our ice axes and looked up.
Above us was the legendary Hillary Step, the forty-foot ice wall that formed one of the mountain’s most formidable hurdles.
Cowering from the wind, I tried to make out a route up it.
This ice face was to be our final and hardest test. The outcome would determine whether we would join those few who have touched that hallowed ground above.
If so, I would become only the thirty-first British climber ever to have done this.
The ranks were small.
I started up cautiously. It was a long way to come to fall here.
Points in. Ice axe in. Test them. Then move.
It was slow progress, but it was progress. And steadily I moved up the ice.
I had climbed steep pitches like this so many times before, but never twenty-nine thousand feet up in the sky. At this height, in this rarefied thin air, and with 40 mph of wind trying to blow us off the ice, I was struggling. Again.
I stopped and tried to steady myself.
Then I made that old familiar mistake — I looked down.
Beneath me, either side of the ridge, the mountain dropped away into abysses.
Idiot, Bear.
I tried to refocus on only what was in front of me and above.
Up. Keep moving up.
So I kept climbing.
It was the climb of my life, and nothing was going to stop me.

Light can only shine through broken vessels. That is the gift of our scars.

Never depend on those luck moments – they are gifts – but instead always build your own back-up plan.