A fourteen-year-old boy attempts to be the youngest person to reach the top of Mount Everest.

It's 1924 and the race to summit the world's highest mountain has been brought to a terrified pause by the shocking disappearance of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine high on the shoulder of Mt. Everest. By the following year, three climbers -- a British poet and veteran of the Great War, a young French Chamonix guide, and an idealistic young American -- find a way to take their shot at the top. They arrange funding from the grieving Lady Bromley, whose...

Canopy: A meditation on the age-old question about why we climb. The Minaret: In the height of the Ottoman Empire, the common people, Muslims, were forbidden to climb mountains. How one who was pious but a mountaineer at heart dealt with this edict. The Agony: Trapped high on a hard new route, a young climber is visited by a woman who once shared his fate, urging him to make the decisions to save himself. A High Refuge: Languedoc, the Pyrenees,...