Top of the World

I thought this article was fascinating and glimpse into something that has existed in most of us.

The sense of adventure and what it can cost.

 Death at 19,000 Feet

KHUMJUNG, Nepal—They came from six continents, each angling for a chance to reach the roof of the world. As harsh winter turned to spring, hundreds of climbers settled into what has become business as usual at the base camp below Mount Everest.
There were yoga classes, mountaineering training sessions and, for some high-end climbers, cocktail hours as they waited to conquer nature and fear and death. A team from Google Inc. had arrived to collect "Street View" images, while a Hollywood film crew was there to shoot scenes for an action movie about the calamitous 1996 events on Everest chronicled in the best-selling book "Into Thin Air."
Joby Ogwyn, an American stuntman, was getting ready to jump from the summit in a wing-suit, an exploit the Discovery Channel planned to broadcast live. "It's good to be climbing in the big range again," Mr. Ogwyn wrote on his Facebook page on April 17. "Power up."
But in the early hours of the next morning, while most of the foreign climbers slept, Kaji Sherpa and five teammates took a moment for a more somber activity: They prayed.
A veteran of six Everest expeditions, the 39-year-old knew how treacherous the first part of the day's journey—through a splintering section of glacier known as the Khumbu Icefall—could be. He knew that he and a colleague would each be carrying more than 60 pounds of supplies. And he worried about a 19-year-old brother-in-law, a climbing novice who had signed up to work on the expedition.~snip~