Chill winds.
Oxygen deprivation made my vision swim; I'd lost feeling in my extremities. Fifteen hundred yards to the peak; I knew I would certainly never make it down, and it appeared I wouldn't make it up, either. A failure on both counts.
Idiocy. What was I
(more) trying to prove? That I lacked the common sense to climb with a partner? Olympus Mons was the tallest peak in the solar system. I'd scaled Everest before I could legally drink. Arrogance, then, not idiocy. A different flavor of folly.
Pride goeth before the fall, they say. It also goeth before the climb.(less)
