- Narrator: The first barrier in the ascent of Everest is a huge ice fall. It looks like the tongue of some gigantic demon. More lives have been lost here than on Everest itself. It rises 1600 feet--a world of dangerous, fragile beauty; a cascade of massive blocks of ice moving imperceptibly from the glacier above, pushed by the weight of centuries of the snows of Everest. Without warning it can shift and break into an avalanche of millions of tons of ice. On the other side of this barrier lies the most challenging ski run in the world.
- [After stopping dangerously close to a bottomless crevasse.]
- Narrator: I am alive. They say I skied 6600 feet in 2 minutes and 20 seconds. I fell 1320 feet. I stopped 250 feet from the crevasse. Numbers have meaning in the world below. But in this almost airless world, what do they mean? Was it a success or a failure? That I am alive must be the will of some higher power.