Lhotse

To get, yeah

... through the valley, over base camp, and we clapped eyes on, on Everest, and looked up through the ice fall, the Khumbu Icefall, the Western Cwm, the South Summit, the neighboring faces of Lhotse and Nuptse.

And what was extraordinary was my first sight of Everest was with you.

Mm-hmm.

[laughs]

... edge of the crevasse.

And remember the, uh, there's the other moment where, and this really happened, and, and Hillary writes about it, where they were, they were high up on the, on the Western Cwm, uh, or the Lhotse Face, which is, which is the sort of, it's the most exhausting part of climbing Everest.

And you just have to cut steps so that everyone can get supplies.

Instead, I set up a route to the left of the couloir.

I didn't want to go via the Lhotse face, because I was worried about the avalanche danger.

I remember trying to dig a platform in solid ice at Camp 3 for about five hours.

In the end, I managed to pitch the half of tent using an ice screw,

You can take a photograph beside Everest Base Camp, look up at the icefall, and then eventually begin walking back down the valley.

But for climbers attempting Everest, Lhotse, or Nuptse, it's the first serious obstacle standing between base camp and the higher mountain.

The route from Everest Base Camp to Camp One passes directly through it, which means every climber using the normal South Col route has to enter this maze of moving ice, climb through it, and then return through it during their acclimatization rotations.

Most of them will cross it several times over the course of an expedition.

I stagger backwards, fighting to keep my balance.

If I fall here, I will slide to my death down the Lhotse Face.

The beam of my headlamp dances as I tremble violently.

The figure twists its head, keeping its narrowed eyes trained on me.

Then there's Kanchenchanga at 8,586 meters, the highest peak in India and the furthest east of the 8,000ers.

The fourth is Lhotse, followed by Makalu, then Cho Oyu, Dholagiri 1, Manaslu, Nanga Parbat and Annapurna 1, which are all also in the Himalayas.

Then there's three in Karakoram, Gashobram 1, Broad Peak and Gashobram 2.

And the final on the list is back in the Himalayas called Shishapangamma, which is 8,027 meters high.