Stephen Venables and three companions were returning triumphant from the first ascent of Panch Chuli V - a remote Himalayan peak on the borders of India, Nepal and Tibet. They had been gone from the top camp for twenty-four hours and the fifth team member, Chris Bonington, was waiting anxiously. It was just before dawn when Bonington saw a torchlight plunging through the darkness and knew that something terrible had happened.Crashing through the black night, flung from rock to rock, Stephen Venables assumed that he was plunging to his death. Against all the odds, he survived a fall of three hundred feet. However, both his legs were broken, one gashed open to the bone. Stranded at 19,000 feet above a labyrinth of dangerous, chaotic glaciers, his predicament was desperate.This is the account of an escape, by one of the best known mountaineers of his generation. It is also a story of exploration - the exploration of a remote, unknown Himalayan valley and the less obvious, internal, exploration of a mind trying to come to terms with risk and death. Read Less