HIGH PLACES: A 100-WORD STORY

Iversen was a man who loved the High Places.

Over the past seventeen years, he had scaled many of them, striding the crests of Annapurna, Kangchenjunga, and Lhotse.

He had lost three digits to frostbite during his 2009 ascent of the great Chomolungma, the mountain the Europeans called Everest. He had gone up the difficult north face, reckoning the missing toes a small price for the experience.

On his last expedition to the Himalayas, he had climbed K-2. Twice. Child’s play.

But when they asked Iversen to lead an attempt on K-Y, he declined, saying, “Now, that’s a slippery slope.”