Learning to Breathe

'This passion of mine had started long ago when, as an inquisitive child, I scrambled up to the local pit muckstack. Later, as a teengage coal miner disillusioned with the world of dirt and darkness, I had fallen in love with real mountain climbing. That night, approaching the tent on the knife-edge ridge of a Himalayan peak, little did I know that this love affair was about to end. The following four days would be the most harrowing of my life.'