I looked down at my hands - the skin was white and dead, the nails easily slid off the ends of my fingers and the red, angry flesh was revealed underneath.

The smell was weird, like the meat counter at Kaune’s, it had the sharp stink of hanging meat.

I knew then that I had to get off of that mountain. I wanted to be home so bad.

I was 23 years old, at 25,000 feet, and 10,000 miles away from the place I desperately wanted to be. I was sitting in the snow, on the side of a mountain I still love.

As I sat there smelling my fingers rot, I knew that I had climbed up to this point and, by putting one frozen foot in front of the other, I could eventually get down.

I packed up my gear and headed down to a life that was forever changed.

~ Quinn Simons writing of Gurla Mandhata, 1997 ~

In 1997, the mountain nearly killed him, and took away his hands and feet.

Eleven years later, Quinn will return to Gurla Mandhata to climb... to heal...and to change lives...

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