Photographs by cory richards photograph above by renan ozturk the wind slams into me, and i desperately grip my ice axes to keep from being ripped off the mountain face. When the wind subsides, i pound an aluminum stake into the snow and clip the rope to it. It wouldn rsquo t hold if i were to fall but gives me enough psychological comfort to continue. At a rock rampart i place an anchor and belay my partners, cory richards and renan ozturk, across the chasm. Ldquo nice lead, dude! rdquo cory shouts above the roar of the wind when he arrives. He climbs onward, slanting left, searching for a passage up through the granite and snow.

When renan reaches me, there is no room on my ledge, so he traverses out to his own perch. Cory carefully tiptoes the teeth of his crampons along a thin ledge above us and disappears from sight. We just stand there, together but alone, on the side of the snow plastered cliff more than three miles in the sky.

Rdquo we don rsquo t know what cory is doing above us, but we rsquo re so cold it doesn rsquo t matter. We rsquo re all still roped together, so it rsquo s crucial that none of us fall. The rope is supposed to be secured to the mountain to catch a fall, but mortal predicaments like this happen often in mountaineering. When there are no good anchors, your partners become your anchors, physically and emotionally. You must trust your life to their judgment and ability, and they entrust their lives to yours.

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Stretched to the limit, the team mdash which included left to right videographer renan ozturk, author mark jenkins, photographer cory richards, climber emily harrington, and expedition leader hilaree o rsquo neill mdash began running low on food on the hike out. Renan and i halt in a small rock recess overlooking the north face of the mountain. The wind swirls around our bodies, howling and biting at us like invisible hyenas.

I wonder, for at least the tenth time on this expedition, whether this is the end of our quest to climb the highest peak in myanmar mdash a journey that has pushed us to our physical and emotional limits. Far below us on the mountain, our other team members are pulling for us in spirit. The previous day we left hilaree o rsquo neill and emily harrington at camp 3, a tent nested on a snowy ridgeline, where our weary team had a bitter argument over who would try for the summit.

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I tell renan to take off his boots and place his feet underneath my down parka, against my chest. He has socks on, and my chest isn rsquo t exactly a furnace, but it rsquo s the best we can do. Our immediate goal remains far above us mdash the crest of the west ridge, glistening like the edge of a sword. When i reach the ridge and push my ice crusted face into the sun, it rsquo s like poking my head into heaven.

Renan and cory have dropped over the ridge to get out of the wind and discovered a stone platform hanging above the south face. After more than a week of climbing, this is the first time we can actually see the summit: a steep, shining pyramid of snow. But we can also see what we have left to climb: a menacing, serrated ridge of rock and snow, guarded by a dozen dagger like pinnacles. ldquo let rsquo s do an old school adventure, rdquo hilaree had said, ldquo an expedition to someplace still remote and unknown. After summiting everest, she climbed its neighbor, lhotse, with two torn ligaments in her ankle. We were both married with two kids and trying to find a way to balance family life with expeditions.

A plane will take you to the north or south pole, you can hop a helicopter to the base camp of everest or makalu, tourist boats cruise the nile and the amazon. Real remoteness mdash somewhere that requires days or even weeks of walking just to reach mdash has almost vanished from earth. Eventually, after bouncing ideas back and forth mdash pakistan, papua new guinea, kazakhstan mdash my enthusiasm got the best of me. Ldquo what about, rdquo i hesitated, ldquo hkakabo razi? rdquo hkakabo razi pronounced ka kuh bo rah zee is said to be the highest peak in southeast asia. It is a jagged massif of black rock and white glaciers that rises improbably out of the steaming green jungles of northern myanmar. Located just beyond the eastern edge of the himalaya, on the border with tibet, it was first measured by a british survey published in 1925 at 19,296 feet high. Getting to the mountain would require a two week trek through dense jungle riven with plunging gorges and inhabited by venomous snakes.

I had learned of hkakabo in the 1980s, when i picked up a yellowed copy of burma rsquo s icy mountains by british explorer francis kingdon ward. It described his 1937 expedition into the region and his audacious attempt to climb hkakabo razi solo. He reached almost 16,0 feet before being stymied by an insurmountable ldquo granite wall … beyond my powers. A tribal elder told me, ldquo everyone here either gets better on their own or dies. Rdquo kingdon ward rsquo s ldquo powers, rdquo as i learned from reading his many other books, were protean. A brilliant botanist, lyrical writer, indefatigable plant hunter, and purportedly a british spy, kingdon ward was one of those hard as iron adventurers in the mold of polar voyager roald amundsen or amazonian explorer percy fawcett. Kingdon ward could tramp through jungle for months on rice and tea, writing in his journal at night beside a campfire.

From 1909 to 1956, he made more than 20 expeditions into central asia, during which he survived a fall off a cliff and one of the century rsquo s worst earthquakes. Along the way he collected hundreds of plants and named many, including species of rhododendrons and lilies that now adorn gardens worldwide. I was entranced by kingdon ward rsquo s journeys and was determined to make the first ascent of hkakabo razi. So in the fall of 1993, i enlisted my climbing buddies steve babits, mike moe, and keith spencer. Mike had been my best friend since high school in laramie, and i rsquo d met keith and steve at the university of wyoming. Since then, mike and i had done several first ascents in the rockies and the first kayak descent of the niger river in west africa. At that time the military junta controlling burma mdash later renamed myanmar mdash had declared the north off limits to foreigners.

We naively planned to avoid this obstacle by accessing the mountain from tibet, illegally crossing the border, traveling light and fast with no porters. We flew to lhasa with our rucksacks and proceeded to sneak across eastern tibet mdash also closed to foreigners mdash hitching rides in the backs of trucks and talking our way past checkpoints. We ran out of food on the north side of hkakabo and had to descend to a tibetan village.

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There we were promptly arrested by the chinese military, interrogated, and jailed. Two years later, to my chagrin, the myanmar government granted japanese mountaineer takashi ozaki permission to climb hkakabo razi. Ozaki was an unstoppable himalayan veteran, having made the first full ascent of the north face of everest in 1980. He made two failed attempts on hkakabo in 1995, but in september 1996, after two months of climbing, ozaki summited with tibetan born mountaineer nyima gyaltsen.