I laid in my bed in camp 4, hoping not to hear any bad news. Sun-jo, Holly and a few others were treating my frostbite.

 

“Do we need to cut it off?” I asked.

 

“I don’t know, we need to see if the treatment works well,” Sun-jo informed me. Holly opened up one of the First-Aid kits and took out a strange looking mechanism.

 

 “This will warm up your toe, we’re going to need to leave this going for an hour

or more,” she said. I was worried about this. I had come this far – reaching camp 4. I guess I didn’t have enough protection around my feet during the climb before. This isn’t what I planned to happen. Feet  and toes are one of the most cold-sensitive parts of the body. As high up as we were, wewould be somewhere close to the summit of Rainier or McKinley. Two mountains I had conquered but not gotten badly injured. Holly and Zopa had left the room, but they left the heater near my feet. 

 

 I had fallen asleep a few minutes after that. I woke up to Holly continuing to treat my foot.

 

“It’s getting better, I’ll ask the others if they knows how you can get back out there and continue climbing,” she told me. I was very tired, I was exhausted, my whole body felt like dead-weight except for my toe. My toe was still in pain.

 

Sun-jo walked in.

 

 “We’re going to leave this on your toe for the next few hours, we think you’ll be ready togo tomorrow,” Sun-jo explained. Her saying that relieved me. We were so close and I couldn’t stop now. 

 

"You know that you owe me for this, I know you don't appreciate the filming but this makes up for it," Holly told me. 

 

"Yeah, I guess it makes up for it," I replied.

 

"Try to get some sleep," said Holly.

 

 As it turned out, I required treatment for the rest of the day. I fell asleep knowing I

would be ready to go tomorrow. The next morning I woke up to Sun-jo yelling blatantly. I don't think he knew I was sleeping.

 

“Would you quiet down?” I exclaimed.

 

 “Dude wake up, we gotta go,” Sun-jo replied. I got up out of bed and proceeded to

change. During those couple of days I was being treated, Thaddeus, Josh and the rest of the group went on. Sun-jo, Holly, Zopa, I and a few others stayed back. After I had gotten changed we headed out.

 

 “About 4000 feet gonna be climbed today! Today is the day we summit!” Holly exclaimed with pride. We began a free-foot climb for about half an hour. I made sure to put on many layers this morning but not too many to slow me down. I was used to the cold. Then we reached the South Col. This is one of the hardest parts of climbing the mountain. We took out our repelling gear. Holly, Sun-jo and I proceeded up the slope as the rest of the group followed.

 

 We proceeded to climb, it was grueling. It was all going smoothly. I was a few feet below Sun-jo when I heard him yell. His left hand fell of the rope and it began to bleed.

 

“Stay calm!” I yelled to him. He was pulling himself with only his right hand. The

surface was very steep, he couldn’t hold up much longer. Holly reached in her bag and pulled out some tape. She passed it up to Sun-jo.

 

“Are you alright?” I asked Sun-jo.

 

 “Yeah, I can keep going but I don’t know how much longer,” Sun-jo explained. We had about 20 minutes left climbing the South Col. We were so close, and JR really wanted to get a shot of me reaching the summit. We continued on and we were able to see the summit. The rest of the group had already reached it. We were about half a mile away.We continued to walk up, we were so close. I noticed Sun-jo became unstable. Sun-jo fell off the rope and began to slide. I dove for him and caught his crippled hand. He let out a scream of pain.

 

“Are you okay?” I asked. He nodded as I pulled him up. Holly passed up some tape and Sun-jo applied it. and we continued on the rope. Zopa had to pull Sun-jo for the remainder of the time and I helped him. A few more minutes had past and it was grueling. We were thriving still and it looked like we could make it. Soon enough, we were a few steps to summit. Sun-jo, Holly and Zopa had made it up already and it was my turn to go up.

 

“Almost there!” JR yelled out to me. I gripped the small overhang and pulled my

self ahead. I had reached the summit. Everyone was waiting for me. Holly and JR had their cameras pointed on me. Just a few more steps. 

 

 "You got this!" Sun-jo yelled. Just a few more steps. Just a few more. All of the sudden, my foot hit a rock. I twisted my ankle and I began the worst fall of my life. What happened after that is still unclear.