A cold wind blows, birds fly above, and all I hear is the sound of my feet crunching in the gravel of the trail. I'm moving very slow now. One step every two seconds to get up this hill. Crunch-Mississippi...Two-Mississippi...Crunch. I have spent eight days now getting to this point. My mind wonders. I think about the gorgeous bridges I crossed, covered in Tibetan prayer flags and suspended by steel cables high over the glacial-green river below. I think about all the people I've met along the way: The Brit Boys who were my trekking partners for the first 3 days; Siberian Tim whose mood swings took him from contemplating "What is happiness?" to "Hey, you want to climb Lobuche Peak?"; The Spainard who miraculously did what I'm doing in 12 days in four; and Milan and Christine, the Czech/English couple who share my enthusiasm for the mountains and have provided me with excellent conversation in the lodges at night. Mostly though (as Forrest Gump as it sounds), I thought about Genny. I left her at the airport in Kathmandu. She doesn't do well with the cold, nor altitude, and she had a cold. It was smart of her to stay behind. However, I missed her and hoped she was doing well.

Crunch-Mississippi...Two-Mississippi...Crunch. Not too much farther now. The money-shot of Mount Everest is just on top of that ridge. I was happy I had made the trek out all this way to base camp and Kala Pattar. I had dreamt of seeing Everest one day. Crunch. The last step. I turn around and there she is. Giant. Snowy. Perfect. I sit on top of Kala Pattar at 5550 m (18,315 ft.), having summited my first Himalayan peak and just stare out at the Everest Himalayan Range. Everest is just as I imagined her. I trace the climbing routes that I have read about up the Khumbu Glacier to a hidden camp I. I can pick out the Hillary Step just below the summit which is a climbers last hurdle before topping out. And I think about the stories I've read of triumph and tradgedy and the people who never made it back, some of whose memorials I passed along the way. I take my pictures, drink a can of Everest Beer (of course) as a toast to my buddy Kevin, and just sit on the summit until the sun sets.

As I climb down by the light of my headlamp, the last one off the mountain, I can't stop smiling. Afterall, it is not every day you can check such a big thing off your life list.