In September 1978, Rick Ridgeway, Jim Wickwire, Lou Reichardt and John Roskelley stood on the summit of K2, the first Americans ever to achieve this victory. Under the leadership of Jim Whittaker, they and their teammates had spent 67 days on the mountain, nearly all of them above 18,000 feet, where the stresses of high-altitude living, of monotonous food, of confinement in tiny tents for day after day of frustrating storms had worn them down to the core. This book is Rick Ridgeway's inside story of this extraordinary expedition.