830PM May 11, 2024.

Lakpa T (my sherpa) he’s moving all his equipment around, he’s getting prepared. He doesn’t speak much at all, but he’s talking to me in spirit language. I know what he’s saying; the mountain is calling us, that I have very little time left to rest or contemplate what is going to happen next. In my mind he’s not just a Sherpa, he’s a spiritual guide. We don’t speak much at all, but so much is communicated. My shadow on the mountain, my eyes and ears so I can try to stay relaxed and focus on self transcendence.

Then in his monk-like-way, Lakpa T says, ‘Brutha, it’s time to go’. I reply simply, softly, but definitively, ‘ok’.

All night. In the dark. Headlamp. Snowing. Slow. Very Slow. We’re essentially alone. There were a few headlamps ahead of us about 200 meters upslope, often I couldn’t tell if they were headlamps or stars.

The vertical rise is incredible. 3000+ ft in 1.07 miles. That is a very very steep angle. We were the 4th pair of climbers going for the summit after the ropes had been fixed a few days earlier by the advanced sherpa fixing team. It had been snowing. The trail was not broken hardly at all, we post-hole constantly. A step into the snow, then sliding back or breaking through deeper snow up to the hip. It’s probably -10F but I’m so so hot. My cough is getting bad again, I worry that my body temperature is high not so much from the vertical deep snow climbing, but rather an infection heating up in my body.

For 5 days I hadn’t had a remotely normal night of sleep. Most nights I had panic attacks, restless, coughing nonstop, body aching from the mega daily compounding effort.

I remember why I came for this challenge. I hate easy. I remind myself to embrace the misery, get comfortable being uncomfortable, yes, more weight, more pain. I invite flashbacks to when I was in the sierra nevada mountains, at Heavenly Valley ski resort when I was 13 and terrified while lost in the woods, facing certain death, I resolved to never give up until my last breath, I would keep pushing, pressing forward.

20,000 years old DNA was revived. Primal abilities override all; survival affirmations are repeated again and again ‘this was what I was built to do’.

But I am going slow. Really Slow. Lakpa T is ahead of me by about 30ft. He tries to break the trail as much as he can, but often it results in more broken up snow which makes my footsteps slip more and more.

I can see he’s cold. He tells me I have to move faster, we’re running low on oxygen if I don’t speed up my pace. I told him I can’t go faster, I’m over heating, my respiration too high creates more coughing and I am fighting exhaustion.

Prior to my arrival in Nepal I had told the guide organizer that I was in very good shape, that I wanted one of their most-fit, most strong Sherpa’s assigned to be my guide.

Well they gave me Lakpa T, and as fit as I was, as many 100 mile running races I’ve won; Lakpa T at 23 years old was 3x stronger than me. His lungs were adapted to the high altitude far beyond my abilities. We were not well matched in this instance.

The frigid air was wearing him down at such a slow pace. He told me point blank that he didn’t have enough clothing and had to move faster to stay warm.

I on the other hand was overheating, and I literally could not go faster, it was not an option.

Lakpa T had a full down-body suit on, which is normally good enough for summit conditions. I had my very warm down summit jacket in my backpack, I was wearing only 2 medium weight ski jackets because I was so hot going up the steep slope in deep snow.

So I said, “Lakpa T, how about you take my summit down jacket, it will keep you very warm and I will be ok with my ski jackets until we get to the top”

It seemed like the only reasonable solution at the time, he was hypothermic and I couldn’t go faster. I didn’t need my very warm jacket until we got closer to the top, and then when we came down the mountain we would move faster together and hopefully everything would be ok.

So Lakpa T takes my heavy weight down jacket.

We’ve been moving for about 5 hours, it was about 1:30am. We get to a place called ‘the balcony’ at 27,500ft. We’re in a good place now. The snow is less deep, a lot more bare rock, the steepness is reduced.

The sky is clear, there is no moon, only stars. I’m looking at the stars in the sky at 27,500ft. The temperature is -15F, I am getting closer to the summit of Mt. Everest. It is a moment I will never forget. I am as close to walking on the moon or in another galaxy far away. This is what I came for. I have spontaneous moments of tears coming out of my eyes uncontrollably. The emotions, the effort, the will to survive, how I have lived a full full life. I am overcome with emotion.

Lakpa T knows it’s ok to leave distance between us, he’s giving me solo time like I’ve never had in my life. There are no crowds, no headlamps ahead or behind me. I take a moment to rest.

I open my bag to drink from my insulated water bottle.

I open it and pull my oxygen mask away from my face. I tilt back the bottle, then tilt more, and then more, nothing. Nothing comes out, I look with my headlamp; frozen. It’s all ice. Shit.

No water, this is not good. So I do what I’ve done many times when climbing Mt. Washington. They call them ice-cookies. They can break your teeth but it’s better than being dehydrated. So I take a moment to take in handfuls of snow. It is refreshing, but it’s not easy to eat with huge mittens on and a cumbersome oxygen mask.

I stuff my mouth with snow, I’m still very hot from the uphill effort. I put my face mask back on, I zip up my bag and start moving upwards.

Lakpa T reminds me that we need to keep a steady pace. If we run out of bottled oxygen we’re in big trouble. Most people die at this altitude from cold or running out of oxygen. So I push ahead.

Lakpa T continues to lead the way. I am working very hard. I keep taking handfuls of snow and stuffing my mouth every 10 minutes or so.

I’m in the zone, I feel ok, I really believe at this point that a summit is going to happen.

Just as it started to get light I made a quick video as we were about 1 hour from the top:

It’s getting light, but the weather report was wrong; we were supposed to have clear sky’s on this summit day, but the mountain was in the clouds and snowing. This was a big disappointment, we’d hoped to see the sunrise from a 1000 miles away. It was not to be.

I was getting excited, we were reaching the jagged upper ridge, the hillary step, the south summit, the false peaks, they were all coming into view. The snow cornices were absolutely frightening; at times the clouds would break and you’d see impossible drop-offs of nothing into no-where, as if we were on an airplane wing.

Then, I saw my first body. Frozen. Death.

I didn’t expect it. It came into view and my pupils dilated wide and fast. I went into a state of shock for a moment, like a deer in headlights, my primal mind was recording a moment of fear and warning.

Take Note. Take Care. Take This Seriously.

The body was partially sunk into the side of the mountain. The legs and boots were visible, the back and side of the jack was ripped to pieces from the wind, the eye mask was fully intact over the head. I couldn’t see the face, but it was unmistakable. This was a lost comrade, someone who was as motivated and determined as me, and they left it all on the battlefield.

I breathe deep. Very deep breaths. I take a long moment. But I must keep moving. I have a great sense of fear and anxiety, the reality of the place I am in could not be more sobering. What can I do? The summit is so close, I must keep going.

I say a Hebrew prayer in my mind, I step past the body.

Lakpa T is ahead of me, we use hands and knees to get over many technical rocky and precarious sections. I am holding my ascender with a death grip, it would be totally impossible to do this climb without fixed ropes. I use my ice ax to keep my balance, I feel as if I’m on a moving boat at times, my inner gyroscope is not working on the very narrow footing. It is absolutely terrifying.

The temperature has dropped a lot, I’m not hot at all, in fact I’m getting cold now. My feet, hands, I can see how people get into trouble very fast in these situations.

There is no fast exit whatsoever, you are there, way way way out there.

There would be no difference if I was in the middle of the ocean on a small raft with sharks circling. You have a small wooden paddle and you can only move in one direction, slowly, very slowly. At any moment a snow cornice could break off, a fixed rope anchor could fail (this happened to other climbers later that week, and 2 people would fall 3000ft into Tibet and never be seen again, on this very section of the trail).

Then without notice, 2 of the 3 teams that were ahead of us all night were coming back down, they came into view.

I know both of them, Kia from Los Angeles and Landry from Saskatchewan Canada. They are moving fast back down, we embrace, and they tell me ‘you’re very close Mike’. I ask how close?? They say 7-10 minutes you’ll be at the summit.
Omg. That close!?

We’re all in survival mode. We carefully move around each other on the shared fixed rope and I pick up my pace. I caught up to Lakpa T. I fumble with my Gopro camera, my hands are freezing, I’m definitely cold now.

It’s very windy, the temperature is probably -20F. I’m thinking about my down summit jacket that I gave to Lakpa T to use, I need it back, but we’re so close to the summit.

I’m in a fever to get to the top, at all costs, nothing matters right now. I forget that the summit is not the finish line, in fact the summit is only half way!

Then it happens.
Remember when I was at Camp 4. I was roiling myself up; I wanted to suffer, that I ‘would rather dine with rats than have a butler or housekeeper wash my sanity away’. I was proding god and fate, I imagined myself signing a duel with the angel of death….

Lakpa T!!! Lakpa! HELP ME!

He turns around as I yell into my oxygen mask. I am about to pass out, suddenly my oxygen flow was gone, I had no airflow.

I am seeing black spots, I have no power at all, I am on my knees. I pull off my face mask, the entire mask is broken, I don’t know what is happening.

Lakpa T rushes down to me, I say in broken english ‘Mask, No Oxygen!’ I am breaking air at literally 29,000ft, I cannot stand, I think about the frozen dead body I had just seen half buried in the snow.

This is it. I am losing touch with reality, fear grips me completely. I am yelling at Lakpa, NO OXYGEN!! He is furiously inspecting my mask, he looks at my oxygen regulator and a spring-like device that shows if oxygen is flowing, a kind of gas-gauge in the oxygen line that comes to my mask.

The spring is moving normally as it should, he yells back at me ‘Oxygen is ok!’
I yell back ‘NO! NO! NO Oxygen!!!’

In retrospect, here's what was happening:

Remember my water bottle had frozen.
I didn’t tell Lakpa about that issue, and he was ahead of me most of the climb to the summit.

He didn’t see that I was stuffing snow into my mouth, and then later inside my mask and into my mouth. This was an idiotic rookie mistake. I didn’t know this, but I had way too much moisture inside my mask. As I moved higher and higher up the mountain the temperature dropped, also more importantly the wind picked up, all that turned into my ventilation freezing up entirely with ice.

The way an altitude oxygen mask works is like this:

Imagine if you were going to make a drink mix from powdered sugar; and then you add water. The water mixing with the sugar makes the drink mix.

The sugar fuels your body, but you can’t get the sugar into your mouth and inner body systems without the water to dilute and transport the sugar.

The pure oxygen line from the tank is the sugar, the face mask is the drinking cup, and the water to mix it all together is the external air that comes into the mask through a valve membrane. The external air mixes with the pure oxygen and then it all gets inhaled into your lungs.

The valve/membrane that allows the regulation of exterior ambient air mix into the mask was totally frozen over. So although I was still getting pure oxygen into my face mask it was 5% of the volume, which I couldn’t do anything with, I couldn't inhale it, I was blacking out, I was going to die on the mountain 5 minutes from the summit of Mt. Everest.

The situation was out of a horror movie, I was screaming at Lakpa T, he was panicking as well. Any moment I was going to pass out and then that would be the end of me.

I know when to keep calm and when to pull the fire alarm, this was CODE RED.

Lakpa is screaming at me in his native language, as he opens his backpack and he takes out his insulate thermos.

He rips my mask out of my hand and he pours to my shocking eyes steaming hot water into my mask. I realized another rookie mistake. You need a metal professional insulated thermos when you are climbing in -20F weather. I had a pathetic plastic and foam insulated thermos.

The hot water melts my mask immediately. Lakpa smashes the mask onto my face and yelling at me with words I don’t understand. I break DEEP DEEP DEEP. Oh my god, I can breathe again!!

“YES! YES! WORKING!!”

How do you describe this in words? Remember we’re literally 5 minutes from the summit, you wouldn’t know because it’s windy and near white out conditions with no more than 50-100ft of visibility. It’s windy, it’s absolutely Freezing cold! We are at least 5 hours from Camp 4 if we were racing back down the mountain, we’re in the death zone. There are literally frozen dead bodies all over the mountain (which we would see later).

Then after about 20 seconds of thinking I had a 2nd chance and my mask was working again, the same problem happens, like slamming the breaks on a car, my mask completely freezes up from all the water in the ventilation membrane. Only now, it seems worse than before, like I was trying to breathe if you had put your mouth up against a glass window, zero air flow!

Lakpa had actually made the situation worse when he poured the hot water into my mask, water filled into the membrane of the exterior ambient air, AND went into the pure oxygen tube and stopped the pure oxygen from coming into the mask.

Lakpa!!! NO OXYGEN!!! I yell at him again!
I’m Going To Die!

I rip the mask off my face and hyperventilate into the 6% 29,000ft death-air 5 minutes from the summit of Mt. Everest.

Lakpa absolutely loses his monk-like abilities and SCREAMS back in his native language, he grabs my mask and puts it on his face, he’s trying to understand why the mask isn’t working!

Then in a total break of his disposition he stands up and he yells at me in a way that I will never forget.

Exit Lakpa T.
Enter the voice of God.

Now I am not a religious person in practice. I don’t make the effort to follow the minutiae of rules and rituals; I don’t begrudge those who do, in fact I often wish I would make a bigger effort to maintain these century old customs. But I do have a very strong personal spiritual connection to my creator. I pray. Often. It’s usually outdoors when I’m running. I’ve always said I belong to the Temple of Sunday Long Run. I use my body to find a place of peace and meditation through aerobic exercise. I reach my best spiritual moments when I push myself far beyond my limits.

Here I was, literally a stone's throw away from my ultimate goal of vanity and ego, the summit of Mt. Everest.

I had the prize in my hand, the flag of victory was being waved, I was so so so close.

I had planned my summit moment in my mind many times over the prior weeks, I literally had a list of people I would address from the top of the world, personalized messages to people that I wanted more respect and admiration from. My ego. I would be king after this achievement.

So in my total despair, as I am on my knees, ready to black-out and fade away to nothingness, Lakpa T standing over me, booming in a voice from heaven above and says UP! OR DOWN!

On my creators behalf he forcefully thrusted his arms, one arm up the mountain and one arm back down the mountain.

Time slowed to a complete standstill.
Oh my god, this was the ultimate test.
I swear this was biblical. Not only in the moment, but as I replay it in my mind writing this now.

I was given a choice.
‘Up or Down’ is what Lakpa T yelled at me into the wind, on behalf of God.

What did I hear?

This is what went through my mind in an instant that felt like an hour:

What is your value Michael Arnstein?
‘I, your creator has given you every opportunity, every blessing possible; but it is not enough! You are corrupted. Egoistical, vanity driven waste of effort. How dare you risk your life on this mountain of death. I am not impressed at all. What will it be, do you want to live or die!?’

I was 5 minutes from the summit. A decision of agony I couldn’t have anticipated. In my tortured vain mind I felt I would rather die on the summit than retreat in failure. I couldn’t imagine turning back, so so close, I swore I would never stop until my last breath, but here I was at the gates of heaven, at the feet of the creator, literally knocking on the door just below heaven. I couldn’t possibly not keep going….

And in what might have been the most unbearable decision of my life…
I looked up at Lakpa T and I said: “Down”

It wasn’t for my life that I cared. Personally I think I would have been happy to be one of the frozen bodies on the mountain, living my mantra to never give up until my last breath, never ever surrender in defeat. But in that moment of making the ultimate choice; my deep love, concern and sense of obligation for others who rely on me was more important than the value in how I perceived the value of my life to myself.

My better self came through. I sincerely believe that had I said ‘Up’ I would have never written this report or anyone ever seen me alive again.

What happened next was very unexpected.

Lakpa stands there looking down at me.
My mask is on the ground, I’m hyperventilating at 29,000ft. The world is spinning.

Lakpa T takes off his backpack, he unzips his bodysuit and uncovers his head, he takes off the entire head gear that is attached to his mask.

He’s giving me his entire oxygen system.
He says,
You Go. Go to the Summit.

I wait here. You Go. Take my mask.

I wish I could say that I hesitated. But I didn’t.

As soon as he reached out to give me his mask I smashed it onto my face; breath breath breath, first order of business was to oxygenate the blood. I hyperventilate for 10 seconds and reach out to the oxygen tank that he removed from his bag, I turn the dial up from 2 to 6 (highest setting) immediately. Oh dear god, I can instantly feel the oxygen hitting my system. It is LIFE coming back into me. I was near the end of consciousness in the moment as my heart rate went through the roof during this searing fear experience.

I continue to breathe heavily while still on the ground.

Lakpa T sits down, he takes my oxygen bottle and mask and he is trying to situate himself. He’s going to sit down on the cornice ridge just below the summit with no oxygen system and wait for me. This is insane! He could die at this altitude with no oxygen.

And lest I not remind all the readers that I am absolutely freezing cold and hypothermic and my very warm down jacket is on Lakpa T who just gave me his entire oxygen system!

This is Madness!
I am going to freeze to death and Lakpa T is going to die with no oxygen!!

But God himself had given me the ultimate test asking me ‘Up or Down’; and I somehow passed after replying that I would go ‘Down’, I would sacrifice my ego and vanity.

I was rewarded with one quick chance, race to the summit just 5 minutes away, get your picture and video, wave your flag of victory, but you better be more humble than ever before and get your ass off this mountain and never come back again!!

So I did that.
I took the 2nd chance; with my oxygen at level 6 and my heart beat pumping like a freight train, I pulled myself up the ropes, over the final rocky outcroppings, the most insane moment of my life.

The visibility was very bad, the ridgeline very narrow, head down, step, then drive my ice ax in the rim-ice of snow, hold tight, step again, moving very carefully with jagged rock cliffs on both sides. Wind comes in gusts, watching my footing… must keep my balance.

I didn’t see the summit coming, it snuck up on me.