Anyone who climbs the mountain signs the waiver. It says if you die up there, your body will not be recovered. It costs too much and puts too many lives on the line.
I signed it. Now I sit, one femur snapped clean through like a twig, up in the death zone, lungs slowly filling with fluid. It’s hard to say what will take me first: the thin air or the cold. Now that I think of signing the waiver, I smile. I couldn’t care less whether my body is recovered. But I do wish I weren’t going to die here.
A solid study in determination. The mountain is there, so the narrator is going to climb it, even though death awaits at the summit. Great story, Marsall!