Everest: The Truth Waiting on Everest

It begins with a few fuzzy photographs-dark shapes darting across the snow near the summit of Mount Everest. Explorers call them mirages, Sherpas whisper of mountain spirits, and the Planetary Survey wants answers. When a scientist proposes to drop a man onto the summit by airplane, it sounds absurd... until James Abram Robbons volunteers. Two weeks later, alone amid hurricane winds and air too thin to breathe, he becomes the first true visitor to the roof of the world.

When rescuers finally...