Upward Bound: Nine Original Accounts of How Business Leaders Reached Their Summits

Your team has faltered at a critical moment. A key member says he can’t continue, requiring you to make a snap decision: Do you write him off? Or do you risk the whole venture by trying to get him back on his feet?

It could be a scenario straight from the business world.

Yet this one occurred high on the slopes of the world’s deadliest mountain, K2, where lives, not just livelihoods, depended on the leader’s choice.

Decisions don’t get much starker. That’s why mountains—though seemingly a wor...