"We have to focus. This is going to suck. We're going to hate it. It's going to be 12 hours of misery worse than we ever imagined."

That is the pep talk my tent mate Andrew Shipley delivered the day before we began our assault on Imja Tse, also known as Island Peak, a 6,000-plus-meter mountain in spitting distance of Mount Everest. Shipley's profession is economics; no wonder they call it the dismal science.

Ship was right, of course. It was going to be miserable, no matter how beautiful -- and distracting -- the scenery, no matter how much we psyched ourselves up, and no matter how good a shape we thought we were in. And Ship was right: It did suck and it was desperate, but for reasons he hadn't imagined. At least that is how it looks now, back in the lowlands, where the air is thick with oxygen, the weather is considerably warmer and the plumbing facilities are a lot more comfortable.