The eight-man expedition was pinned down in a ferocious blizzard high on K2, waiting to make an assault on the summit, when a team member named Art Gilda developed thrombophlebitis, a life-threatening altitude-induced blood clot. Realizing that they would have to get Gilda down immediately to have any hope of saving him, Schooling and the others started lowering him down the mountain's steep Abruzzo Ridge as the storm raged. At 25,000 feet, a climber named George Bell slipped and pulled four others off with him. Reflexively wrapping the rope around his shoulders and ice ax, Schooling somehow managed to single-handedly hold on to Gilda and simultaneously arrest the slide of the five falling climbers without being pulled off the mountain himself. One of the more incredible feats in the annals of mountaineering, it was known forever after simply as The Belay.

Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster