Last night, we were sitting in the dome at camp 2. Dinner was finished, and everyone was in their tents for bed. The steam of freshly boiled water was rising as we poured the last of it into the hot pot.

We sat as a guide team, looking at updated weather and coming up with a summit strategy when in popped one of our team members,

“Hey, Can I talk to you guys?”

“Sure, sure. Come on in.”

She stepped through the door.

“I’d like to help carry this teammate’s weight tomorrow. I want this for him so badly and he’s struggling.”

This morning, after a breezy night straight into a breezy morning, I sleepily walked from the guide tent to the dome tent. Jack immediately handed me my little 1/2 L Nalgene filled with warm coffee,

“Dom made it for you.”

Packing up our bags to carry a load to Camp 3,

“How is your morning, Reacher?”

“I didn’t sleep well. I woke up early to the wind and helped tie down other people’s tents.”

Climbing mountains is an inherently selfish sport. We work hard to get ourselves to the top. It benefits us, the climber, more than anyone else. And there’s no problem with that.

I found my own healing in the mountains, my own growth, the ability to drive and push myself further than I thought possible.

And I fell in love with guiding because I loved helping others do the same - get out of their comfort zone, try really hard, take a really big risk.

But if there’s one thing this team keeps teaching me, one tiny miracle at a time, is that there is more than just our own little dreams happening. Even though 14 days ago we were total strangers, we are now people who have built deep relationships, so much so that we’ll offer to help carry another’s weight because we already believe in that other so much. We’ll share our bag of banana chips at every break, even though instinct tells us to hold fast to those calories we hefted all the way to 18,000 feet. We’ll tie down tents in the lonely early morning just because we don’t want our friends to blow away after a windy night.

And today, when all of us felt a touch alone in our struggle to Camp 3 at 19,600 feet, I looked a little closer and saw the sort of miracle that was a team coming together. Climbing a mountain not just for ourselves but with and for those we are inspired by. I saw that whatever has happened between us is profound and no matter if we stand on top or not, we won’t leave here unchanged.

RMI Guide Jess Wedel