"I am careful now though, to avoid such public displays of dysfunction. Having recently gotten on top of Everest for my third time, I'm not eager to bring dishonor upon that great mountain by failing at simple things in public view....."

"I was completely on board. I liked it all; I liked the dude they were featuring; I liked the glossy ads for shiny new trucks and cool Gore-Tex and must-have gadgets. And I like my profession (which is still guiding, not writing) but it did get me thinking a little about days when it maybe wasn't so fun being a mountain guide — or a transient and migratory worker...."

"Here in Nepal, you don't look up at Everest exactly. What you see is a whole lot of big-darn-mountain, including the west shoulder of Everest, but you don't actually see Everest itself.... By contrast, from the Tibetan Basecamp, one sees one's future directly off in the southern sky, and one can easily get the willies by looking too long at too much future...."

"I felt the earth move then. Continental Drift, possibly, but more likely a slab avalanche trying to break free. It probably didn't move more than an inch, but I was quite aware that it was the whole of Castor moving an inch in the wrong direction. I was also quite aware then that if the whole damn thing broke free I'd face the tumble of a lifetime...."

"When storms knock you from your feet and thrash you to within an inch of your life, you don't tend to worry much about the calendar.... When your beard hurts because eight or 10 pounds of ice are hanging from it, you seldom concern yourself with picking an aisle or window seat on some hypothetical airplane...."

Hahn's third column, written on Dec. 31 as he sits alone in his tent in Vinson base..."I'm in a place where time seems a little arbitrary, where one day becomes the next without the moon and stars intervening. A book lover's dream – it never gets too dark to read at Vinson Base Camp on the Branscomb Glacier in Antarctica..."

Hahn's second column describes his experiences both during and after the famed Mallory & Irvine expedition to Everest this spring, including his nearly three months guiding on Rainier, his 20th high school reunion and his months on the ice in Antarctica...

Hahn's first column tells the story of last winter's adventure to Antarctica, where he was joined for a few days by Alex Lowe, Conrad Anker and Gordon Wiltsie for an ascent of Mount Tyree, which rises out of the Patton Glacier a few miles from Vinson.