Rather than the straightforward descent from a monastery in the Khumbu Valley, using the traditional Everest Base Camp route, a motley crew who never should have been there in the first place - a concert pianist, his piano tuner, a piano, a corpse, a Valley girl (from the wrong valley), a desperate political fugitive, a born-again Buddhist - head deeper into wild mountains, at the end of which there is no food and no return - only the vast arrêtes and exposed ridges of Makalu, from which only one will return to tell the story. These are the last photos of that disastrous flight into stupidity and madness.