Issue link: https://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25170
Just after dawn on 7 October, 2000, Siovenian Davo Karnicar stood on a point of snow not much wider than a coffee table. To either side, the earth dropped away for 5,000 feet. The temperature was minus 50°F, Karnicar couldn't feel his hands and he struggled to breathe in the thin air. Moments later he pointed his skis over a steep precipice and dropped in for one of the most amazing descents in history. When Karnicar finally stopped five hours later, he had become the first person to ski the 12,000 vertical feet from the summit of Mount Everest to base camp. "I was born to do it," said Karnicar. "You have to have a big knowledge of both skiing and climbing-and both are my life. I think I deserved to be the first." Karnicar set his sights on the world's highest mountain after he and his brother descended from the summit of Annapurna in 1995, thus becoming the first people to completely descend an 8,000-meter (26,247-foot) mountain. Karnicar attempted to ski Everest in 1996, but as he ascended the Northwest Ridge, severe frostbite forced him to retreat to base camp. Just hours after Karnicar's abandoned attempt, the storm made famous in the book Into Thin Air swept over Everest and claimed the lives of 12 climbers. On the October 2000 expedition, Karnicar waited until the fa ll monsoons had blanketed Everest with snow. While deep snows deter most Everest climbers, Karnicar was depending on the prodi- gious snowfall to cover the notorious Hillary Step, a 30-foot exposed rock face on the summit. As he sideslipped the almost vertical crest of snow that had formed on the Step, his tips dangled 3,000 feet 21