Peter: You're gonna kill him.
Montgomery Wick: My wife died of edema. Stripped the skin from her throat, her lungs filled with water. She drowned in her own bodily fluids. Yeah, I'm gonna kill him.
Peter: I can't let you do it.
Montgomery Wick: Peter, do you know where you are? Above 24,000, you're at the vertical limit, you're already dying. Look at you. You can hardly stand. If you think you can stop me, go ahead.
Its shadow falls on a vertical rock face being climbed by Peter Garrett, his father and sister Annie. Suddenly, a backpack hurtles by, followed rapidly by two climbers, whose ropes tear the male Garretts from the rock face. The excruciatingly tense sequence ends in tragedy. Then at the Himalayas, where tycoon Elliott Vaughn has financed an expedition that will take him to the summit of K2--the world's second highest mountain. Annie is one of Elliott's party. In the face of a threatening storm, Elliott recklessly insists the climb should continue. The storm duly arrives and decimates the expedition, leaving Elliott and Annie stranded. Peter leads a group of climbers--including the grizzled Montgomery Wick and a French-Canadian nurse)--in a rescue attempt.
