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Few things are more likely to exasperate a seasoned alpinist than being asked to justify their passion, or to explain why they willingly put (9) .......... with gruelling hardship and genuine peril. When the celebrated climber Edmund Carver was pressed in 1931 on his reasons for attempting an uncharted Himalayan peak, he replied simply: 'Because the summit demands it.' It is entirely plausible that, having fielded the identical question on countless occasions, Carver had long since abandoned any attempt at a thoughtful reply, and that this was merely the first phrase to (10) .......... into his mind. Then again, for (11) .......... we know, it may have been his elegant shorthand for 'Why would I not?'
This strikes one as perfectly self-evident (12) .......... someone of Carver's temperament and calibre. One ascends because one is constitutionally equipped to do so. A productive lens through which to view such figures — mountaineers, polar explorers, deep-sea pioneers — is to see them (13) .......... individuals who have arrived at a lucid reckoning with their own capabilities. When one reads their memoirs, more often (14) .......... not, they present themselves as people utterly (15) .......... ease within environments that would overwhelm most, (16) .......... forbidding or alien those environments might appear to the uninitiated.