https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJlYCNqzICc It was time for Emily Harrington to make a choice. Harrington is a professional climber . In 2014, she was trying to reach the top of the tallest peak in Southeast Asia, a little-known mountain called Hkakabo Razi that had been successfully climbed only once before. "We were on this ridge at about 18,100 feet, and it just dropped off on both sides about 4,000 feet," Harrington recalls. She could see the summit from the narrow ridge, but one of the more experienced climbers warned her that the final route to the top was going to be harder than anything they'd done up until this point. Was she really up for the final push? Or was it time to climb down? Harrington had spent her whole life fighting failure. "I just grew up in this atmosphere of competitiveness," she says. As a kid in Boulder, Colo., she was always trying to beat her two male cousins. When she discovered she was better than they were at climbing, she stuck with it. She started
↧