Everest Diary / Grania Willis: Job done. Mission accomplished. In the early hours of Sunday morning I reached the highest point on earth - the summit of Mount Everest. But in doing so I had to dig into reserves of strength and courage that I had no idea I possessed.
Lowest moment of the longest day of my life came at 8,550 metres, at the top of the Third Step when I found the body of Slovenian climber Marco Linekah, part of the 7-Summits team. I knew he was there, but it was still a hideous shock to see him, frozen in the final agony of death as he tried to suck oxygen out of an atmosphere that simply wasn't enough to sustain life.
His backpack sat about 10 yards downhill from where he lay, untouched by all the climbers that passed by his icy grave. Marco himself was on his back, arms stretched out above his head, his hands frozen in terrible claws as he tried desperately to cling on to life.
It was the starkest possible reminder of the dangers of climbing Everest. Anyone taking on the challenge knows that there are risks, but seeing a body when you're already wondering if you're going to die yourself is spectacularly eerie.
My own summit push had started later than intended, but still before midnight, so the majority of the ascent was in the dark, with a light flutter of snow caught in the beam of my head torch. The darkness shielded us, not only from other bodies on the way, but also from the exposure - the mountaineering term for horrendous drops that would be unsurvivable in a fall.
But even the darkness couldn't shield us from death. Himalayan Experience (Himex) leader Russell Brice rightly insists that all climbers maintain radio contact throughout summit day, but that meant we could hear every transmission throughout the night hours too.
At some stage - the hours passed by unnoticed - Scottish expedition leader Henry Todd contacted Brice from the south side to say he had turned his team around following the death of a 23-year-old Briton.
A suspected heart attack had cut the young man down in his prime, exactly the same way my 19-year-old nephew Joe had died at college in England a month before my departure for Tibet at the end of March.
It was a devastating blow to my family, so I dedicated my Everest attempt to Joe. It was an emotional moment when I set foot on the summit and Joe, the red-headed, blue-eyed youth, was there with me.
The moment was doubly emotional as I was with Paul Hockey, the one-armed Australian climber, who turned around just short of the summit 12 months ago. He was carrying his mother's ashes with him and, with only one hand, had to ask me to open the container before he could scatter its cargo to the winds.
But things were about to get worse, as Hockey found the descent far more difficult than the ascent, even with the assistance of two sherpas. My sherpa Karsang and I got stuck behind Hockey on the traverse across the dihedral, the rocky outcrop just below the summit.
Hockey was seriously struggling, as the traverse meant that his left arm was away from the rock face and effectively useless. With serious exposure falling away beneath him, he was naturally keen to keep a hand on the rock, but had to twist his body through 90 degrees to do so. Towards the end of the traverse, he stopped and radioed Russell Brice. "Russ, I'm in trouble," he said, with death in his eyes. He had given up, just as so many people do on Everest and pay the ultimate price.
It took all of Brice's skill to talk Hockey down, but he succeeded - with the help of four sherpas. And yesterday, after a very uncomfortable night at the 8,300m camp, Hockey was guided down by Nima Sherpa and Kiwi Dean Staples all the way to the 6,400m advanced base camp, having escaped death by a whisker.
But he had summited Everest and left his mother's ashes on the top of the world.
Others won't get the chance of a decent burial or cremation. Marco is one. And a member of the Indian Air Force team, who left only a crampon on the mountain for his colleagues to remember him is another.
But the body of the German who collapsed and died just above camp II after summiting was collected yesterday by four sherpas and will be flown home. It's an unusual mark of respect for those who die on Everest. Most are simply left frozen on to the mountain where they fell.
The Grania Willis Everest Challenge 2005, supported by The North Face, SORD Data Systems, Peak Centre Ireland and Great Outdoors, is in aid of the Irish Hospice Foundation and the Friends of St Luke's Hospital. Donations to the fund can be made to The Grania Willis Everest Challenge, Permanent TSB, Blackrock, Co Dublin, account number 86877341, sort code 99-06-44. Visa card donations to 01-2303009.