In his fictional short story, Top Man, mountaineer James Ramsey Ullman writes of a three-man mountain-climbing team in the Himalayas that pitches camp—really only a single tent—at 26,500 feet. The next morning, they plan to scale the mountain's summit, but a blizzard strikes. The sun doesn't emerge for a day and a half, and soon the food supply gets low. The team leader, Martin Nace, finally announces they'll have to give up their hope of reaching the summit.

His fellow team member, Osborn, challenges that decision: "Once we go down we're licked. You know it.…I'm going—understand?"

For the first time since I had known him, I saw Nace's eyes flash in anger. "I'm the senior member of this group," he said. "I forbid you to go!"

With a tremendous effort [because of the lack of oxygen at that elevation], Osborn jerked himself to his feet. "You forbid me? This may be your sixth time on this mountain and all that, but you don't own it! I know what you're up to. You haven't got it in you to make it to the top yourself, so you don't want anyone else to get the glory. That's it, isn't it? Isn't it?"

While the other two men are sleeping, Osborn leaves alone to climb the summit. When his partners discover he's left, for his own safety they try to catch up with him. Many hours later they see Osborn; he's stepping out on a slope of snow. His partners yell at him to stop: "Come off the snow!"

The partners can see, but Osborn can't, that…

the slope on which he stood appeared as a harmless covering of snow over the rocks. From where we were now, however, a little to one side, it could be seen that it was in reality no covering at all, but merely a cornice or unsupported platform clinging to the side of the mountain. Below it was not rock, but ten thousand feet of blue air.

"Come back!" one man cries. "Come back!"

Osborn hesitated, then took a downward step. But he never took the next. For in that same instant the snow directly in front of him disappeared. It did not seem to fall or to break away. It was just soundlessly and magically no longer there. In the spot where Osborn had been about to set his foot there was now revealed the abysmal drop of the north face.

Because the men yelled, Osborn's life is spared—barely. Whether climbing a mountain or following Jesus Christ, certain undertakings should never be done alone.