Years ago, climber and author Greg Child wrote: Somewhere between the bottom of the climb and the summit is the answer to the mystery why we climb.

Greg - a prolific climber with an uber-impressive resume - is no stranger to standing on summits, and some of the hardest ones. But, like any true climber, he’s had his fair share of “failures” as well, expeditions where all was given and the summit, the tippy-top, remained elusive.

It’s through these experiences, I believe, that Greg came to the understanding that indeed the summit is not the answer; it never was and likely never can be.

We in the west tend to have a perversely linear view of life and our trajectory through it. We celebrate point-instants of heroism or accomplishment; we view success as the paycheck, the promotion, the fastest time or heaviest lift or highest score. Or the summit.

And in so doing, we completely miss the point.

A week ago, I sat in our dining tent at 14,100 feet, scalpel in hand. It was 1:00 AM and my client, Grace, let out a pained smile: Let’s do this, she said. Grasping her sister’s hand tightly, I poked with the scalpel as Robinson, a Chagga friend and guide, held her right wrist tightly. I hoped this procedure would release the intense pressure in Grace’s finger, that this was a simple paronychia infection with a simple solution: lance the abscess and release the build-up of pus. But, it didn’t look that simple; it looked deeper, an infection down in the tissue, not superficial, and not something I could handle well in a dusty camp on the side of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Despite my efforts and Grace’s strength and impressive pain tolerance, we could get no release or relief. My hunch seemed right: this was a deep infection. To be certain, I walked 30 minutes into the night to a point where I could snatch a tiny cell signal snaking up from the Kenyan plains and sent a text to a close friend and ER doctor in Colorado. She thought the same as me, but with more official language: this was likely not paronychia, but a felon, a deeper infection reaching into the joint, likely requiring IV antibiotics and surgical work to release the inflammation.

The gig was up.

Grace was strong, marching up to Mawenzi Tarn Hut without issue, smiling and laughing as she went. She was determined to climb Kilimanjaro, not just to reach the summit, but to honor her late-daughter, Cameron, and raise funds for the foundation bearing her name, the CKG Foundation.

But, Grace is also wise, knowing amidst the deep disappointment that no climb, no summit, no point of purported success is worth one’s finger, one’s health, perhaps one’s life. So, she made the tough but right decision to end her climb of Kili and get down to proper medical care.

To my surprise and, strangely, delight, the rest of the team - sister Clair, friend Kim, and children Tyler and Sydney - decided they, too, would end their climb and stay with Grace. I say delight not because I was happy no one would summit on this trip. Far from it. Rather, I was delighted because I knew this group, this team, truly understood the nature of the endeavor, the real goal at hand, and that the summit was (is) but a minor player in a much larger narrative. This team realized that while the summit, Uhuru Peak, was a motivator for all, it in no way held the reins of success; for them, for this team, success was defined - as it should be - by a return home, safe and sound, all together.

In a dozen trips to Kilimanjaro, this was a first: having the entire team turn around and descend.

And I couldn’t be prouder of them.