Have you ever climbed to an elevation of 20,000 feet?

I came very, very close to crossing the 20k boundary. I missed it by two or three hundred feet.

So did these guys.

In a car.

And you know what? 20k isn't the point. Driving to 19,947 feet is simply astonishing. Even more so in an essentially stock vehicle. It sounds like the team made the final 2,000 meter assault in less than a day. That may not sound so hard in a truck, but ascending from 4,400 to 6,080 meters in a day would be absolutely brutal on your body. It could even be lethal, especially without oxygen (they had oxygen). I've seen people airlifted out of similar elevations for climbing too quickly. Some of them were in a very bad way. If you get stuck like that, and you're unlucky and bad weather closes in and a rescue chopper can't make the perilous flight up, you either have to get someone or some beast to carry you down quickly, or you die.

Add to that what I can only imagine as a pretty big trick for an internal combustion engine to pull off, and that's one hell of an amazing road trip.

I want to do that.