``Kruse was having an incredibly difficult time simply trying to dress himself. He put his climbing harness on inside out, threaded it through the fly of his wind suit, and failed to fasten the buckle; fortunately, Fisher and Neal Beidleman noticed the screwup before Kruse started to descend. ``If he'd tried to rappel down the ropes like that,'' says Beidleman, ``he would have immediately popped out of his harness and fallen to the bottom of the Lhotse Face.`` ``''It was like I was very drunk,`` Kruse recollects. ''I couldn't walk without stumbling, and completely lost the ability to think or speak. It was a really strange feeling. I'd have some word in my mind, but I couldn't figure out how to bring it to my lips. So Scott and Neal had to get me dressed and make sure my harness was on correctly, then Scott lowered me down the fixed ropes.`` By the time Kruse arrived in Base Camp, he says, ''it was still another three or four days before I could walk from my tent to the mess tent without stumbling all over the place.``''
Scott
Kruse