THE WEATHER REMAINED stable and clear, and over the next few days the Spaniards, the Indians, and all the big commercial teams began putting climber after climber on top. Meanwhile, weird things were happening lower on the mountain.

At Camp II, Kalpana Dash, the Indian woman, had run out of steam and announced that, since she couldn't summit, she would fling herself into a crevasse—forcing her Sherpas to tie her into a special safety harness. Around the same time, Toshiko Ushida, the elderly Japanese woman, had bonked as well, and during her descent she'd taken so long to get through the Icefall that her Sherpa had reportedly considered flinging himself into a crevasse. And Chris Balsiger, the Texas millionaire, had stalled out just above Camp III.

"What a way to spend a million bucks, huh?" he quipped later, keeping a sense of humor about it. "But what else was I gonna do—buy myself another boat?"

The mood was bleaker over at the Czech camp, where the frostbitten Martin Minarik had struck out in his efforts to retrieve the body of Pavel Kalny. Simone Moro, the Italian superclimber, had volunteered to lower Kalny into a crevasse during his solo traverse. But for some unknown reason, that hadn't happened—and now Moro was on the north side, apparently trying to argue his way out of a $50,000 fine for having crossed into Tibet without a Chinese climbing permit or visa.

Finally, Minarik had taken his problem to the people who probably should have volunteered to solve it in the first place. The South Korean Han Wang-Yong Cleaning Expedition was supposed to be collecting five tons of refuse, which mainly meant oxygen bottles and, alas, dead bodies. According to Minarik, the South Koreans had promised to bring Kalny down but then mysteriously withdrew their offer. On May 21, Minarik finally threw in the towel and left, cursing the cruelty of Base Camp from the back of a Nepalese porter who was literally carrying him. As a final insult, Nepal's Ministry of Tourism later refused to refund his $3,000 "garbage-disposal deposit" because he'd left his friend's body behind.

Later that afternoon, word arrived that the Polish cover girl had come down from the summit and was available to talk. I raced over to Bunnystan, where I was greeted by a willowy brunette who looked like she was having a bad-hair month and hadn't taken a bath in 56 days.

Martyna Wojciechowska wasn't quite as big a star in Poland as the pope, but she came pretty close. Back in the late nineties she'd hosted Auto Maniac, a TV show devoted to Formula One racing, before moving on to host Big Brother (Europe's most popular reality show) and then starting an exotic-travel program called Mission Martyna that featured her sand-surfing in Chile and wrestling anacondas in Venezuela.

Mission Martyna was a hit until 2004, when the Energizer Bunny, while filming an episode that involved searching for elves in Iceland, suffered a car accident that killed her cameraman and shattered her spine. Doctors said her adventure days were over and told her she had to start "living like a normal person." At which point she decided to climb Everest.

"I had to fight my way back," she told me. "And the best way was to prove it's possible for somebody who is not a climber to get to the top of the world's highest mountain."

"So how was the summit?" I asked.

"Well, initially it was very foggy, but then the fog lifted to reveal a beautiful view of Tibet. Mountains upon mountains—enough to make you think the whole world is made of them. But it was so crowded up there. There was this Korean group, and they were all shouting and using their sat phones, and I couldn't even hear my own thoughts!"

"What did you do in the midst of all that ruckus?"

"Well, I made some calls of my own. I had a live satellite connection with TVN2—which is the Polish CNN—and with my mom, and with my boyfriend, Chris, who is a safari guide in Africa, and who had proposed to me a few days earlier. I must say, however, the summit was not what I expected.

"It was actually kind of a shabby moment," she continued, "fighting to have a moment of beauty to yourself. You know, after my accident, I had thought that standing on top of Mount Everest would make me the happiest person on earth. But now I know this is simply not true. And suddenly it seemed like maybe it wasn't so important after all."