"I am always scared there," says Kaji Sherpa from his hospital bed in Kathmandu, Nepal. "But I know I always have to do it. Everybody is scared of the crevasses, but we just try to get through there as fast as possible."

Kaji was at the front of a line of Sherpas on April 18, walking along a narrow path through the Khumbu Icefall, when he didn't get through fast enough. (See "Historic Tragedy on Everest, With 13 Sherpas Dead in Avalanche.")

The men were clipped together along a rope line that had been set earlier by the "ice doctors," a group of senior Sherpas whose job is to set and maintain the always changing rope routes through the perilous area.

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