Jim Icarus is a handsome twenty-two year old who is invited to trek to the base camp of Mount Everest by his Dad, Alex. His adventures start by saving a boy from a burning helicopter. He falls in love with Charley, a pretty emergency physician. She helps resuscitate his Dad who succumbs to high altitude mountain sickness in Dingboche, Nepal. By luck a working group who has spent the summer and fall cleaning the trash from the base camp of Mount Everest is camped a few hundred yards from Jim's trekking party when his Dad goes into high altitude cerebral edema. Their Gamow hyperbaric bag is successful in resuscitating his Dad out of coma, but unfortunately Alex slips back into coma. Good fortune smiles again when a French physician from the High Altitude Mountain Rescue clinic in Pheriche arrives with her Jacque Cousteau designed hyperbaric chamber that will pressure the victim down to sea level. An injection of Niphedapine under Alex's tongue and a dive in the Cousteau bag brings Alex out of his coma once again.