In 1953, as two men summit Mount Everest for the first time, Charlie Houston and a team of mountaineers carve a path up the second-highest peak on Earth: the deadly K2. For Houston, reaching the top of K2 is a lifelong dream, an obsession that began 15 years earlier on his first expedition there. Since then, another American expedition has fallen apart on the remote, windswept mass of rock and ice. Now, Houston's team follows in their tracks, though hoping for better results.

With the summit in their grasp, a vicious storm and a sudden illness puts their own expedition on the edge of disaster, turning their quest to conquer a mountain into one of the most daring rescue missions of all time.