High in the Tien Shan mountain range overlooking the vast Takla Makan desert, a team of climbers reach the 'Death Zone' where survival is a lottery run by fate. Ray and Sarah scale the heights until tragedy overtakes them. Two decades later Julie proves she is a climber in the same class as her mother. The love between a man and a woman travels from the Rocky Mountains to the Tien Shans on the Chinese border and beyond to the Himalayas.