Australian mountaineer Brigitte Muir remembers reaching the summit of the world's highest mountain, sitting atop the peak of Mount Everest laughing and thinking: "I'm never coming back here again."
It was a goal nine years in the making.
Muir is the first Australian woman to summit Everest and the first Australian to climb the Seven Summits, the highest mountain on each continent,
It is an achievement that took years to sink in, the 63-year-old said.
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"It wasn't easy but I was so motivated to climb that mountain because it also happened to be the last one on my list of climbing the highest peak on each continent," she said.
"I really, really wanted to finish what I started."
The climb was a culmination of a decades-long mountaineering and guiding career, and four attempts over four years to reach Everest's summit.
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Muir described the feeling of finally reaching the top of Everest, towering 8849 metres above sea level from a restaurant in Salleri, Nepal, ahead of the May 28, 25-year- anniversary of her record-breaking, 1997 climb.
"There were just three of us on the mountain and it was just amazing, no one else was on the mountain," Muir said.
"You can see the north side of the mountain, I could see where I had attempted the climb from Tibet and you could see all the way to the plains of India, it was a perfect day.
"It was extraordinary. Persistence paid off."
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But, upon descent, Muir realised she was struggling for oxygen in the high altitudes.
"I made the mistake of taking my oxygen mask off at the top," she said.
"We were on the summit for about an hour without oxygen and we were so happy to be there, we filmed and we talked on radio, those kinds of things.
"The body is really not made to function at very high altitudes.
"I realised when I was going down with my mask back on that I couldn't breathe at all."
Muir was experiencing pulmonary edema, a build-up of liquid in the lungs.
Tied with rope as a safety precaution on the steep, icy slopes, Muir and her fellow climbers made their descent back to Base Camp.
"High altitude is definitely a dangerous environment and it really helps to know your body and not be a slave to your ego," Muir said.
"It takes a lot for your body to get used to the thin air and there are some physiological changes that happen, your blood thickens, you get more red blood cells."
Muir relayed her previous attempts to tackle Everest, adding that had her group not turned back on her first try, they would have died in a vicious storm.
On her second attempt at the climb, the experienced mountaineer's head torch blew out just hundreds of metres from the summit, causing her companions to mistakenly leave her behind.
"I was devastated," Muir said.
"I spent the rest of the night waiting for the light on the side of the mountain basically at 8500 metres, and my oxygen ran out.
"By the time the light came, I was too cold and had to go down."
The next year, Muir found herself in the middle of the deadliest climbing disaster in Everest's history at the time, with eight climbers killed on the mountain's southside in a single day.
While making the 1996 climb, Muir came across a man nearing death by frostbite and exposure on the Mountain, helping him reach the nearest camp.
"Commercial interests were taken before people's lives," she said.
"I helped in the rescue of one of the people in the storm and then obviously we didn't go for the summit."
Muir now spends her time at home in Natimuk, at the foot of Mount Arapiles in Victoria, podcasting, writing, key-note speaking or shooting documentaries back in the Himalayas.
But her second home is the farming village of Lura, Nepal where she supports local women's literacy programs, running fundraising treks through the region.
Muir said the idea for the Beyond the Smile project came when visiting a friend in the village, where she learned many women were unable to read or write.
"We asked them what they want basically and then tried to find the money for doing what they want to do- there's a lot of work that comes from the villages," Muir said.
When asked which moments from her globe-spanning career stand out the most she answers "there's too many times to just pick one."
"It's always the people- You don't remember being at the top of the mountain, you remember the people you are climbing with.
"Climbing mountains was a lifestyle."
