It all started 10 years ago. My dad set off to climb Mount Rainier, a 14,411-foot volcano an hour's drive from Seattle. He did not make it to the top.

My dad tried again in 1999, with the same result. He made his final try in 2006, this time with me, his 16-year-old son.

So here I was at 5 a.m., with five hours of climbing behind me. Having started our climb at midnight to avoid melting snow, I stood 11,000 feet in the air, at the top of Disappointment Cleaver, a gargantuan collection of rocks, ice and snow that physically separates two glaciers. Nothing was below me but crevices that resembled the cracks in a broken window.

My dad, Roland Dorson, trained for months, but he is 51 years old, and the climb was simply too taxing. He left me in the hands of two other climbers, and fate, as I made my final ascent to the summit of Mount Rainier.

Here I was, suspended above the Earth on a slanted hill of ice and snow. The cold soaked through my fleece, my legs ached, and my crampons dug deeper into the packed snow as I prepared to tackle a mountain without the person who had prepared me for this very day.

There was no waving goodbye or sentimental words. I looked at my father, and he looked at me, and I watched him disappear over the cliff into the rising sun.

At 9:15 a.m. on July 23, after nine hours of climbing, I reached the summit of Mount Rainier. From 14,000 feet, the world seemed to be mine for the taking. The incredible vividness of the blue sky seemed to blend seamlessly with the greens and purples of the mountains below, creating a gently flowing ocean of color as far as I could see.

The proudest moment of my life came when I signed not only my name but my dad's name in the log book at the summit of Mount Rainier. Though he was not with me physically, my father's spirit never left me that day. I knew he deserved, as did I, to be standing on the top of the world.

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