What happens
Adrian Tillett, a man who has lost feeling down one side of his body and fears a slow decline, decides to climb an unclimbed ice face on the west side of a mountain ridge near Zermatt, accepting the risk of death as the cost of his choice. His old friend Tillett and the local guide Gaspar try to talk him out of it, and he travels up alone. Suspense presents this adaptation of C.E. Montague's story starring Herbert Marshall, first broadcast on October 5, 1953. Along the way he meets a little old guide he has known for years, and the climb itself becomes the story's central trial.
Mountain village of Zermatt and the west face of the Shalihaq ridge in the Alps, with an earlier scene in London and a country stream near Weybridge
Characters: Bill, Adrian Tillett, Margarita, Gaspar, Theodore Gollum, Hillary
Listen for: The ice wall climb and the overhanging bulge, where the story turns on the rescue of a woman dangling on a rope
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.