Max is dropping out of everything. Mad at his coach, he even drops soccer. In a confrontation with his mother, the 13-year-old demands to follow in his deceased father’s footsteps and climb Mt Rainier, one of the most lethal mountains in the world. A mountain known for ice cliffs, glaciers, crevasses, and chaotic weather. Max trains with his grandfather and his life starts going better. He makes friends on his rope team and the climb goes well. He discovers the wonder and the love of high mountains.

Then, in an earsplitting crack, everything changes. Hurt, scared, Max just wants to curl up, pretend he and his rope team are okay. But in soccer, his father had taught him to ‘be there for your team.’ Can Max be there for his rope team?

Recovered from the aftermath of his Mt Rainier tragedy, Max wants to return to the mountains. He volunteers to help his grandfather deliver a mythical talisman to a monastery in one of Bhutan’s high Himalayan passes. He meets Hillary, a red-headed Scottish archer, in Bhutan’s capital. Their meeting doesn’t go well. Unhappily, they end up on the same trek. Worse, Max needs her help because of poachers, mountain tigers, Chinese Special Forces seeking the talisman, and a cranky Buddhist dakini. Will they be able to work together? Will Max survive?

Max and Hillary are together again. This time Hillary is the one who needs Max’s help. She’s foolishly accepted a haunted, ancient basket. The wee one in the basket demands to be returned to its mother in Death Valley, or it will bond with a new mother, Hillary. Max and Hillary risk their lives as they race to find the mother's burial site in the vastness of the hottest place in the world. They battle dangerous heat, infamous slot canyons, narrow rock ledges, and a car wreck in their frantic hunt. Hillary desperately needs to find the mother’s burial site. Max, even more desperate, needs to find if Hillary likes him.