The highest peak in Europe and a dormant volcano to which, in one version of the tradition, Prometheus was chained. The mountain has accumulated a body of stories of its own: the Priyut 11 hut that burned in 1998, the bodies of German Edelweiss division troops found where they planted a flag in 1942, and figures in the mist that climbers describe in almost the same words used on Scotland's Ben Macdui.