ELEVEN YEARS HAD PASSED by the time our crew of would-be eye-camp assistants stumbled out of a cramped bus and stood blinking in the bright afternoon light flooding the front yard of the Jiri View Hotel. The Sight-to-Summit roster included marquee alpinists like 43-year-old Conrad Anker—the Montana climber who made headlines in 1999 when he discovered the body of British mountaineer George Mallory, who'd died attempting Everest in 1924—and fellow American Pete Athans, 48, a seven-time Everest summiter, friend of Geoff's, and self-described "jack Buddhist" with deep ties in Nepal. Also on board were Abby Watkins, 36, an Australian mountain guide living in British Columbia; Kevin Thaw, 37, a lively, lanky Brit and one of the world's reigning big-wall specialists; Kristoffer Erickson, 31, a Montana photographer who, in 2002, became the second American to ski from the top of the 26,906-foot Himalayan peak Cho Oyu; and Jordan Campbell, 38, a public-relations consultant from Basalt, Colorado, who'd formerly run The North Face's expedition program.

Along with Geoff and Ruit, the climbers would be featured in a documentary for Dish Network's Rush HD channel, scheduled to air April 2, 2006, and being shot by Boulder, Colorado, filmmaker Michael Brown, a 39-year-old director best known for Farther Than the Eye Can See, an account of the 2001 Everest ascent made by blind American climber Erik Weihenmayer.

Brown had brought along Dave D'Angelo, 26, his Serac Adventure Films partner, and John Griber, 39,

As the eye patches fell to the grass, one man leaped up and started dancing. Another, a wiry old Brahman in an army tunic, stood up, clapped his heels together, and snapped his hand to his forehead in salute, tears streaming down his craggy face.

a big-mountain snowboarder and cinematographer who would do the filming up high on Cholatse. Telluride, Colorado–based photographer Ace Kvale, 46, and I rounded out the rest of the "Westies," as Thaw liked to refer to the group in his Manchester accent. Finally, two Nepali climbers, friends of Pete, completed the roster: Ang Temba, 36, our base-camp manager, and Dawa Sherpa, 37, who was helping the film team. Grand total of Everest summits among the group: a hefty 17.

The Sight-to-Summit project represented a compelling evolution in the nature of big-time expeditions. Pete had helped Geoff at an eye camp in Mustang in 2003, and the two friends had dreamed of combining another camp with a climb—just the kind of thing that would appeal to TNF's slightly revised sponsorship criteria. North Face–sponsored expeditions had long included cultural dimensions, but those aspects were formalized in 2004, when TNF partnered with Global Giving, a Bethesda, Maryland–based nonprofit that channels philanthropic donations through the Web. Proposals now hinged as much on cultural components as on adventure ambitions.

A man hoping to replace his outdated glasses with interocular lenses (Ace Kvale)

Though smaller neo-adventures had already taken place, this trip was the most ambitious attempt yet to fuse corporate philanthropy, high-altitude athleticism, and cause marketing, and there was something in it for everybody: The athletes would get to climb; The North Face and its parent company—Greensboro, North Carolina–based VF Corporation—would advance their philanthropic mission by ponying up close to $65,000 for the trip, including nearly $10,000 to pay for the eye camps; and Rush HD would roll out a high-quality film, one that might attract even more donors to the cause. Most important, several hundred Nepalis would have their sight restored. How it would all blend together on the ground, no one really knew. But it sure sounded good.

That first morning at the eye camp, the climbers busied themselves unloading supplies at the Jiri Technical School, a small vocational campus. The doctors had assembled a remarkably simple and portable system: two microscopes; several crates of sterilized drapes, face masks, caps, and rubber gloves; and a few boxes of sterilized instruments, syringes, anesthetics, blue plastic eye shields, and rolls of gauze and medical tape. Two small classrooms were swept out and lined with sheets of black plastic to create rustic operating theaters.

The camp had been advertised on the radio, and medical assistants had combed the hills, dropping leaflets and prescreening patients. Several hundred had gathered by the time Tilganga's tan Toyota Land Cruiser arrived and disgorged the docs: Geoff bounding alongside the slightly older, slightly shorter Ruit, whose Buddha belly strained against his white polo shirt, his fleshy face scrunched into a broad smile as he greeted local officials. A few freaked-out patients had already bolted after seeing the anesthesiologist plunge a large needle directly into an eye socket, but now Ruit floated through the throng, touching and reassuring the people with warm tenderness. It was as if Siddhartha himself had strolled down from the high peaks.

Jiri was a homecoming for the two doctors. Geoff had come to Tilganga in 1994 as a corneal fellow from Australia's Melbourne University, just in time for the center's maiden eye camp. He'd grown up in the affluent suburbs north of Chicago, attended Yale as an undergrad, completed a master's in philosophy at Oxford, and gone on to Harvard Medical School, a residency at Brown, and finally Melbourne. Over the years he'd found time to squeeze in some extracurriculars. In 1979, as part of Oxford's Dangerous Sports Club, he'd been featured on he TV series That's Incredible! as the first American to bungee-jump. In 1983 he was part of the first—and, to date, only—team to go up the American Direct route on Everest's Kangshung Face, and in 1989 he became the fourth climber to complete the Seven Summits.

Although Geoff had arrived in Nepal full of self-confidence, the cases he'd confronted as a Western surgeon were nothing like the ones he saw in Jiri: advanced cataracts as large and hard as dimes. What's more, he was accustomed to using a $65,000 microscope with a top-shelf Carl Zeiss lens, not the $4,000 model provided at the camp. In four days, the two surgeons completed 238 surgeries. Ruit performed 201, Geoff 37.

"I'd seen Dr. Ruit operate in Kathmandu," Geoff told me with a laugh. "And he just made it look so easy."

Ruit, for his part, was skeptical at first. Plenty of Western doctors had come to study with him, and few seemed particularly interested in helping the greater cause. But Geoff was different. "He had this strange restlessness," Ruit told me. "He said the mountains in this part of the world had been a tremendous part of his life. You could tell he was just itching to give something back."

The two decided to create HCP, which would funnel tax-deductible donations from the U.S. and keep Geoff returning to Nepal three or four times a year. By the time he and Pete Athans cooked up the Sight-to-Summit Expedition, Geoff was hoping to open up a whole new level of support—and get one last shot at making a formidable summit.