There’s a quite clear image of them being at one of the camps up the climb while one is suffering from frostbite, evidenced by the narrator mentioning their “blackened fingertips”. There is a slight mention of the narrator’s disdain for large cities and prefers the solitude of the mountains.
The narrator uses language such as “damaged” and “blackened” to make their problem sound more impactful. They also use enthralled to describe how attached to the mountains they are, and we know this because the definition of enthralling is to captivate the attention or fascination of someone or something.