The Blue Ice

by Innes, Hammond;

  I grasped his hand. ‘An’ remember wot Oi says,’ he added. ‘If yer crossin’ Sankt Paal, don’t get a’t o’ sight o’ one markin’ post before you’ve located the next. An’ there’s an ’ut right at the top. Built by the ’otel association for the convenience of skiers. It can save yer life. It saved mine once.’ His friendly, wizened face puckered into a grin. ‘An’ if anybody asks yer, we didn’t meet no bloke off of Hval Ti, see. We ain’t met nobody. Well, good luck – an’ Oi’ll be seein’ yer da’n at Aurland.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘If you can’t make it, don’t worry. I’ll send a party up from Aurland, if you’re not with Diviner by the time I get back’

  ‘Okay,’ he said.

  He came with me to the door and stood, sniffing at the moonlight and the chill glitter of the mountains, whilst I put my skis on. A thin powder of snow blew in my face. ‘Wind’s goin’ ter get up,’ he said. ‘Looks like the weather’s goin’ ter break.’ He caught my arm as I straightened up and put on my gloves. ‘Mr Gansert,’ he said earnestly, ‘if you aim ter ’elp Olsen, yer’ve gotter move fast. They bin gainin’ on us all evening.’

  ‘I’ll go just as fast as I can,’ I said.

  He nodded and grinned. I bent forward and thrust with my sticks. My skis slid forward across the fine snow and a moment later I was whistling down the slope in the tracks of the others’ skis, the wind cold on my face. Faint behind me came Sunde’s shouted ‘Good luck!’

  Then I was alone and the only sound was the hiss of my skis and the quiet whisper of the wind brushing the snow like sand across the valley.

  In places the ski tracks I was following were already half obliterated. In other places they ran deep and clean as though Farnell and Lovaas had only just passed. The down stretch to the valley floor was all too short. Soon I was climbing steadily. The path became steeper, winding in giant zigzags up the shoulder of a mountain. That climb seemed endless. I climbed until my limbs ached and became like liquid. The path went up and through a litter of boulders till all the mountain tops for miles were visible, their smooth ice caps glinting in the moonlight – so cold and remote, like pictures of the South Pole.

  But at last I reached what Sunde had called the Driftaskar. I paused at the top of the pass. The moon was high overhead now. The wind had risen and all about me the powdery top layer of snow was on the move, sifting across the rocks like the sand before a desert storm. The place was as desolate and white as the moon itself viewed through a telescope. I put on a windbreaker and then began to descend. There was no clear run, for the ground was strewn with rocks. But it was easier going. And after the sweaty heat of climbing, the cold night air chilled me to the bone.

  Shortly after this I crossed a stream and began to climb again. After that I don’t remember very much about the journey to Gjeiteryggen. I only know that the country I passed through was wild and desolate, that as dawn grew nearer it got unbearably cold, and that I was stiff and dead with tiredness. I kept on repeating Sunde’s words over and over again as I trudged on through the snow – ‘You gotter move fast. They bin gaining on us all evening.’

  Often I thought I’d lost the way. The ski tracks vanished, obliterated by the snow. Then in panic I’d have recourse to map and compass. But always, sooner or later, in some spot sheltered from the wind I came upon them again. The moon sank towards the west and soon its light began to fade as a cold, grey luminosity spread over the mountains. Dawn came creeping like death across a snow-clad world. And I barely noticed it. I was beyond caring. With head bent I somehow kept going. But it was willpower, not the strength of my limbs that drove me. And all the time I kept on thinking – the others can’t be going on like this, without pause, unendingly. But always the tracks of their skis ran ahead of me to prove that they had.

  The moon sank at last behind the mountains. The snow on the mountain tops no longer glinted like sugar icing at Christmas time. It was grey and cold and the first light of day stripped the place of all beauty, leaving it bleak and empty. I was conscious then of the utter loneliness of these mountains. In summer a constant stream of walkers would tread this path. But now, with the mountains still in the last grip of the winter snow, there was nobody. I remembered Sunde’s wizened, friendly face and wished he were with me. Only the half-obliterated ski tracks that showed where the route was sheltered from the biting wind linked me with any other human.

  I was descending now to a long, frozen lake. In the valley below me the water was not frozen. It ran swift and black, like a jagged crack in the white carpet of the snow. At the bottom I stopped behind a tall rock and rested. I set my pack down on the snow and had an early breakfast of more flatbrod and brown cheese. I felt dazed and numb. Nothing was real. And when I went on, my movements were automatic as though I were skiing in my sleep.

  Thin clouds streaked the paling sky and as I worked my way along the lake they became suffused with a pink glow. The glow grew until the whole sky flamed a violent red. It was a beautiful, terrifying sunrise. The sun came up, a red angry disc, bloodying the snowy summits and casting an orange glow over everything. The sky reddened till it blazed with crimson. Then slowly it faded until all that was left was a cold, watery sunlight that had no warmth nor any promise of warmth. The last tinge of pink clung to high-piled cumulus lying to windward along the Norwegian coast.

  At last I stood on the shoulder of a hill, leaning wearily on my sticks, and looked down on Gjeiteryggen. The hut was without beauty. It was painted a dirty red and it stood there like a barracks in one of the most hideous stretches of country that I have ever seen. A broken series of lakes, frozen and piled with snow, lay about it in a semi-circle. Between the lakes were the black marks of moving, unfrozen water. The hills in which the lakes huddled were smooth. The boulders that littered the place were smooth. Only here and there a rock showed a jagged edge, as though smashed by a giant sledge hammer. The place was marked and scored and hammered out by ice. It was an awful, unhappy place.

  But there was the hut. And I thanked God for that. I wasn’t thinking then about Farnell, or about Lovaas and his mate. I was thinking that I could light a fire and sink down in a chair and rest. God, I was tired – tired and cold and wretched! Nothing mattered. Nothing at all. In that moment I could have been offered the mines of Solomon, the treasure of the Incas, all the wealth of the Indies, and I wouldn’t have cared a damn. What are the world’s minerals worth when you’re sick with exhaustion – weary right through to your bones and to the very marrow of your bones?

  I started down to the hut. And then I stopped. Something had caught my eye – something that moved. I screwed up my eyes, trying to clear their vision which was half blinded by the whiteness of the snow. It was away to the right of the hut on the further shore of the largest of the frozen lakes. It was moving towards the valley that led up to the sombre mass of Sankt Paal. Was it reindeer? A bear, perhaps? But I think I knew what it might be even whilst I considered all the possible alternatives. I felt the excitement of the chase send the strength pumping back into my tired limbs. Lovaas – or was it Farnell? Had he given them the slip? No. The object had separated – there were two of them. It was Lovaas.

  I searched farther on up the white slopes of the valley. And there, high up on the valley side, another black speck moved steadily through the snow.

  I didn’t stop to think. I thrust my sticks hard into the snow and went hurtling down the slope to the flat ice of the lake. At least I could cut a corner here. Farnell – and Lovaas behind him – had gone down to the Gjeiteryggen hut. There they had to turn sharp right. By cutting across the lake I might save a mile, maybe two.

  The chase was on now. Before, the quarry had been mythical, something that was there ahead, but only visible through the lines of the ski tracks. But now I could see them. They were real. No thought of what I should do if I came up with them crossed my mind. All my efforts were now bent on one thing – making the best possible speed and lessening the distance between myself and Lovaas.


  I tumbled down a steep drift of snow and my skis scrunched as they bit the harder snow on the frozen lake. The ice held and I went forward easily across the flat surface. As I started to climb the long valley leading to Sankt Paal I wasn’t more than a mile behind Lovaas and his mate. Every now and then, on a shoulder of the valley, I caught a glimpse of their two figures, black against the snow. I could even pick out Lovaas – he was so much shorter and stouter than the other. Once I caught sight of Farnell, a lone dot high up on the mountainside.

  The tilt of the valley became steeper. Soon it was sheer willpower and nothing else that drove me forward. Every effort was concentrated on pushing forward. Twice I saw Lovaas turn and glance over his shoulder. He couldn’t fail to see me. And yet I gave no thought to what I was going to do, how I was going to get past them to Farnell. It was enough that they were in sight. And I could spare no thought for anything other than the task of holding the pace.

  The tracks of the skis ahead were deep and clear now. There was no question of looking for the route. I had only to follow. But God how my legs ached! My breath came through my teeth in rasping gasps. Soon I was side-stepping up. I had not the energy to stride forward, my skis wide like crow’s feet. Nor could the others apparently. And it was some comfort to know that I was not the only one who was feeling exhausted.

  Once, on a particularly steep stretch, I paused. The sweat was like ice on my forehead where the wind touched it. The sun had vanished now. The day had a bleak, wintry look. And away to my right the clouds were rolling in from the sea, covering the mountain tops. It was a bad outlook for crossing the glacier. If it were mist it might enable me to get past Lovaas to Farnell. But if it were snow … The thought sent a chill through me. A snowstorm at just on five thousand feet wasn’t a good prospect. It would obliterate the ski tracks. It might even hide the posts marking the route.

  I turned and pressed on. The fear of those clouds piling up from the west was what drove me forward now. I felt I had to get across the glacier before they reached me. But I hadn’t a hope. In five minutes visibility was diminishing and the air was becoming much colder. I stopped and took a quick bearing on the direction that I knew the peak of Sankt Paal to be. Then I trudged on – climbing, climbing all the time. The clouds had no form now. They were a grey veil obliterating the valley behind me, swirling chill fingers round black outcrops of rock until nothing remained. Then my world became reduced to a small compass of snow that looked dirty and bleak in the half-light. The rest was a grey void. My only link with the world beyond that void was the sharp-cut lines of the ski tracks. They disappeared ahead in the curtain of mist, yet they always continued as I advanced.

  The wind was very cold now. There was a damp chill in the driving force of it. I might have been in Canada, up in the mining camps of the Rockies. But then I would have been properly equipped with moccasins and fur cap and plenty of woollen clothes. Here the wind blew right through me, eating into bones that were already numb with exhaustion.

  A tall slender pole emerged from the mist. It was thrust deep into the snow by a black granite outcrop. The first of the markers. I was at the top of a ridge. The ski tracks ran level ahead of me into the impenetrable murk. Before I had lost sight of the marker behind me, the next was in sight. The ski tracks ran close by it. Another and another followed. Then I was climbing steeply again, side-stepping steadily so that my limbs ached. The rarefied atmosphere and the cold began to tell. I felt I should never make the top of that ridge. Surely this must be the top of Sankt Paal? But after that ridge there was another and another.

  And then suddenly, at the top of that third ridge, close by one of the markers, the ski tracks turned away to the left and ran downhill. I followed them automatically. For two hundred feet or more I ran smoothly and easily down. The wind whipped through my wind-breaker, turning the sweat of my body to an icy dampness. It was as though I had no clothes on at all. A flurry of torn-up snow leapt to meet me out of the mist. Fortunately I was not going fast. I did a half Christi and followed on the line of ski tracks. Below me, to the left, the snow fell away in a sheer drop. My heart leapt in my mouth as I saw the white tendrils of the mist swirling in an up-draught of air. I was skiing along the edge of a precipice. The drop might be a hundred feet. It might be a thousand. I couldn’t tell. And I realised that I had passed no markers in the last five hundred yards or so. I stemmed and came to a standstill. As I stood there, looking down into the nothingness of moving vapour, I realised suddenly the game that Farnell was playing. He knew these mountains. He had deliberately led his pursuers off the marked track and was playing a game of hide-and-seek on skis, with the mist and all the perils of the mountains in his favour.

  I hesitated. And as I hesitated the mist darkened. A myriad black specks began driving past me. It was starting to snow. I glanced ahead. There were the ski tracks, clear and deep. But even as I looked the edges became blurred and their sharpness was lost in the falling snow.

  I turned then and in the fear of sudden loneliness hurried back along my tracks. The snow thickened. The wind was driving straight into my face, blinding me. In an instant my windbreaker was white and I was brushing the cold, clammy particles from my face.

  God, how fear lent strength to my limbs! By the time I had reached the spot where I had had to Christi, the marks of the turn were barely visible. I started to climb the long slope down which I had run so easily. But before I was half-way up, the tracks made coming down were gone, as though rubbed out by a giant rubber. I stopped and got out my compass. No good going by the direction of the wind. It was eddying all over the place.

  I reached the top at last and began to descend. I turned back then, certain I had crossed the line of the markers. I searched back and forth across a wide area. But there was nothing. Just snow and an occasional jagged outcrop of rock. I followed the compass bearing, casting back and forth across the direction it took me. No friendly posts came out of the mist to greet me. Perhaps the slope I had descended had curved. I cursed myself for not being able to remember. I had just followed the line of the ski tracks, blindly, unthinkingly. In a sudden panic I struck away to the right, climbing again. Soon I was on a ridge, the wind whistling past my face, driving the snow in a thick black cloud. Back and forth I cast, my heart hammering and a horrible emptiness in my belly. I began to descend, and then in panic turned back. I struck away to the left and in a few minutes was crossing a half-obliterated ski track that had been made by my own skis only a few minutes before. I climbed to the top of another ridge. And then I stopped. I was lost. Completely and utterly lost.

  I had known men who had been lost in the bush in Africa. I had always thought it must be a ghastly experience. But it couldn’t be as bad as this. At least there had been trees and warmth and sunshine. Here there was nothing. Just this empty, desolate waste of snow.

  I was almost sobbing with fear. I’m not easily frightened. I’ve never been frightened of anything I could see. But I was cold and exhausted and alone. What was that story of Jack London’s? Something about a wolf. Had London experienced the utter emptiness of exhaustion and lostness before he wrote that story? What had been the end of it? What had happened to that man? He had gone forward on all fours at the end. Had he killed the wolf that was as exhausted as he? Or had the wolf killed him? I couldn’t remember. And it was frightfully important. I was certain it was important. I knew my mind was wandering. But I couldn’t help it. The story hammered at my tired brain. I couldn’t think of anything else. I could see it so clearly. The man on all fours and the wolf – each waiting for the other to die, neither having the strength to kill the other. I was feeling drowsy. I wanted to sink down into the snow. That way lay death. But I didn’t care. A merciful oblivion. What did it matter? But I mustn’t give up. There was Farnell. And there was Jill. Why did I think of Jill? Farnell and Jill. What was that to me? But I must go on. I must.

  I can’t remember much about what followed. Cold and exhaustion made everything seem unreal. I was dazed
and numbed. All I know is that I began to move forward. I was climbing. And I kept on climbing. I had some crazy notion that if I went on climbing I’d get above the snow, out into the sunshine. And then suddenly I was standing in front of a long slender pole stuck deeply into the snow. I looked at it curiously, almost without interest. Then my brain seemed to function again and hope suddenly coursed along my frozen nerves. I cast about from the pole until I found the next and after that I kept moving from marker to marker, my teeth gritted and only some hidden force inside me driving my unwilling body forward.

  And at last, on a ridge that sloped away on either side, something square and solid emerged out of the snowstorm. It stood on a platform of half-exposed rock. It wasn’t until I had almost reached it that my brain recognised it for what it was. The hut. It was the hut that Sunde had mentioned. The hut on the very summit of Sankt Paal.

  I struggled to leeward of it and found the door. My frozen fingers fumbled with the bindings of my skis. But at last I had them off. Then I lifted the latch. It opened. I stumbled in and closed it behind me.

  The sudden stillness was like oblivion. Outside the wind roared and I could hear the falling of the snow. But inside all was quiet. I was in a little passage. It was very dark after the glare of the snow. It wasn’t warm. But the wind no longer cut through my clothing. There was an inner door. A pair of skis clattered to the floor as I opened it. Inside was a big room with a long deal table and benches. There was a rucksack on the table and an opened packet of sandwiches. A dull glow of warmth met me as I staggered towards a seat. That warmth – it seemed to rise up and lap me round. I felt suddenly dizzy. The table began to move. Then the whole room started spinning. I felt my legs buckle under me. I heard somebody cry out. Then everything was a blank and I was sinking down, down, into a soft, warm darkness.