The Ledge

by Jim Davidson

  Copyright © 2011 by Jim Davidson and Kevin Vaughan

  Title-page photograph copyright © iStockphoto.com / © Brett Despain

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Portions of this work were originally published in different form in the

  Rocky Mountain News.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission

  to print previously unpublished material:

  Scott Anderson: excerpt from a card from Scott Anderson

  to Jim Davidson from 1992. Used courtesy of Scott Anderson.

  Joanne (Markowski) Donohue: excerpts from the journals of Joanne (Markowski) Donohue. Used courtesy of Joanne Markowski Donohue.

  John Madden: note from John Madden to Jim Davidson.

  Used courtesy of John Madden.

  Don and Donna Price: writings, including journal entries, by Mike Price. Used courtesy of Don and Donna Price.

  The Ruess family: quote by Everett Ruess. Used courtesy of the Ruess family.

  Mark Udall: excerpt from a letter from Mark Udall to Jim Davidson from July 1992. Used courtesy of Mark Udall.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Davidson, Jim.

  The ledge: an adventure story of friendship and survival on Mount Rainier /

  Jim Davidson, Kevin Vaughan.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-345-52321-1

  1. Mountaineering accidents—Washington (State)—Rainier, Mount. 2. Mountaineering—Washington (State)—Rainier, Mount. 3. Davidson, Jim. 4. Price, Mike. 5. Mountaineers—United States—Biography. I. Vaughan, Kevin. II. Title.

  GV199.42.W22D38 2011 796.52′209797782—dc22 2011010515

  www.ballantinebooks.com

  Jacket design: Daniel Rembert

  Front jacket images: © Alamy/Marc Muench (background),

  courtesy of Jim Davidson (climbers)

  v3.1

  Dedicated to

  Mike Price

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Acknowledgments

  Photo Insert

  Sources

  About the Authors

  June 23, 1992

  Dear Mike,

  Jesus, man, I’m sorry! I can’t believe this happened to you and to us … I swear to God, Mike, I didn’t mean to fall into that crevasse and I certainly didn’t want to pull you in behind me …

  Everyone tells me that it was all an accident and that it could have been the other way around just as easy. I suppose they’re right.

  I really enjoyed our climb … God—weren’t our bivouacs wild? We were like real alpine hard men—as you said, this climb should make some great stories …

  I apologize if my nervousness made you mad or frustrated. Perhaps it was a lack of courage. Perhaps it was foreboding. My crevasse fear did build and build right up to the last few hours and minutes—perhaps I knew.

  I assure you that had you gone in first, I too would have dug in for all I was worth and then would have gone right in behind you. I think you know that, though. I truly felt we were friends and partners …

  I shall strive to take this second chance I’ve been given and unfurl my wings and fly with it, not turn inward into a dark ball. I shall strive to live a strong, forward-moving, vivacious life in your honor.

  Take care, Mike.

  Your friend,

  Jim

  PROLOGUE

  I peer off the ledge into blackness. Pressing my gloved hand against the ice wall for balance, I tilt my head to the right and stare past my boots, half-buried in loose snow. Squeezing my left eye shut, I look straight down my right hip and leg, as if I’m sighting along a rifle barrel. I am desperate to see the bottom of this dim cavern.

  Nothing. Empty space drops below us and vanishes. My stomach clamps tight, and I swallow hard.

  Even through my thick climbing gloves, cold seeps out of the ice wall and stings my fingertips. I pull my hand back and exhale a ragged breath.

  Fear forces me, for the moment, to block out the ominous space looming around and below, so instead I study the ledge we’re on. It’s been a few minutes since the collapse happened and we crash-landed here. My eyes have now adjusted to the muted blue light filtering down from far above. Our frozen shelf is about seven feet long and two feet wide. Mike lies on the snow ledge lengthwise, his feet dangling a few inches over the far end. I’m standing next to him, with the toe of my left mountaineering boot touching his climbing harness.

  I step back to give him some room, but right away my shoulder bumps against the frozen wall behind me. When I reach forward, my hand hits the far ice wall before I can straighten my arm. A mild wave of claustrophobic tension ripples through my chest, but I push it away and shuffle about to find more space. But with Mike, his pack and gear all jumbled across our small ledge, there’s nowhere else for me to stand. One long strand of yellow climbing rope loops off the ledge just beyond Mike’s head, so I bend over to reel it back in before it snags on something.

  With my head down low, I feel wetness drip off my nose. I run my forearm across my face and see dark smears on my jacket sleeve. Blood.

  Retrieving the rope forces me to confront the dark space beneath our ledge. Fighting to stay calm, I focus on trying to figure out where we are inside the glacier, and how much deeper the crevasse stretches beneath us. The rope droops down at least twenty feet without touching anything; beyond that, I see nothing. Deep below me, the glacial sidewalls are nearly as black as the crevasse itself—I can distinguish them only by the glint of weak light reflecting off the ice. The walls pinch closer until the gap between them is less than a foot across.

  I’m not going down there.

  To my right, the crevasse stretches laterally away from me as it tunnels more than one hundred feet farther into the mountainside. It’s like looking into a dark, narrow alley, just two feet across, squeezed between towering buildings. At the far end our fissure burrows even deeper beneath the glacier and the gloom fades to impenetrable black.

  I turn and look in the opposite direction, along the crevasse’s long axis as it stretches down the mountain. Peering out over Mike, I figure the crevasse extends about two hundred feet that way. I pull in a sharp breath and hear my hiss echo off the ice wall. This slot is enormous.

  Slowly, I face the awful truth: We’re stuck on a tiny ledge, trapped alone inside this miles-long glacier. God only knows how far down we are—I haven’t dared to look up yet. But there’s no question about it: We’re deep, deep inside.

  It happened so fast. One second we were descending the mountain, nearly finished with the most remarkable alpine climbing experience of our lives, just hours after summiting Mount Rainier. Then a step, a single treacherous step, in the wrong spot.

  A snow bridge collapsed, and in a second, I was falling, falling—dragging Mike in behind me. Falling, falling.

  And now, this. Trapped in a crevasse.

  I drop my head and stare at my gree
n plastic boots. I’m shocked by the massive space below us, on both sides of us, above us. It feels as if the weight of all the air in the huge cavern is squashing me.

  By looking down and to the sides, I had hoped that I might find a simple exit. But now it’s clear: The only way out is up.

  I steel myself to face that reality, to determine how far the distance to the glacier’s surface really is. Leaning my forehead against the ice wall, I close my eyes, blow out a long breath, and try to find some calm. I need a minute before I can look.

  Rocking from one foot to the other, I hear the snow squeak beneath my boots. When I shift my arm, my Gore-Tex jacket crinkles against itself. Water drips on my sleeve, falling from somewhere high above me.

  Stoically I straighten up tall and begin lifting my gaze. Twenty feet above me I see the side walls of ice flare away from each other as the crevasse gap expands to around four feet across. Then maybe six.

  My eyes travel up … up … up. Forty feet above me, I see the walls, now separated by about eight feet, leaning back inward in an ever-steepening overhang. In the blue light closer to the surface I can make out lumpy blobs of ice frozen to the side walls.

  My neck strains. About sixty feet above me, the left wall juts out, forming an overhanging ice roof that would be impossible to free climb. A sense of dread washes over me.

  Resting my right hand on the wall for support, I curl my upper body backward so I can finally stare straight up. Far above, back at the glacier’s surface, the entire crevasse is capped by a huge roof of snow. In some places up there, the snow bridge that spans this crevasse is thick enough to block all light, and from beneath, the bulbous ceiling appears black. In other places, the deceptive snow layer is so whisper-thin that soft light glows from its underbelly.

  My eyes lock on the most vital feature: Directly over my head rests a small, irregular circle of bright white light. It’s sunlight spilling through the jagged hole that opened beneath my feet and swallowed us. The sky above the glacier is presumably still blue, but I can’t see it—the intense light pouring in blinds me. That sunlit hole is the only way out of here, the only way back to life.

  And that hole is roughly eighty feet away, straight up.

  I hear a quivering voice.

  “Oh, we’re in trouble,” I say to Mike. “We’re in big, big trouble.”

  CHAPTER 1

  THE AIRPLANE’S ENGINE droned rhythmically, the only sound in an empty sky. Mike Price peered out the window, taking in a snow-covered landscape that unfurled as far as he could see. He’d studied a map of this area for weeks, but even that hadn’t prepared him for the reality of the Yukon.

  Glaciers wider than mighty rivers; ice-streaked peaks reaching into the evening sky; a brilliant white blanket undulating across a barren landscape.

  It was June 11, 1981, and Mike Price was on the cusp of one of the greatest adventures of his life. In the coming weeks, he and three friends would trek and ski ninety miles across this isolated stretch of uninhabitable expanse, lugging eighty-pound packs, aiming for the summit of a desolate peak called Mount Kennedy.

  It was Mike’s job to drop two plastic barrels of provisions along their route—and to know with certainty that they’d be able to find them days later, when they’d be out of food, isolated, alone. The plane swept in low over the snow, and Mike pushed one of the barrels out, watching as it crashed to the ground in a spray of powder. He marked the precise spot on the coffee-table-sized map.

  A little later, deeper in the frozen wilderness, he dumped the second barrel, and again marked the map. The hired bush pilot banked the plane and headed back to base camp.

  Later that night, in his tent, Mike cracked open a leather-bound journal, lifted a black ballpoint pen to page 46, and began writing.

  “Tomorrow we’re off! For real.”

  The magnificent desolation he’d seen out the plane’s window riveted him.

  “I find it difficult to write. The visual experience simply does not translate to paper well. Awesome.”

  To emphasize that entry, he took a blue pen and underlined the words.

  In the coming weeks, Mike Price would learn things about himself that would help shape his destiny, that would one day lead him to a snowcapped mountain near Seattle.

  During those long, muscle-numbing days in the Yukon, not only did he see things he’d never forget, but he was able to reaffirm in himself something he’d always known, something his parents had seen, too, when he’d boxed older, bigger boys as a kid, or when he’d loaded up his backpack and headed into the woods alone as a teenager: Mike Price was tough. He could survive hunger, weariness, and fear.

  Mike was twenty-three years old in the summer of 1981. A native of Pauls Valley, Oklahoma, the son of an air traffic controller, he’d already led an exciting, nomadic life. Military school; college in Colorado and Montana; work in Wyoming. And lots of time in the mountains.

  Now, the four friends—Mike, Andy Thamert, Bob Jamieson, and Bob’s brother, Lee—were ready to reach for a dream that was as audacious as it was difficult. They planned to make their way across the ice and emptiness of the Saint Elias Mountains in the Canadian Yukon, then climb Mount Kennedy, a steep, snow-crusted peak. Named in memory of the late president after he was murdered in Dallas, it had first been climbed in 1965 by Robert F. Kennedy and a team of experienced mountaineers on a trip sponsored by the National Geographic Society.

  Mike and his buddies would spend thirty-seven days in unforgiving country, beginning in the mud along the Slims River and then, roped together in their climbing harnesses, trekking through endless fields of ice and snow. They would cross seven major glaciers, go thirty-four days without seeing another human being, run short of food, fight off overpowering boredom and tension, and skirt yawning crevasses that threatened to consume them.

  “I will always remember the trip as being equally difficult, beautiful and desolate,” Mike would write near the end of the journey.

  NO ONE WHO’D known Mike Price as a kid would have been surprised to learn that he would one day possess the confidence to set out into the Yukon with three friends and that they would rely on their wits and little else to get home alive.

  Small and skinny all his life, with a bowl cut of blond hair, he was self-assured beyond his size and years. After he advanced in a junior high spelling bee, he told a reporter for the local paper that he wasn’t surprised.

  “I’ve got momentum,” he said. “The Price is right.”

  He was barely a teenager when he uttered those words, but they illustrated the combustible mix of mischievous joy and wit that would form the core of his personality.

  He drove his mother crazy at times, his curious preteen mind fueling a motor mouth that seemingly wouldn’t quit. They’d be out in the station wagon, Donna Price up front, Mike leaning over from the back seat, yammering on about the army, about soldiers, making it up as he went, like a junior Dick Vitale, one sentence crashing into another and then another, no hint that an ending was coming. Sometimes he’d go on for so long that his mother would think silently about offering him a dollar to just be quiet.

  Over the years, as he grew older, his parents and his younger brother, Daryl, saw a gentle transformation. Mike grew to be more introspective, and he would sit in a gathering and listen rather than yammer.

  After his family moved to Colorado, an abiding love of the outdoors blossomed in Mike, and as it did he developed an inner confidence. He was the son who, as a teenager, ventured up Poudre Canyon, west of Fort Collins, Colorado, camping out in weather so cold that—family legend would have it—he used a frozen stick of summer sausage to drive his tent pegs into the icy soil. He was the traveler who blew into town the day before his first class at the University of Montana, found an apartment, and got a part-time job in a ski shop—no worries.

  “He did what he wanted to do,” Donna would say years later. “How many people can say that? How many people have the chance, and the courage?”

  There wer
e times, when Mike was out in the desert or up in the mountains, that concern, even alarm reverberated in the minds of his parents. But Don and Donna Price were determined that their boys would stand on their own, that they would make their own way in the world.

  MIKE CARRIED HIS bravado with him to the Yukon, where the four young men—“unknowns and never-wases,” as he described them beforehand—fought through at-times horrific weather in their quest to climb a peak few had ever visited.

  Near the summit of Mount Kennedy, rocked by blasts of wind, blinded by sheets of snow, they found they could go no farther. Bitter cold froze their eyelashes together when they dared close their eyes for longer than a blink. In that no-man’s-land, only a few hours from the summit, Lee Jamieson, then just seventeen years old, stopped, his hands numb. Bob, seven years his brother’s senior, sidled up to Lee and slipped off his frozen mittens, replacing them with his own.

  “Andy and I move behind,” Mike would write of the moment. “At 12,500 feet the climb is over. Simultaneously all four of us know it, but stand dumbly in the blowing snow, waiting for Bob to speak … Less than 1,400 feet from the summit, no one wants to be the first to give in. We are so close. We have come so far.”

  It was July 4, 1981, their twenty-third day in the mountains.

  As they started down and began the ninety-mile trek back, a sense of dread swept over Mike.

  “Thinking about the descent I worry about falling on the steep slopes below,” he would write. “I picture myself sliding sideways, head downward, into an open crevasse, with snow pushing up the sleeve and collar of my jacket, packing into my clothes.”

  As he skied, roped to one of his partners, it almost happened.

  “Bracing into a tight turn above a particularly ominous crevasse, I push my skis and nothing happens. I try again and am still unable to drive the tails around and into the slope. Picking up speed I am shocked to hear the icy skitter continue. Already I can see into the depths of a dark hole vaguely ahead. I feel the blood pulse through my neck, grip my ski poles tightly, and give an all-out oompf! into the mountain, slamming to a stop.”