The Ledge

by Jim Davidson

  About then, a party of four climbers arrives at the summit. After they celebrate, I ask one of them to take our picture. The easterly wind puffs up my hood and whips around the drawstrings of Mike’s wool hat. We toss an arm over each other’s shoulders and the climber snaps a photo of Mike and me on the summit of Mount Rainier.

  IT’S NOW AFTER nine A.M., and more climbers are arriving. I am surprised to see so many mountaineers, then remember that it’s Sunday, June 21. I think of my dad, twenty-five hundred miles away, and silently wish him a happy Father’s Day. About a dozen people tag the top, take photos, and leave, with most of them retreating south to the standard Disappointment Cleaver route. A few head back down the northeast side of Rainier to descend the Winthrop and Emmons Glaciers. Time for us to get going, too.

  We rope up again and head back down the northwest slope of the summit cone, alone. Following our solid tracks in the snow, we reach our packs in less than thirty minutes and prepare to traverse eastward so we can join the standard route on the Winthrop and Emmons. The Emmons itself is nearly five miles long, and together these two glaciers form the biggest mass of ice in the United States outside of Alaska.

  With the solstice sun now high in the sky, we are sweaty, so we strip off our pile jackets, put our shell jackets back on, and then squirm into our chest harnesses. Staring eastward across the upper Winthrop Glacier, I see curved crevasses and ice blocks the size of vans thrust up out of the snow. I say, “Let’s play heads-up here, okay?”

  “You seem nervous as a cat. What’s up?” Mike asks.

  “I’m okay. I just don’t like the looks of this.”

  Mike studies the untracked terrain lying between us and the established snow trail off in the distance.

  “We’ve been through a lot worse in the last few days,” he says. “We’ll be fine.”

  By ten A.M. we are moving, with Mike leading the way. Cool breezes roll across the glacier as we navigate around some obvious crevasses. Seeing the cracks so close, I constantly scan right and left, looking for trouble, and I feel my confidence ebbing.

  The warming snow balls up beneath our metal crampons. Quickly, the snow trapped beneath my boots grows several inches thick, and it’s like walking with a tennis ball stuck to the bottom of each foot. I pause, lift one boot, and bang the side of my crampon sharply with the shaft of my ax, knocking the snow off. I switch legs and clean the other boot. Mike and I soon synchronize our crampon-cleaning breaks to reduce the number of stops.

  We cut above some linear crevasses. I find myself nervously measuring our progress to the established trail ahead: We’re halfway across; two-thirds; almost there.

  A short rest would be nice, but with tilting ice chunks poised just above us, we push on.

  Another one hundred feet and we finally reach the snow trail stomped out by all the passing climbers. I exhale deeply and let my chest loosen up. Now we are on the main descent route, and we are no longer alone. There are probably twenty people on the route, most above us, a few below.

  We drop our packs onto the snow, taking a break. Mike picks through our food bag—there’s very little left, but that’s okay because we should be off the mountain in another four or five hours.

  “You want the greasy cheese or the granola crumbs?” he asks.

  “Uh, sounds great. I’ll take the cheese.”

  I gnaw indifferently on the slimy yellow cheddar and grin as I watch Mike chase granola bits around a clear plastic bag. He licks a finger, stuffs it into a corner of the crumpled sack, and, like an anteater feeding, pulls out a few morsels. After he sees that I’m amused, he makes a big show of licking each crumb off his dirty finger. I shake my head and we both laugh. Steady wind from the east chills us, so we don’t linger long. Mike heads right down the trail at a good clip, and when the rope between us tightens, I follow. The morning sun casts sparkles and shadows across the glacier.

  Going straight down means that to stay centered over my feet, I have to bend at the knees and lower my butt. We’re descending fast; after twenty minutes, my thighs are on fire.

  When the snow softens a bit, I start plunging my heels into the glacier’s surface. Driving my heels down dents a firm, flat platform for my foot. Mike is heel-plunging now, too. This takes more effort, but our pace doesn’t slacken much. I feel a bit rushed and nauseous; maybe I’m altitude sick from sleeping so high last night. I shout ahead to Mike, “Hold up!”

  Mike halts, then turns to face me.

  “I don’t think I’ve got the oomph right now to heel-plunge. Let’s sidestep.”

  “That’ll be slow.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t want to trip.”

  Mike’s right that we should keep moving downhill as best we can. But I can see he knows I’m fried, so he relents without making me feel bad.

  “Okay, we’ll try it for a while.”

  Turning sideways, I stretch my downhill leg below me and press the uphill edge of that boot into the snow. Next, I shuffle my higher foot down to join the lower boot, and then reset my ice ax downslope. This jerky motion is slower, but the pauses give me the half-second rests I need. I settle into a rhythm, as does Mike, and we steadily descend the glacier.

  We drop another few hundred feet, and three climbers with daypacks pass us. We watch them descend ahead of us and curve to the right. The trail down the glacier is an impromptu path of footprints stomped solid by scores of climbers. It has been over a week since the last snowstorm, so all the repetitive footsteps have consolidated a track in the snow at least ten feet wide. In some sections, meandering climbers have packed it out almost twenty feet across.

  The path is reassuring: Dozens of others have trod here without trouble.

  When the trail cuts abruptly in a new direction, sometimes the cause is obvious—like an open crevasse, a sagging snow bridge, or a teetering ice buttress. Other times, the reason for the sudden direction change is not clear. Whatever the case, we follow the proven footprints before us. The next hundred yards of climber’s trail is easily seen, but farther ahead it intermittently disappears as it drops behind snow hills, swings below small ice cliffs, and meanders laterally across the glacier.

  We stomp along for a while, passing ascending climbing teams. Some climbers notice our short ice axes and helmets and ask where we’ve been; one guy even correctly surmises that we climbed the Liberty. We are still wearing our helmets, which puts us in the minority on the Emmons-Winthrop route. An hour earlier we had talked about taking the helmets off and strapping them on our packs. But since we’d have to lug the weight anyway, we figured we might as well keep them on our heads.

  This downhill trudge gets monotonous. Mike must be feeling it too, because he suddenly turns around to talk. With a mischievous lilt in his voice, he drawls out, “Hey … Jim?”

  “Yeah,” I answer.

  “Whatever you do, don’t think about a hot fudge sundae.”

  “Aaah, crap! Why did you bring that up?” I say in mock disgust and anger.

  “Don’t think about the chocolate,” Mike goes on. “Don’t think about the nuts. I don’t want you thinking about that.”

  “Thanks. Thanks a lot, Mike,” I say.

  We walk in silence for a minute while I scheme. Then I shout, “I promise not to do that, as long as you don’t think about a cold, frosty beer with foam on it about two inches tall running down the side.”

  Mike groans in happy longing. Ha! We’re even.

  Motoring downhill, I give some serious thought to dinner. We should easily make it to the campground tonight. I know Mike’s self-discipline and meager budget means he’ll vote for generic pasta in the campground. But maybe I’ll insist on treating us to steaks and beers.

  THE SUMMIT CRATER far above us now blocks the wind, so it feels warmer, and the surface of the glacier is like wet oatmeal, three inches deep. As we descend, we pass a few climbers moving downhill more slowly than us. We zig and zag our way downhill, traversing onto the Emmons Glacier proper, and reach an elevation of about
12,000 feet.

  Mike asks, “Feeling better now that the air is thicker?”

  “Yep. I feel pretty good.”

  “Well, let’s try and glissade.”

  Glissading is basically sliding downhill on the snow; you sit down on your butt or, more rarely, stand up and ski on your boots. When the slope’s angle and the snow’s consistency are just right, glissading can be a fast way to descend, and pretty fun, too. We know that if we glissade, we must pay strict attention to avoid losing control, going over cliffs, smashing into rocks, or plunging into crevasses.

  Glissading would give our weary legs a break, so it sounds tempting. But we are still on the glacier. We should probably just walk the Emmons and then glissade later, on the Inter Glacier, where there are almost no crevasses. But I don’t want to sound weak or be the naysayer by bringing this up. I’m afraid Mike will think less of me if I keep presenting risks. So I don’t say anything direct. Instead, I waffle.

  “Well,” I say, “do you think we should?”

  “Yeah, we’ll make better time.”

  So we sit down and get ready. We remove our crampons—leaving them on would be asking for them to snag and break an ankle—and tuck them inside our packs, where they can’t grab the snow.

  We strap our ice hammers to our packs, move about forty feet away from each other, and sit down in the snow. I stay on the known climber’s path while Mike places himself off the trail to my right, so we can glissade almost parallel to each other. We each hold an ice ax like a canoe paddle to steer ourselves and to use as a brake. With a mutual nod, we scoot our butts forward and begin sliding downhill on the wet snow. My nylon climbing pants hiss as they glide across the glacier’s surface.

  After a few minutes, Mike halts. Since we’re roped together, I skid to a stop, too. I stand and scan the next section of glacier below us.

  “Looks safe ahead, Mike. No drop-offs or anything.”

  “You’re moving slower. Take your pack off and drag it behind, like me.”

  So I slip off my pack and clip it with a carabiner and sling to my waist harness. We push off at the same time and resume the glissade. Mike was right: Having my pack off makes me faster. But my tethered pack keeps flipping, flopping, and crashing into me from behind—a pain.

  The descent path has been mostly straight so far, but now it angles left, so we stop, stand up, and brush off the clingy snow. We pull our packs on and walk laterally on the snow trail until we are above the next linear section. Then we plop down and glissade again.

  Soon the snow path has so many meandering portions that we have to walk more and our overall progress is about the same as two other climbers who are hiking downhill. We pass them glissading, and they pass us each time we stop. Because we have our crampons off, when we walk laterally we’re less secure and less speedy than the other climbers, so the two of them keep catching up with us, then waiting behind us. Mike is leading now, and as the follower I grow sick of feeling pressed by the other team’s front climber, who walks right on my heels.

  “Mike,” I yell, “hold up.”

  I let them go by me, which means Mike must also. I trade friendly nods with the rear climber as he passes me.

  At about 11,500 feet, Mike and I see the trail below us head into a long, linear section of the glacier. This semipermanent feature is called the Corridor, and its smooth, gentle slopes are known to have few crevasses. The Corridor is in the middle of the glacier, and the unrelenting ice pressure from the two sides probably closes many of the tension cracks. I can see that the trail runs fairly straight down the slope’s fall line to about 10,000 feet. This should give us fast, easy access to the glacier’s end at Camp Schurman, located at 9,460 feet, where a little humpbacked hut of a ranger station is tucked in against jutting volcanic rocks.

  The two climbers who just passed us stop to eat and fiddle with their gear. We walk past them yet again, and line ourselves up at the upper entrance to the Corridor. Jumbled garage-sized blocks of glacial ice, separated by cracks and sagging holes, line both sides of this alley. Danger hovers on either side, but the clear path down the middle seems inviting. Across the whole landscape lies a deep blanket of snow.

  It doesn’t look like we can quite make a single straight run all the way down, but we will be able to slide downhill for quite a ways before having to move eastward so we can resume our descent.

  I take the lead spot on the rope and step off the trail to the left. This allows Mike to stay on the wide communal trail to my right, and slightly above me. With a push of our ice axes, we are once again sliding downhill on our butts. I sit up as tall as I can and lift my head to look out for any danger.

  About every hundred feet, we stop by digging the bluntly pointed spikes of our ice ax shafts into the snow. Then one of us stands to scout the trail ahead, make sure it is safe, and adjust our route if necessary. During one stop, I stand, then turn back and look over my left shoulder. We’re several hundred feet below where we left those two other climbers. A snow-covered ice hummock lies between us and them now, so we can no longer see each other. Mike and I resume sliding downhill.

  The smooth snow slope in front of me looks fine, but as we descend I sense the terrain changing off to my left. I can’t see a section of the ground over there, which suggests that a drop-off lies ahead. I snap my left arm high above my shoulder with an open hand—the signal for Mike to stop. I grab my ax with both hands and brake hard.

  I stand up and peer to my left. I still can’t see the actual problem, but it doesn’t feel right. When I look up at Mike, he is rolled onto his left side, ice ax held in both hands, poised to drive it into the snow for an anchor. Not knowing why I signaled for a stop, he is ready to belay me if necessary. He lifts his head a bit, glances the fifty feet downslope at me, and yells, “What is it?”

  “Not sure. I think there are crevasses in front of us.”

  “Go take a look,” Mike says.

  I pull on my pack, shimmying into the shoulder straps, and make sure the rope isn’t snagged on any ice protrusions. Looking upslope, I watch Mike stab the sharp pick of his ax firmly, and kick his boot toes deep into the snow as an anchor. Satisfied with his secured position, he gives me a nod. I return the nod and turn downslope.

  Probing ahead of myself with my ice ax, I walk cautiously forward two steps, tightening slack from the rope. My internal danger meter kicks up a notch. I instinctively pump my left hand into a fist—the signal for Mike to watch me and hold on tight. I raise my voice: “Tension.”

  My attention is focused ahead, but I feel the rope tug reassuringly at my waist. Mike has me. Holding my ax at the ready, I creep forward another half step and see the ground drop off below me. I stare into a dark hole. My stomach clenches, and I suck in a short burst of air.

  It’s not a singular cliff but, rather, a series of descending vertical steps, each one formed by loose, leaning ice blocks the size of tractor-trailers. Each step drops off about ten feet more than the last, and between each tilted ice block is a gaping crevasse, mostly camouflaged by snow. It looks like an ice serac has collapsed from below and sucked the broken glacier pieces seventy feet deeper into the Earth. Beyond the collapsed hole I see transverse crevasses, all stretching east-west, contouring across the slope.

  I look over my right shoulder and see the rope stretch tightly back to Mike. Still pinning himself to the ground, he is on his stomach, ice ax muscled diagonally across his chest in a classic self-arrest position. He stares at the snow an inch from his face, focused on being our team’s anchor.

  I ease back a step and the piano wire of a rope relaxes. Mike feels our lifeline slacken and looks over his right shoulder at me, but keeps us anchored. I exhale hard to force myself to calm down.

  “Whoa, big crevasse down here, Mike. We’re not going this way.”

  I back off a few feet to a safe spot. The slack rope flops to the ground, so Mike sits up.

  “Okay,” he hollers back, pointing. “Why don’t you cross beneath me, to the
right, to get away from it.”

  I walk a few steps back east and stand on the broad trail of footprints. The late morning sun beats down on us. Even though we are only wearing Gore-Tex shells over a single layer of polypro long underwear, sweat soaks my skin.

  I look directly uphill at Mike resting on the snow trail above me and say, “Water up.”

  I drop my pack, and Mike slides out of his. As we drink, I survey our surroundings. We’re at about 11,000 feet. Another hour and we’ll be off the glacier. A few more hours of hiking over glacial scree, then through old-growth forest, and we should make it to the rental car tonight—and maybe those steaks and beers.

  Time to get going. I pull my pack back on and study the communal trail ahead. By contouring to the right across the slope, I can traverse over five yards and align myself directly above the next straight downhill section of the climber’s path.

  I turn upslope to Mike, fifty feet away. He is on the stomped-out snow trail, watching me.

  “Ready?”

  “Ready,” Mike says, nodding.

  “I’m going to cut right.”

  “Sounds good,” Mike answers.

  I’m facing directly east, perpendicular to the slope’s fall line. I’ll go about fifteen feet or so, which will tighten the rope between us. This will leave Mike still on the snow path and put me on the right-hand side of the trail, where we can again glissade straight down.

  I scan the snow-covered glacier surface before me, but I don’t see any signs of trouble. No accumulated dust in a low spot. No cracks. No sags.

  CHAPTER 10

  THE SNOW FEELS dense and firm as I shove the handle of my ice ax into the glacier’s surface. Satisfied, I take a step and sink ankle-deep into wet snow before settling onto solid ice beneath.

  I probe the snow again, and it feels strong, so I step forward; but in an instant my boot pushes deeper into the glacier than before. My mind tries to comprehend what’s going on.

  The next few seconds unfold in what feels like an eternity. As I tip forward and start sinking into the snow, I realize what is happening: I’ve walked onto a snow bridge spanning a hidden crevasse, a plank of snow crystals terribly weakened by the sun-baked days, and it’s crumbling beneath my feet.