The Ledge

by Jim Davidson

  I know I must move his legs out of the way so I can reach his mouth and nose to breathe for him, but the thought scares the hell out of me. What if he has a spinal cord injury?

  I realize I don’t have any choice—I’ve got to try to breathe for him, and the only way I can get to his face is to flip his legs out of my way. If I don’t breathe for him, it won’t matter if his spine is damaged.

  I grab both of Mike’s legs and push them upright into the air, away from me, closing my eyes and turning my head away—I can’t stand to see it. Trying to lessen the impact, I grasp the loose nylon fabric of his climbing pants and ease his limbs downward. When the snow encasing me to my belly won’t let me stretch any farther, I open my hands and let go. Mike’s legs flop over to a normal position and his boots plop softly into the snow on the far end of the ledge. The thought of what I may have just done to my friend forces a small gurgle of horror from my throat.

  Now I can easily get my face to his. With my right thumb and index finger, I pinch Mike’s nose closed. I open my mouth wide and seal it around his. I blow a puff of air into him, but it shoots right back out, as if it didn’t go very far.

  Oh God, he didn’t use it.

  I tilt his forehead back a little and lift his chin, then give him another strong breath. I get more air in this time, and it seems like the air goes in deeper. When I pull my head back, I watch his chest and see it drop down: good. I got air in and it flowed back out. But it feels as though I’m just blowing into a balloon and the air is escaping as soon as I pull my mouth away.

  I puff into him again. This time I just retract my lips and remain stationed right over Mike’s mouth. When the air rushes back out, it flows right into my mouth and nose. We are truly sharing breaths. In our shared air I taste and smell a slightly sour odor. Is it me? Is it him? Doesn’t matter. It is us.

  I HAVE TO start chest compressions. Mike’s head rests on my chest, and I’m basically behind him, fighting the ice wall and the snow pile to position my left arm. I torque my shoulder, hover my left palm over his sternum, and push down hard with the heel of my hand. But with Mike resting on the layer of loose snow that’s trapped between us, it feels like all I’m doing is shoving him down deeper into the slop. It doesn’t feel as though I’ve compressed his chest enough to force life-giving blood through his body.

  I know that I should be compressing with both hands, but I can’t. Our bodies are a tangled mess. Since I am trapped below him, I simply cannot get above him to do compressions the way I have been trained to. I’m forced to reach around from behind him and lift my left arm above us both just to get one hand over his heart. I can’t twist my body any farther or stretch my right arm high enough over Mike’s head to reach his chest with my right hand. Getting one hand on him just above the sternum is all I can do.

  With the next compression, I again mostly just shove him deeper into the snow jammed between us, and I feel Mike get pushed down against my body. I realize that since I’m trapped behind Mike’s back, I can support him from below as I simultaneously press down from above. I sort of puff out my rib cage, wiggling so Mike’s shoulder blades are squarely against me. Now I press down with my left hand on his sternum while thrusting up my own chest against Mike’s back to support him, almost like sandwiching him between my open hand and my body. With me reaching around him from behind, it’s sort of like performing a one-handed Heimlich maneuver.

  It works better. His chest recoils, and I can feel that I’m actually doing some good. I get in another solid compression, and then switch back to breathing.

  I blow a breath into his mouth, and seek some sign that he’s responding. Seeing nothing reassuring, I do CPR again, and again. I had hoped that after just a few cycles, Mike would recover, wake up, and everything would be fine. None of that is happening.

  It’s not working.

  I settle into a pattern: compressing his chest as hard as I can, cradling his head and pinching his nose with my right hand and blowing air into his lungs, and sweeping away snow with my left hand.

  Compressions. Breathe. Sweep.

  As I move more snow away from me, I become slowly able to sit up a little farther. Working my way out of the snowbank, I rise a bit higher above Mike, and I’m able to give more forceful compressions. But I can still get only one hand on his chest, because my right arm is still torqued and trapped behind Mike’s head.

  During all this action, I accidently knock off his sunglasses. I do not want to look right at Mike, but I need to. Although my training dictates that I study his pupils, I try hard not to actually stare into my friend’s eyes, into his being.

  Clinically, I note that his pupils are fixed. To test their reaction, I cover his open eyes with my right hand for a few seconds, then pull it away to see if the pupils respond to the shaft of sunlight stabbing down into the crevasse.

  They don’t. I shudder.

  Maybe they’re not responding because it’s so dark in here. Keep going.

  I see what looks like bruising behind his left ear and along his jawline. That’s a bad sign, but I continue CPR. As I struggle to revive Mike, I begin to understand what is happening, though I don’t want to accept it. It’s been a while since I’ve heard or seen any sign of life from Mike. I’m losing him.

  Compressions. Breathe. Sweep.

  A blast that sounds as if it’s from a rifle pierces the air, and instinct warns me that ice or snow has ripped free far over our heads and is screaming down through the crevasse. I lean over Mike’s head to protect him from the falling debris—just as the professional rescuers showed me on Longs Peak last year—and throw my hands above my head. A snow slab whistles by just past our feet, crashing somewhere far below us in a thunderous explosion. Two seconds later, snow dust billows up from somewhere below and settles around us.

  The near miss unnerves me, but I realize that more light is now streaming into the crevasse. I can see more clearly, so I slide my hand in front of Mike’s eyes, blocking out the light. A new wave of sadness sweeps over me after I move my hand out of the way and confirm that his pupils don’t react. My training tells me that I’m supposed to continue resuscitation until I’m either relieved by another rescuer or the patient is declared dead by a doctor. But those things won’t happen—I’m the only one here. I don’t want to quit. Not on Mike. It’s not working, but I mechanically continue the CPR fight.

  However, I also know that I can’t prolong this exhausting effort forever. At some point, I have to stop, and I have to escape the snow before it locks me in. The tension between needing to continue and needing to stop tears at my heart.

  Finally, I check for a pulse again and glance at his lips; they look blue. I move my hand in front of his eyes, and again I get no response.

  “I think he’s gone,” I say to myself quietly.

  I stop CPR, staring at Mike for about ten seconds. Nothing changes. I hope, illogically, that he’ll take a breath. He doesn’t. Dumbfounded, I lift Mike’s gloved hand off the snow. When I let it go, it flops limply back down.

  I GENTLY LAY my head down on his chest and rest my arms across him, shaking with fear. Tears well up at the corners of my eyes.

  If you let that come up, you’re going to die down here.

  I fight to force emotion back. I stare ahead, numb on every level, unable to move.

  A voice inside my head pulls me back, shaking me from the shock—a desperate voice of survival, half emotional, half logical.

  Dig. Dig out of the snow. Get out before it freezes up.

  I pull my right arm out from behind Mike’s head and furiously paw at the snow with both hands. I don’t have the ice ax—I dropped it—and I’m momentarily angry at myself for that. A jolt of alarm hits me as I realize the consequences if I don’t get out before this slurry freezes.

  My breath bursts out in heavy wheezes. I dig madly and manage to get down to about my waist. Finally, I can move enough to loosen my pack’s shoulder straps and waist belt and wiggle free.

  Log
ically, rationally, I know I should keep digging to gradually free myself from the grip of this icy debris. My gut reaction, however, is to just wrench myself loose. I panic and try to push out of the snow all at once. But I’m stuck fast. It’s like being buried in the sand at the beach.

  “Slow down and dig,” I say in a sort of lecture to myself.

  I scratch away some more, and get down to my thighs. Mike is crammed in next to me, rope and gear are tangled all around us, and I’m so oppressively confined I feel like I might completely lose it.

  I try to push free again. Nothing. I try yanking my left foot free, but all I manage to do is hyperextend my knee, causing a grotesque stab of pain.

  I resume digging, and as I move the snow around, I realize that Mike has slid away from me a little. I don’t want him to slip off our snow pile, so I grab the back of his jacket with one hand. His chest is squishing me against the left ice wall, and I know that digging myself out would be easier if I could sit him up for a minute. I stop and think about it. Part of me is worried about aggravating what I am sure is a serious spinal injury. Another part of me admits that any such worry is moot now.

  “He’s gone, and it’s not going to hurt anymore,” I mutter to myself sadly.

  So I push him upright, which takes a lot of his weight off me and gives me more room to move. I clutch a handful of his jacket in my right hand while I dig with my left, and after a couple of minutes I manage to get my left foot free. The increased freedom is intoxicating, and in a rush I try yanking my right foot out. I feel my knee strain, so I stop pulling and dig some more.

  I switch hands and hold Mike up with my left hand and dig with my right. Once I excavate to my calf, the weight on my lower leg lessens, and suddenly I can pull my right foot out of the snow. Elated, I watch my boot emerge from the hole, and relief washes over me. I’m out.

  I lay Mike back down. Now that I am free and poised right above him, I realize that I’m in a better position to perform CPR. Somehow, I think, it will all be magically different this time, even though it’s been five or ten minutes since I stopped.

  I hunch over Mike, resting on one foot and one knee. With my fingers interlaced and both arms straight, I start giving strong compressions. I pause after every few pushes and blow air into his mouth. Nothing changes, but I continue, hoping for a miracle.

  I keep going, though the work tires me. My calm, logical inner voice urges me to stop.

  “Look at the medical signs,” I softly say to myself.

  Finally, I persuade myself to stop. Stopping the second time is harder. I know for certain that I will not try again. Mike is gone.

  I lay my head down on Mike’s chest again, bewildered, unable to comprehend what has happened.

  KNEELING OVER MIKE, I stare at his rumpled jacket, unsure of what to do. A question rings loudly in my mind: Where are we?

  I stand tentatively to look around. The crevasse walls are about two feet apart here, and they rise high above us on either side. How far, I’m not yet sure. I know on every level that I am in a desperate situation.

  Leaning to the right, I stare over the drop-off behind Mike’s head. I see the crevasse disappear into nothingness dozens of feet below us, and it’s as if we’re on a snow pile maybe seven feet long that holds us aloft between the ice walls. Mike’s feet dangle off the far end.

  I look laterally along the crevasse’s length, hoping there is a way to simply walk out the end of it, but it stretches for around a hundred feet in the up-mountain direction, then vanishes into darkness. I turn the other way, down the mountain: After about two hundred feet, the crevasse shows no signs of ending.

  Maybe twenty to thirty minutes have passed since I took that awful step on the glacier’s surface and the snow beneath my feet collapsed. I know I have to look up and see how far in we are, but I’m scared. After stalling for a moment, I gather the courage and raise my head, determined to get a firm physical understanding of just where we are trapped. All those summers working with my father’s painting crew, estimating building heights and calculating the rigging we’d need, come back to me.

  My eyes travel up the frozen walls, first dark gray, then dark blue, then bluish white near the top, reflecting splotches of light. I figure it is almost eighty feet up to the sunlight flaring through the hole we punched in the snow bridge. The walls above me climb up at about eighty degrees until the crevasse is eight feet wide; then the ice walls go dead vertical; and then, higher up, they close back in toward each other in an overhang.

  Oh my God.

  The full depth of our predicament settles on me like a great weight.

  I stand awestruck, staring up at the underside of the snow bridge that spans the crevasse. In places, the frozen veil is so thin I can see light filtering right through it. Being way down in this dangerous dark hole, it is as if I am looking out from the belly of a beast, its jagged white teeth interlocking above me.

  “Oh, we’re in trouble,” I hear myself say out loud. “We’re in big, big trouble.”

  STUNNED BY THE overhanging walls arching above us, I look beyond the edge of our snow pile. If we’re on the bottom of the crevasse, there should be a snowy floor just below us instead of that black drop-off I see. I’m confused. What did we land on? Why is there so much dark space beneath us?

  I kneel down and scan beneath our perch, and it’s just as if I’m on a platform, bent over and peering underneath it: We’re on a ledge, and there’s nothing below us but frigid air. As I stare at the ledge’s underbelly, I realize that our perch is composed of my green Gregory backpack jammed against an ice slab the size of a coffee table. The ice slab must have fallen down here long ago and lodged, leaving a gap just about the size of my pack. When I plummeted down here, pack first, I landed right on that narrow gap. In essence, my backpack corked between the crevasse wall and the ice slab. If the slab hadn’t been there, or had been a different size, or I had fallen a few feet to either side, the alignment of pack and ice slab could not have happened. Instead, I would have plunged down another five or ten feet, until I corked, permanently wedged between the unforgiving crevasse walls.

  I sit upright, stunned as I realize how lucky my landing had been. It’s hard to believe what I have just seen, so I bend back down to look at the ledge’s underbelly again. The shelf is partially supported by snow crammed in between my pack and the ice slab. At the far end of the snowy ledge, Mike’s boots dangle down into space. It hits me that Mike and I are precariously perched on a makeshift platform of unknown strength and longevity. If anything gives way, we’ll plummet deeper into the narrow crevasse—something I’m sure I won’t survive. We need an anchor, quick.

  Mike and I always carry enough climbing gear on our hips to set an emergency anchor. An ice screw, snow fluke, rescue pulley, carabiners, and slings always dangle from my waist, and from his. I stand up, unclip an ice screw from my harness, and grab Mike’s ice hammer—the only tool visible in the jumble of gear around us—and start pounding the screw into the wall. The blows echo dully in the cavern, but after a few swings it’s set deep enough for the teeth to grab. Then I stick the tip of the hammer’s pick into the eye of the screw and use the hammer as a giant lever, twisting the metal ice screw deep into the concrete-hard ice. The screw screeches with each twist, but after a few minutes it’s well set. I fish around and find my end of the rope and tie a figure eight on a bight into it, snap a locking carabiner onto the screw head, and clip into the anchor. I’m safe.

  I fumble around some more, looking for Mike’s end of the rope, and once I find it I tie a similar knot and clip Mike in secure with two biners. We are both tied into the same screw.

  That screw will keep us from sliding deeper into the crevasse if the snow ledge gives way. It will give me a chance to save myself, and this way I won’t lose Mike’s body deeper in the slot. He’s gone, but I still have to watch out for him. We’re still partners.

  I’ve taken a first, tentative step by anchoring us. It feels good to have grabbed some
tiny bit of control in this impossible situation.

  Hardly believing that this snow shelf is really as precarious as it seems, I unzip the one pocket on my pack that’s accessible, and find my red-handled jackknife and headlamp.

  When I snap on the lamp, its beam cuts through the darkness, and for the first time, I can truly see what we are up against.

  Below me, the lower reaches of the crevasse come into view. Thirty or forty feet down, the walls converge to within a few inches of each other. I can’t see the bottom. From the glacier’s surface eighty feet above, down past me, to as deep as I can see, the total crevasse depth is about 120 feet. Sensing that yawning chasm below us, I realize I can’t take any chances, so I reach for another ice screw on Mike’s harness. After I beat and crank it into the wall, I clip us both to it as a backup. If I am to have any prospect of getting out of here, I can’t make any mistakes.

  As I look down, I realize we could lose all the gear, so I tie both packs into the screws, too. This makes me consider the loose gear on and in the snow pile that is our ledge. I dig around, recovering a few stray items, and carefully clip them all to me or the ice screw. I’m going to need every piece of gear we’ve got to survive this—dropping anything deeper into the crevasse isn’t an option.

  Looking up to the sunlight—to the surface—again, I have no idea what to do. The only thing that comes to mind is to yell for help.

  “Help! Help!”

  My shouts echo around the slot, unsettling me. I hear the fear in my own voice, and it loudly demonstrates just how scared I really am.

  Yelling isn’t doing any good. Start taking care of yourself.

  Meltwater drips constantly from the sun-baked snow bridge above me. I’m already soaked.

  I struggle to organize my thoughts: Put warm clothes on. Strap on your crampons. Yell for help. Don’t yell for help. Get in the sleeping bag. Clip into the ice screw again. Put on more clothes. Eat. Check on Mike. Don’t stumble off the ledge. Look for an ax. Jam another screw into the wall. Scream for help some more. Blow your whistle. Find your helmet. Drink.