The Ledge

by Jim Davidson

  Hanging, exhausted, my mind drifting, I find myself wondering, What’s Mike’s spirit doing now? In that moment, I have a sense—a comforting feeling—that he is still here with me in the crevasse. Not just floating in a portion of the yawning crack, but filling the entire void.

  Perhaps that explains all the times falling ice and snow have sailed past me harmlessly. The upper snow bridge has by now collapsed in several crackling fractures, huge slabs of snow that plunged to the depths of the crevasse. Any one of them could have swept me off my stance or even suffocated me, yet none of them has, and I feel that Mike’s spirit is the reason. My partner’s still watching out for me while I do my best to get us up this wall.

  HAVING LEFT BEHIND several screws, carabiners, and slings as protection in case I fall, now I have to use anything I can to help me claw my way up. With no spare slings left now, at the next screw I clip in a rock-climbing cam, figuring I can use it as a small, open step. I stick my front points into the cam’s trigger-wire mechanism and torque my foot sideways. Metal screeches on metal. The fragile cam wires bend grotesquely, but they hold. I stand up, gaining another two feet.

  I have one thing going for me that dates all the way back to boyhood: I’d bought the best climbing gear I could. Dad was a blue-collar painter, but he never skimped on safety equipment. He used to say, “Fudge it when ya can to save a buck, but don’t be cheap when it comes to gear that people’s lives depend on.”

  So even as a nearly broke college student with big climbing dreams, I scrounged in other areas of my life so I could afford the best mountaineering gear out there, poring over catalogs, comparing specifications, searching out the best deals. Saving money was important, but not as important as having strong equipment.

  IT IS A netherworld inside the crevasse. The air near me is below freezing, yet up above—along the snow bridge that looks like a dappled veil, light leaking through in places—the summer solstice sun bakes the snow to the melting point.

  Meltwater falls constantly in a frigid drizzle, then freezes after it lands on my jacket and my rope. Each time I move my Prusik along the climbing rope, I fight with that layer of ice, rubbing and scraping at it with gloved hands, trying to clean the rope so the friction knot can bite down. It is clumsy and slow, but I push on, and each foot closer to the surface I sense more light around me. I keep spitting up blood, not knowing the source. It seems like I don’t have any major injuries, because I have been climbing for several hours now. But what if something is still wrong inside me? Maybe a broken rib or lacerated lung? The pending sunset has been my self-imposed time limit, but what if I don’t have that long?

  I look at the wall in front of me and hawk a bloody mix of saliva onto the ice. It drools down for a moment, then freezes in place, distracting me, entertaining me. And it gives me an idea. The bloody spatter will be my tick marks—my equivalent of the small chalk swipes that rock climbers sometimes leave on a wall to chronicle their high points. Those bloody spots of sputum, I decide, will prove to anyone who descends into the crevasse that I tried to get us out, that I tried hard. In some warped way, I seek to turn negatives—like spitting up blood—into positives that will help propel me up, to find tenacity even in the things that scare me.

  AFTER A FOURTH, shorter trip down to retrieve my ice screws, I reach a point about sixty feet above the ledge and twenty feet from the top. It is nearing four P.M. and I have been leading—out front, alone, forging the route, placing gear—for about three hours.

  My heart aches for Mike; an off-center feeling deep in my gut constantly reminds me that something in the world is very wrong. When I shift my weight from one foot to the other, water squirts out the top of my boot—a blend of meltwater and sweat. Wet nylon clothes cling to my skin and suck heat from my core.

  The wall here, already leaning past vertical, juts out several feet to form a small, horizontal ceiling above me. I saw this roof before leaving our ledge and worried then that it would be too big for me to reach past. Now hanging just beneath it, I extend my arm out toward the lip and confirm the worst: I can’t stretch the tips of my fingers beyond it. And I am down to just two spare ice screws.

  I think about going way back down and pulling out the ice screw near the bottom of my rope. Another one would make life easier. But by now I am so exhausted that if I descend that far, I might not make it back up; I abandon the idea.

  I feel tired, so tired. My mind floats to Gloria. Dad. The rest of my loved ones. Thoughts of my family make me wonder about Mike’s family. What am I going to tell them?

  Thinking intensely about the important people in my life, I feel their energy. I sense the strong presence of Dad, Mike, and some fuzzy blend of my climbing partners hovering nearby. They are silent, watching me closely. Gloria stands a few paces behind them. She, too, holds back from saying anything, but she looks upset. I want to ease her anxiety and tell her not to worry, but I know I can’t.

  TRYING TO CRANK back up, I lift my ice ax. My arm slowly sinks, my muscles powerless against gravity. Numbness tingles in my left arm and leg. Temporarily unable to advance, I study my position. When I look between my feet, I see my yellow rope trailing down the ice wall, clipped into the three protective ice screws I have left behind every fifteen feet or so. Dangling beneath the overhang with all the vast dark space beneath and around me, I feel like some kind of floating astronaut.

  Then I notice something else: Facing one fear after another for hours has tempered me to a resilient calm. Repeatedly grappling with obstacles and adversity has led me to tap wells of fortitude that usually lie hidden and unused. I sense that if I can persist through these moments of fear and doubt, a relieving wave of tenacity will eventually rise to aid me. Just knowing this encourages me to keep hanging on.

  When a little strength returns to my arms, I pull myself up until my helmet bumps against the underside of the ice roof. With one foot in a sling, I poke the tips of my other crampon into the ice for stability. I creep that free foot up, then push off hard to lever myself away from the wall in an effort to get a bit more reach. I swing out to the right, like a barn door on its hinges, and stretch out as far as I can, reaching, wincing, and get my right hand up and beyond the edge of the overhang.

  With my abdomen muscles quivering with fatigue, I lean back precariously and am able to crank an ice screw about two turns into the wall just above the overhang. Then I run out of energy and let myself drop a few feet in a controlled fall. I sag onto the sling attached to the ice screw just below the roof and rest. After a few minutes, I fight back into the stretched-out position, reach past the lip, and twist the screw a bit deeper into the ice. With about one-third of the screw’s length into the frozen wall, I figure it can hold part of my body weight. So with my right arm I hook my hammer over the protruding screw’s shaft and pull my upper body high enough so that I can peer past the overhang.

  To my great relief, the view up the wall looks less steep than what I’ve been climbing. Excited that easier ground awaits, I gleefully spit a blood clot a foot higher up the headwall to prove I reached that high. Straightening my right arm out, I lower my head and chest below the roof’s lip and intentionally collapse back onto the screw underneath the roof. Guilt jabs me: I saw the wall above, but I hadn’t climbed onto it yet, so when I spit my blood mark I cheated. It seems silly, but this somehow sullies the real work and achievement that have gotten me this far. I recognize that no one knows and no one cares about this little progress game except me, but it still feels wrong.

  Realizing that I should not have claimed that ground prematurely, I grunt my way back up and out along the roof. I stretch my ice tool farther up the headwall and use the pick to scratch off the red frozen tick mark. Once I have scraped away my own false claim, my conscience is eased, but my arms are tired. I settle back below the overhang, satisfied that I have made amends.

  Worn out from that one-minute penance, I rest again, pondering the tough overhang ahead—the crux. Because the crux is the most physically
difficult section, it’s also usually an ascent’s most mentally challenging part. The trick to getting past it is to act confident even though I might be racked with doubt. Hesitating or stalling at the crux wears you out, but acting confident and moving past it boldly will lead to easier ground ahead. Setting protection, then moving on is usually best, so Mike and I have always reminded each other by saying, “Pro and go.”

  I will be on a much easier section of the wall if I can just get past this crux overhang. I have to keep moving.

  I struggle back up, reach out, and continue my slow progress of cranking the ice screw into the wall. My position is awkward, and just balancing in delicate tension while I turn the screw consumes huge amounts of energy. It is like standing on a wobbly chair in a hallway and bending underneath a doorframe to work on the wall in an adjacent room.

  After advancing the screw a few rotations I slip, falling onto my rope with a jerk. I need a rest. I want to just hang there—five minutes at the most, no more.

  My mind drifts back home, and I start thinking about what it will mean to my family if I get out, what it will mean to Mike’s family. And what it will mean to all of them if I don’t make it—how no one might ever find out what happened. Thinking of all the grief that this will cause makes me sad and guilty. Sensing these emotions softens me up, and I feel my energy drop.

  As my spirits sink, I wonder how much more I can take. My mind loses focus. So tired.

  PAIN. MY FOREHEAD stings. Drowsy, I reach up to make the sting go away. I touch the wall and realize that my head is against the ice. I shift in my harness to move away, and when I lift my arm, my jacket feels stiff. Newly formed slivers of ice in the crook of my elbow break away, swirling down into the darkness like little translucent leaves.

  How did I get like this? I heft my arm up slowly and look at my watch: four-thirty. How can that be? I drifted off for almost half an hour, sixty feet above the ledge, twenty feet from freedom.

  But hanging motionless for so long on the rope has left me almost catatonic. My mind is dull, my energy is low, and the many pains all seem magnified. Just lifting my arm makes my neck burn.

  I’m not sure I can take it anymore. Maybe this is as far as I am going to get. I toy with the idea of not trying to go any higher, but then I remember everyone back home. They wouldn’t want me to quit, no matter how much I hurt right now.

  I understand that I have to keep going, keep taking the pain for my family. For Gloria. For Dad. For Mom and my three sisters. For Mike’s brother, and his mom and dad, so that they will know what happened.

  For Mike.

  I have to take the risk and misery for everyone in both of our families. And somehow, in my sputtering mind, I guess that might be twenty people, maybe more. I reason that if I take all the pain and effort and divvy it up among all of them, then it won’t seem quite so overwhelming. The suffering I have to endure to see any one of them again is individually quite small. Even one foot of anguished progress for each important person will get me up the remaining twenty feet. All I have to do is work a bit harder, endure a little chunk of pain for each of those people, and then just do it over and over again. Repeatedly doing small things, one for each person that matters to Mike and me—that I can do.

  I realize that this is not really even about me anymore. I want to live, but I am so far gone now that it’s not guaranteed. Even if I can’t rally back to action for myself, I must be resilient enough to carry on for the people I love. They have made me all I am and given me all I have. I owe it to them to keep trying. The same is true for Mike and his family: I owe it to them to do the best I can to get us out.

  I certainly owe it to Gloria.

  Seeing Gloria almost seems too much to hope for. Sharing a long future with her is what I want, but I don’t know if I can realistically expect that now. With my body and spirit so battered, I’m not sure I’ll actually live very long after this.

  Even if I make it out of the crevasse and get to see her for just a minute, that would be something. At least she wouldn’t have to live the rest of her life not knowing what happened to me, with me having just been wiped off the face of the Earth. Knowing what happened to us would probably make it easier for Gloria to rebuild her life. So even if I reach the lip of the crevasse, get onto the glacier, and die there—that’s a win. Because then she’ll know.

  This new perspective soothes me. I no longer have to worry about the distant future, or if I’m busted up inside. All I have to do to win is get out of here. And if I get my life back, well, that’s a dream almost too big to hope for.

  Slowly, I begin moving again. With jerky arms, I stiffly brush the ice crystals from my sleeves. I crane my neck to scout the overhang, then grimace through clenched teeth as pain knifes through my left shoulder. After each rest, it’s harder to get going.

  If I let myself stop one more time, I may never be able to start up again. But if I just keep moving, I have a chance to make it out alive.

  For them.

  CHAPTER 15

  I AM ALMOST through the crux—another couple moves and I’ll be past the hardest part. I’ve seen the headwall beyond the overhang, and once I clip to the screw above the roof’s lip, the climbing should get easier. Still a little rattled by my slip into a stupor a few minutes ago, I rush to anchor myself to that upper ice screw, snapping a two-foot-long sling to my chest harness.

  Having already made several trips out to the lip, I’ve got the moves wired. I scoot my left foot high, push my left hip tight under the ceiling, and hook my ax pick through an anchor carabiner clipped to a screw at waist level. Then I stretch to the right and stabilize myself with body tension. My abdominal muscles, torn in the fall and fatigued to their limit, ache and tremble.

  To increase the upper screw’s strength before I commit to it, I twist it in one more turn with my hammer before my power ebbs. That will have to be good enough.

  The leash for the new screw dangles from my chest harness with a carabiner attached and ready to go. I grab that biner, extend my arm toward the nearly buried screw, and open the carabiner’s gate. Hooking the biner through the screw’s eyehole, I feel a solid tap when the two metallic pieces meet each other, and I see the carabiner settle in. Having finally anchored myself above the dreaded overhang, I pull my left tool free, sagging happily onto the leash that connects my chest harness to the upper ice screw.

  And it’s then that disaster strikes.

  My body slumps, driving my shoulders up toward my ears, and in an instant, both arms fly above my head, hands flopping uselessly, squeezing my lungs empty with a deep grunt.

  My head is too far below the ice roof. Why am I so low? And when I try to breathe, I can’t. My lungs are smashed inward. A tight nylon sling pushes hard against my face.

  Now I understand: I’ve blown it.

  When I clipped the screw on the headwall with a sling directly from my chest harness, I didn’t think it through. Settling all my weight onto that leash yanked the chest harness up and drove it into my armpits, forcing my arms above me and crushing my torso. I hang from my chest harness, suffocating.

  I kick my left foot, but my crampon skitters off the ice. Both legs paw the air.

  Flailing my trapped arms, my heart pounding, I get my right hand on the two inches of ice screw protruding from the wall. I grab the screw’s eye and pull hard, easing some pressure from the cinching chest harness and letting my arms move more freely. Gasping, I suck in a short breath. Then I lose my grip on the screw and slip down an inch. My arms pop back up, and the fight resumes full force.

  As the chest harness cuts deep into my armpits, numbness sears my arms. I hear the gurgle and strain of my constricted breathing. The front points of my crampons scrape across the wall, but I find no purchase.

  My left hand bumps into the tight leash leading up to the screw. I grasp and pull hard, taking some weight off the harness. With my body an inch higher, I push down with both arms, levering my triceps against the nylon strands of my chest ha
rness. This pumps me up another precious inch and transfers more weight from my chest to my arms. Getting a crampon into the wall lets me push up even higher. Clutching the protruding screw, I do half a pull-up and lift my weight from the chest harness. I pant and recover a bit, but the arm strain builds; I can’t hold myself here very long.

  With my right hand, I grab the carabiner connecting the leash to my chest harness. If I disconnect, I’ll drop below the overhang and lose ground, but if I don’t, I’m going to strangle. I fight the biner off my chest harness, unclip, then let go. The anchored rope arcs me back under the overhang, slams me face-first into the ice, and leaves me hanging from my waist harness, stunned but okay. Cowering under the roof, I pant fast, trying to calm myself, pressing a palm against my chest to check for my medal. I chide myself for breaking my pattern and for making such a serious error.

  The good news is that the ice screw above the overhang must be solid, and with that piece and leash already in place, clearing the roof should be simple now.

  Once I recover, I reach up and clip my climbing rope to the dangling sling first, the way I should have done before. I adjust my Prusik loop tight, then release my grip on the piece below the roof. My torso swings out beneath the upper screw, and my feet slingshot toward the opposite wall. Hanging in free air below the screw, I pendulum back and forth. I close my eyes, worried about the screw pulling out. After the swinging slows, I kick a crampon into the wall for traction, hook a tool on the upper ice screw’s shaft, hoist myself up, and connect my sit harness directly to the upper screw. Now secure, I relax my limbs and slump my helmet against the ice wall.

  And with that, I’m past the overhang.

  THE HIGHER I look, the less steep the headwall seems. It’s about eighty-five degrees right here, then eighty, then maybe only seventy degrees about fifteen feet above me, near the top. The climbing should keep getting easier.