by Jim Davidson
With three screws strung out below the overhang, the bottom anchor screw, plus the one I’m hanging from, I have only one ice screw left. I reach up to start pounding it in, but a moment later power drains from my arms and I stop to rest. As I resume twisting the screw into the wall, the wet ice yields easily—a bad sign. The last screw placement was pretty bad, too. I know these will never hold if I fall, and I wonder whether they’ll even hold my body weight for long. If one screw pulls and the next can’t catch me, I might plummet, ripping out one piece after the next in a zipper fall.
After clipping into the second placement above the overhang, I’m out of screws. The one back below the roof is not doing much good anymore, and I consider dropping down to retrieve it. I’d have more gear, but I worry that I don’t possess the arm strength to scale the roof again. If I go down there, I might not be able to get back up. It’s too risky to try. I’m exiled to the headwall now.
A new texture on the crevasse wall surprises me. It’s coated with hundreds of rough, spherical ice globs ranging in size from plums to grapefruits. Ever-changing frozen environments sculpt water and moist air oddly, but in ten years of winter climbing I’ve never seen ice blisters like these. I figure the protruding lumps can serve as footholds, so I set a boot atop one, easing the strain on my lower back.
Three and a half straight hours of balancing in jittery aid slings has kinked my back into knots. The new body position provides long-needed relief. After five minutes, I switch feet to give other muscles a break, but as I step onto an orange-sized ice globe, it snaps off the wall. I drop hard onto my sit harness, my foot pawing empty air.
Startled by the mini fall, I curse the ice as adrenaline blasts through me.
I had contemplated aiding up by looping some webbing over the protruding ice globs, just like I’ve done on rock faces—threading slings around knobby bedrock protuberances we call “chicken heads.” But if these ice chicken heads are that weak and untrustworthy, I can’t risk hanging from them.
Suddenly, the slide and slump of collapsing snow echoes in the crevasse. Terrified, I throw both arms over my neck and lean into the wall. Holding my breath and listening, I hope I am not in the fall line. Ice chunks splinter in a shattering crash far off to my right. Then I sense a voice nearby: “It’s okay. You’re safe.”
The man’s voice came from directly behind me, just a foot away. My brain knows the words were only imagined, but my gut tells me someone is here. I casually glance over my right shoulder, into empty space. I resume facing the milky wall before me, but I sense a strong presence, maybe two. Remembering an old tae kwon do lesson, I stretch my peripheral vision sideways without turning my head, trying to snatch a glimpse. It feels like two people are right behind me, just out of sight.
I casually glance to the right, then whip my head left 180 degrees to see if I can catch them, but all I see is blue light bouncing off the other wall. Of course no one’s hovering behind me, and yet I can’t shake the strong feeling that two people are there. I feel no fear—I sense that whoever it is, they’re on my side, and that they seem to understand better than I what’s going on. Closing my eyes, I try to detect their presence.
It’s Dad and Mike.
I feel less alone, somehow, even as I struggle to understand it all. With the headwall’s angle easing off, I consider free climbing it. It’s only about fifteen feet to the top—fifteen feet to freedom, fifteen feet to life. The lure of salvation beckons me.
If I move fast, I think, I can climb it in a minute. I latch onto the idea and start calculating how much slack rope to let through my Prusik loop before I start free climbing. I know I can’t be wrong in my calculation: Too much slack, and I greatly increase the chance of disaster if I fall; not enough, and the too short tether might prevent me from escaping from this hole.
I examine the wall again, confirming my fifteen-foot guesstimate to the crevasse lip.
But the snow bridge hole I must climb back through is two feet off to the right. I need a few extra feet of rope to traverse sideways—that makes twenty feet—and then a bit more to make sure that I clear the crevasse lip. This means I need about twenty-five feet of slack. With that much slack, if I slip off the wall I’ll drop twenty-five to fifty feet—depending on where I am when I lose my grip—before the rope catches me. That’s a huge drop, even onto the best placements, and those last two screws were terrible. If I peel off, I’m looking at a chain-reaction zipper fall. These are horrifying possibilities, but I’m infused with excitement.
I adjust my gloves and ice tool leashes. Still attached to my highest screw for safety, I loosen the Prusik knot and pull through twenty-five feet of slack. I watch the rope loop grow far below my feet, drooping past the overhang. Twice I jig up the slack line, then lower it again, making sure it can’t snag and stop me short. The rope’s clear. I test-wiggle my fingers and flex my grips on the tools, getting ready to sprint to the top. Reaching to my chest, I feel again for my medal.
I grab the biner that, when released, will thrust me onto the sharp end of a big lead fall above a manky screw. Just one simple unclip and I will force myself to play this terrible hand right now, all in, to free climb up in one great go-for-broke effort. One way or the other, it will be over in the next minute. Perhaps that is what I want the most: for it all to just be over.
I hook my index finger on the biner’s gate, ready to open it.
And then I hear a loud voice in my head. It’s Dad.
“Stop! Ya can’t do it.”
Stunned, I pause.
“Ya gotta keep doin’ what you were doin’,” he says.
“No,” I say. “This will be over in a minute. All I’ve got to do is climb this one section and it’s over.”
Dad doesn’t buy it.
“Ya may not be strong enough. The wall may not be secure enough. And if ya fall, the screw’s not gonna hold. You’re gonna go all the way down.”
“I can’t aid climb anymore. I’m out of gear. I’m too tired.”
“I know ya want to climb out fast, but the risk is too big. Ya can’t do it. The aid climbing’s working. Stick with it.”
With my forehead slumped against the wall, I squeeze my eyes shut to keep from crying. My internal whining spills over, and in a half cry, half plea I mutter aloud against the ice, “I just can’t keep doing this anymore.”
My admission of weakness hangs heavy in the damp air. For long, silent seconds my blank mind awaits a response. The answer comes back gentle but solid:
“Ya hafta,” Dad says.
Dad has always been right with these kinds of calls. During all my intensely dangerous crawls on electrical tower arms, Dad kept those binoculars glued to his eye sockets and shouted life-protecting instructions to me, his only son. Back then, with my head forced down below the wires and my body struggling not to fall, I couldn’t see or analyze all the danger around me, so I had to completely trust his judgment. The same is true now. He wouldn’t steer me wrong. Even if I don’t like that he’s telling me not to free climb yet, I just have to trust him.
There will be no mad dash for the top.
I glumly heft the rope, pulling the twenty-five feet of slack back through the Prusik until it holds me tight against the screw.
THE EMOTIONAL TUSSLE of that false start drains me. As I focus again on the tedious grind of aid climbing, I find myself still in the same bind: I have no ice screws left. I hang from one, the second is planted a few feet below me, and the others are out of reach below the roof, which I dare not cross again. I am now constrained to advancing on just two screws, repeatedly leapfrogging one above the other. This means there can be no more backup screws left behind to catch my fall and there is no margin for error.
My protection placements are so close together now that I don’t have to rappel down to retrieve the screw just below me. I simply lean over sideways and reach near my ankles, then twist it out. Bending over so far leaves me light-headed. Then I sit up tall in my harness and twist the screw back
in, two or three feet above me. The wall’s so soft that half the time I can crank the screw by hand.
Several inches of rotten surface ice, almost like crusty snow, coat the crevasse wall. So I haul up the blue sack dangling from my harness and fish the snow fluke out to try placing it. I hammer the shovel blade horizontally into the wall, hoping I can use it in place of a screw.
As I pound on it, the blade sinks in three inches and starts to bite. But after penetrating another inch, the fluke hits dense ice and stops. With the next hammer blow, the blade skates sideways and shears out. It’s no good—the snow-crust layer is too thin to hold the fluke. Disappointed, I jam the fluke back into my gear bag.
I look down. The yellow climbing rope bends under the ice roof, then disappears from view for twenty feet. Halfway back to the snow ledge, it reappears as a dark gray line cutting across an inky wall. With my eyes adjusting to the increased illumination in the upper chamber, I can no longer see Mike’s feet—or the pad covering him. Worried that he might not be there, I yank hard on the taut rope below me, feeling it stretch and pull tighter against our mutual bottom anchor. The bottom screw is still there, so Mike must be, too. But for the first time I feel truly separated from my partner.
I’m leaving him behind.
AFTER PULLING ANOTHER screw out from the wall at ankle level, I rest. Then, reaching up, I turn that screw in halfway. There is so little resistance from the soft ice that I use only my hand—no ice tool leverage required. My arms are too tired to reach up far anymore, so I’m just placing this screw two feet higher than the last, right near my face. With my nose six inches away, I watch air-filled, watery slop drool out of this screw’s hollow core. The worst placement yet.
I clip the screw and hang uneasily from it. The soft crevasse wall even allows me to kick in footsteps, so burying my boot tips in the wall gives me a good stance. Setting a higher screw into this squishy wall would be false security. Since there’re no options left for getting in solid aid gear, I’ve got to resume free climbing.
I test-kick the wall. My boot penetrates nearly to the ball of my foot. I press my leg down on the foothold and feel the buried front points grab pretty well.
I shift almost all my weight to the kicked step. It holds. Although I am dog tired, the soft snow and moderate wall angle make it possible for me to free climb. I’m less than ten feet from the escape hole, confident that this is the right move—it’s different this time. Dad’s voice can’t talk me out of the risky free climbing now, because there’s no other choice.
FIGURING THAT TEN feet of slack should allow me to get my waist to the crevasse lip, I feed that through my Prusik loop, then add five more feet to let me make it onto the glacier’s surface. Still leashed to the top screw for safety, I check my gear one final time. All I need now is the strength for five or six moves up and right and I can climb through the porthole to the surface. Taking the last step won’t be simple—that open hole doesn’t extend all the way back to solid ice, so I’ll have to hack away some of the weak snow to reach firm ground.
I reach one tool above my head, nearly touching the underside of the snow ceiling looming over me. When I stretch far to the right, my hammer just reaches the sunshine streaming through the hole. The lingering afternoon sun bathes the steel head in a subtle yellow glow.
I mentally draw that solar power right through the tool and into my muscles, trying to infuse myself with the energy to make it out. The challenge is near my limit, but probably not beyond it—less-than-vertical, soft ice, a warming sun. I’ll need to rally more strength, but all I have to do is hold it together and climb well for the next minute, and then I will live.
Pro and go.
I pull in one long breath, then release it slowly.
Climb!
My arms and legs move in a controlled fury: Stick one pick, then the other, kick my right foot into the ice, shake my left foot free from the make-do aid sling, and push myself up in a spray of milky crystals. I feel momentum shift as I leave the comfort of the ice screws and engage the risk of sprinting toward the sun, and life.
With my hips now about eighteen inches past the last screw, I am on my way. Pulling my right tool from the wall easily, I stretch up to place it again, then halt jerkily, as if something has yanked my harness back to the left. I nearly lose my balance.
Confused, my rhythm gone, I snap my head to the left, where I see the sling that’s tied to my waist harness still stretched taut back to the last screw. In my excitement to go, I forgot to unclip myself from the anchor. I’m stuck.
I glare at the tight leash as seconds tick past, wasting precious strength. I ponder either cutting the sling so I won’t have to climb back to the screw or deliberately dropping onto it and starting this section over. But with such bad protection, I can’t fall on purpose.
I must climb back over. As I traverse left to the screw, I burn energy struggling to remove the deep sticks that I’d been so proud of a moment ago. Unable to yank one pick from the wall, I wage a frustrating battle with the tool and self-control. I can’t let myself fall fighting this ax, so I wiggle my hand out of the skinny wrist loop, leaving the ice tool stuck to the wall—super risky since unweighted tools sometimes drop out of the ice. If it pops, I’ll be marooned with one tool above a shaky screw.
Leaning to the left, I stretch just far enough to unclip the restraining sling from the screw. I’m free. Now I struggle to stay calm and insert my hand back into Mike’s too small wrist loop.
I finally pull the ax out of the wall. Afraid to lose momentum, I immediately move back up and right. Grunting with each kick, I smash my front points deep into the soft snow wall and slam each tool down hard enough to embed the entire pick.
My head bumps under the sagging belly of the snow bridge. I’m almost there.
The edge of the open hole beckons just above my right shoulder. I thrust my right arm up the hatchway and wave my hammer frantically, hoping that someone will see me. The great openness so near and the strong light bathing my arm both buoy me.
The sun.
Just below the glacier surface, where the snow bridge meets the crevasse sidewall, I smash my right tool into firm snow. With my left tool I hack away some rotten snow to enlarge the hole above me. The snow bridge is eighteen inches thick and so soft I can push the shaft of my ax up through it easily. Chopping at the roof, I swing my ax rhythmically and the snow breaks away in sticky, irregular clumps. Working from the open edge, I widen the hole, bringing it closer to me.
I keep looking up, my lips sputtering as snow chunks slap my face; I ignore the wet globs sneaking into my jacket. When the snow stops slumping, I see blue sky.
I shove my left ice tool up through the hole and plant it on the glacier’s surface. The snow, after cooking in the sunshine for twelve hours now, is soft and wet. The tool plant is decent, but not great.
I kick at the mushy snow but must swing my leg three, four times before I form a foot hold that feels trustworthy. For several minutes I have been furiously driving tools, kicking boots, and smashing snow. My body feels heavy, and I hear myself panting.
After packing down a shaky boot hold, I thrust myself up twelve inches. The snow bridge surrounds my head and upper chest. I am passing right through the weak and traitorous snow layer that collapsed beneath us five hours ago. With my eyes still below the ground surface, I can’t see out yet. Instead, my vision drills into the white, lumpy surface two inches from my nose—irregular humps and hollows of corn snow, trillions of crystals loosely bound together by a slippery film of water.
All that’s above ground level are my forearms, my ice tools, and the top of my helmet. I straddle two worlds—my legs submerged in the cold, dark crevasse, my arms clinging tenuously to the warmth of light and life.
All the perseverance I can draw from my past pushes me up from below. All the resilience I can gather in this moment keeps me hanging on. All the opportunity I can sense in the future pulls me up from above. Just a few more feet, and I get my l
ife back—Gloria, my parents, my future—even as I sense the black beast clutching at me from below.
THIS IS IT.
Afraid that something will go wrong, I jostle the rope with my foot to confirm that I’ve got enough slack. I kick one boot and then the other into the snow wall—it’s getting softer—then straighten my knees and push myself up. My head pops above the surface. The late-afternoon sunlight ricochets off the brilliant glacier, assaulting my eyes, blinding me. I am going to need those sunglasses I hauled up.
Blinking rapidly, I rotate my head around like a gopher peering from its tunnel, hoping to spy another climber. I see only footprints.
I slam an ax down horizontally on top of the lumpy glacial surface. When I pull on the tool, the pick cuts laterally through the sloppy snow. I set the tool again, but it’s no better. I scratch away some garbage snow and swing again. Finally, my pick bites into firmer snow beneath, and I pull myself up a little farther. Setting my other tool also requires a few swings through slush before I finally land a decent stick. I am above the snow bridge now from the waist up.
Pulling my boot from the wall below, I rotate my hip out so I can heave my right knee up and onto the surface. The move shifts weight to my tools set in the oatmeal snow, and a strange sight unfolds in front of me, as if the ground is moving away. Confused, I look at my tools and see the picks inching through the slush.
With my tool placements failing and only one foot in the wall, I gently tip backward—right back toward the crevasse. The last two screws will never hold. With so much rope out, I will fall thirty feet and shock-load that first screw hard, then plummet on down to the next, and the next—maybe all the way to the bottom.
I desperately shove my free leg behind me and touch something solid, momentarily stopping myself. I realize my right boot’s making contact with the far side wall of the snow hole I am crawling through. What’s keeping me from tipping over backward is the snow bridge itself, just twelve inches over from the weak spot that collapsed beneath me so long ago. With my legs splayed apart, I’m stemmed wide across black space.