The Ledge

by Jim Davidson

  I straddle the monster.

  I’ve stopped, but I’m not stable. From my chest to my death-gripped hands, I lie flat on the glacier’s wet surface. Pressing my torso against the very top of the icy side wall, I feel the tie-in knot bunch under my left hip. The rope trails back into the darkness snarling just behind me. As I swing and paw, fighting for purchase, my ax carves easily through the wet slop, grabbing nothing.

  I feel like my head is going to explode. In this moment I am one with the snow. I’m stalled out, motionless. I lean forward, with my upper body planted prone in mush and my lower half poised upright over the dark void. With all four limbs stretched out, I have no leverage. I know I can’t stay like this, but I have no concept of what to do next.

  And then I feel it: an uncontrollable shaking in my right leg. It starts in my overstretched hamstring, but in horror I feel it spread to other muscles, until my whole leg is twitching rapidly. Climbers call it Elvis leg, and I have it bad. With all my muscles clenched tight to keep me pinned in place, the other leg starts dancing, too. A climber with Elvis legs is certain to fall in seconds.

  And then a calm thought fills my mind.

  Go ahead and lunge for it. Your tools will stick. God’s going to make ’em stick.

  I instinctively push my right leg hard off the weak snow bridge behind me. This shoves my body up and forward, and as I lunge I also swing my right tool down hard. I feel the pick bite into better snow farther back from the rotten crevasse lip.

  I drag my body forward through the slop by pulling with all my might on the right tool. It holds. My whole torso rests on the surface now, and most of my weight, too. Not daring to get off the ground, I lie on my stomach and swing the left tool down as hard as I can from my sprawled-out position. The ax head dives through the surface glop, and the pick grabs something solid underneath.

  I scoot my body forward another six inches and feel my thighs slide onto solid snow atop the glacier’s surface.

  Kicking and clawing, I finally slither out of the beast’s mouth.

  My knees touch the glacier’s surface. I’m on top. To let out more slack, I twist back to my left and reach behind to my Prusik loop. I fight the wet knot’s grip, but manage to slide it up the rope a bit to make sure I have enough slack to keep moving forward. Both my feet dangle in space over the ravenous black gap. I have almost won my freedom

  Embedded in the wet snow, I worm forward another undignified foot. When my boots scrape solid ground, I rise onto my knees and crawl two feet away from the hole. I am desperate to get away from the crevasse lip, terrified that the whole area will crack and crash back into the slot, taking me with it. I consider standing to walk but fear I’m not strong enough, so I crawl on, my head hung low.

  A new fear seizes me: that somehow the rope itself will pull me back in. It might snag, or the weight of it—anything, I fear, might happen. I need an anchor. Still on my knees, I sit back on my haunches and jerk the drawstring of my blue ditty bag, pulling it to me. I fumble for the snow fluke and begin pounding it in with my ice hammer. It bites hard, and I get it partway in before weakness forces me to stop, panting. A minute later I drive it home, then clip a biner through the fluke’s anchor wire. With stiff hands, I clip my harness leash to the fluke’s biner.

  Now that I’m directly anchored in, I feel relief bubbling up. I desperately want to get off the rope, but I have to anchor it first so we can get back to Mike.

  I have no protection left—no screws, no flukes. The only things left are my tools. With my hammer, I start pounding my ax, handle first, into the glacier. I don’t have the strength to lift my hammer with just one arm, so I use both. Although the snow is soft, I manage to drive the ax in only halfway before a new wave of exhaustion washes over me. I bend forward, resting my head and forearms flat on the glacier. After I recover some, I pound the ax the rest of the way in, slot a biner through the ax head hole, tie an anchor knot, and clip the climbing rope to the ax. Mike’s anchored in.

  Not trusting myself, I double-check my anchor, then Mike’s. Finally convinced that we are both correctly anchored in, I untie the rope from my harness. I am a little stunned to see my hand drop the loose end into the snow.

  I rise higher on my knees.

  “I’m alive,” I say, meekly, tentatively.

  It feels good to say it.

  “I’m alive!” I yell it this time, raising my hands above my head.

  I crumple forward and wrap both arms around my chest. My body shakes in broken, choppy sobs. Still kneeling in the snow just a few feet from the crevasse lip, I rock back and forth, desperate in my sorrow and emotional release, talking rapidly out loud to Mike.

  “Mike, I’m sorry. Man, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry you didn’t survive … I tried so hard to revive you … I was so afraid to even try to climb … Thanks for encouraging me to try, and for not letting me back away from the fear … Once I started, I stuck with it … You’d be proud how I stayed on the lead. And every time I fell I went back up … I did the climb for me and you both … I tried to do the best I could all the way to the end … I’m sorry you’re still down there … I have you anchored … We’ll get back and get you out.”

  FOUR HOURS OF climbing the crevasse wall and my injuries have stiffened my legs. As I start to stand, I list sideways. I shove my left hand into a snow mound to catch myself. Concentrating on balance, I hurl myself up and plant my second foot beneath me, momentarily resting my hands on my knees, then straighten up, swaying.

  After a long stare at my watch I finally comprehend that it’s after five P.M. It’ll be dark in four hours—enough time to walk off the glacier. I’m wet, with no stove, sleeping bag, or food. The rope, my anchored ice ax, and the other climbing gear must stay here so we can get back to Mike, so I have almost no equipment with which to descend. I am in the middle of a treacherous glacier, alone and exhausted. I feel small and weak. I’m out, but I’m not safe.

  Crossing a glacier alone is dumb, especially in such a weakened condition. But I just managed to climb alone up that incredible wall; surely I can manage a solo descent of low-angled snow.

  Scores of footprints lead down the fall line. After the day’s descending climbers moved twenty feet downslope of our snow bridge hole, they all cut right, eastward, perpendicular across our crevasse. Having been beneath the snow bridge for five hours, I know that their trail crosses a bridge section that’s thick enough to block the light from penetrating. Their safe and simple passage traversed right over the hungry crevasse just seven paces away from the thin spot I had stepped upon. Seven paces.

  I’m on the west side of the crevasse, and to follow the communal descent trail, I will have to get over to the east side via the same snow bridge—and I will be unroped. I know there may be a hundred other slots lurking between me and the glacier’s edge about half a mile away, but this one, the monster I just escaped from, feels the scariest. Tempting the killer slot by again crossing the same snow bridge over the same crevasse is just too much. I can’t do it.

  I stand motionless, gripped by fear and yearning to be off the glacier. I have escaped the crevasse, but I could still die here—wet, frozen, and alone.

  Below me, at the edge of the Emmons Glacier, boulders mark where the shifting ice and lurking crevasses stop and solid ground begins. Like a swimmer washed out to sea, I gaze longingly at that distant shore of salvation. It seems so far away.

  CHAPTER 16

  HUGGING THE VOLCANIC rock outcropping far downslope from me sits the rangers’ hut at Camp Schurman. I can’t quite see its humped roof, but I know it is less than a mile away and 1,200 feet below. I hesitate to yell for help, and for a moment I consider digging a snow cave right on the trail and hunkering down for the night, with a rope tail sticking out of the snow to alert tomorrow’s climbers to my presence.

  But I’d probably die of hypothermia before they found me.

  I have to get help, but when I open my mouth to yell only a croak emerges; my throat’s too dry. I dr
op to my knees and grab a handful of snow—the same wet slop that betrayed me and Mike—and suck on it. After a couple minutes, I feel my voice returning.

  I stand, and looking down the mountain, I see movement around the rangers’ cabin. I pull out my red balaclava and start waving it over my head.

  “Help!” I scream hoarsely, tentatively, then gather all my strength. “Help! Help! Help!”

  AFTER A COUPLE of minutes, it’s obvious that the people at the hut have heard me. Over the next half hour, I watch as they get organized and start moving my way. I decide I’m not going anywhere until they get here—it’s too dangerous. I pull my helmet off, plop it in the mushy snow, and sit awkwardly on its dome to stay off the cold, wet ground. Unzipping my chest pocket, I take out my sunglasses and slide them over my eyes. I wrap my arms around myself for warmth, but immediately begin shivering anyway.

  Over the next forty minutes, I stand to check on my rescuers’ progress, wave my arms, talk some to Mike’s spirit, scream, “Help! Help! Help!” and fight to calm myself.

  Finally, I hear the metallic clank of climbing gear.

  As their rope team of four moves closer, I warn them to be careful—I know they are approaching the snow bridge.

  “We’re coming,” one of them yells. “Just stay there. What happened?”

  “We fell in a crevasse,” I stammer hoarsely.

  “Where’s your partner?”

  “Still in the crevasse,” I yell.

  “Does he need help?”

  “No, I think it’s too late for him,” I say.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “I’m beaten up,” I say, “but I think I’m okay.”

  They move closer to the hidden crevasse.

  “You’re twenty feet away, be careful … You’re ten feet away, it’s about ten feet across, the snow’s rotten. Watch it … You’re five feet away.”

  They are almost on me.

  “Okay,” I hear the leader say, “let’s look sharp.”

  One by one, they cross the snow bridge without a problem. A minute later, they reach me. I am no longer alone.

  “What happened?” one of them asks me.

  “We fell in the crevasse and we were stuck down there, but I managed to climb out,” I say.

  “How is your friend?”

  “He got hurt real bad,” I say. “He stopped breathing and I tried to give him CPR, but he never started breathing again. His lips and gums are blue; I don’t think he has breathed for hours now.”

  I shake uncontrollably, and they help me remove my drenched jacket and wiggle into a dry one they carried with them. They force candy bars on me, and water, and make plans for the leader to descend into the crevasse to check on Mike. Then they set up an anchor system in the snow. Someone asks me if I need to be taken off the mountain right now.

  “No,” I say. “I can wait.”

  The lead ranger—in my shaken state, I’m taken aback to hear the others call him “Mike”—prepares to rappel into the depths, and worry overcomes me. Rattling off potential dangers in the crevasse, I spit out everything I can think to tell him. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.

  Finally, he backs over the edge and disappears into the hole that opened beneath my feet almost seven hours ago. There is nothing to do but sit and wait for him to return.

  The guy tending to me introduces himself as John. He strikes up a gentle, distracting conversation, asking me where I’m from, what I do, that sort of thing. At one point, my tears return.

  “My God, my friend’s gone,” I sob. “He’s dead, man. He’s down in the hole and he’s dead.”

  “Yeah, man,” John says sympathetically, “that’s terrible, but we’ve got you and that’s a good thing.”

  I don’t feel very good, but I nod my head in agreement. John puts an arm around my shoulders and gently pats my back.

  “It would have been even worse if you were still down there with him,” he says.

  Finally, the lead ranger emerges from the crevasse.

  “There’s nothing we can do for your partner tonight,” he says. “He’s buried under a lot of snow, and it’s going to take a big effort to get him out.”

  Someone asks me if I can walk.

  “You’ll have to put me in the middle and I’ll be pretty shaky,” I say, “but I think I can do it.”

  We spend the next few minutes roping up, then set out with me in the middle position, just in front of a guide named Uwe. Fear seizes me as I approach the indistinct edge of the snow bridge spanning the crevasse, and I suck in a deep breath.

  “Watch me,” I say to Uwe.

  After one big step, I am across. It seems too easy. The snow is soft, my legs are like jelly, but I am walking and stumbling down the mountain. We reach the rangers’ hut in about thirty minutes. My spirits sink as I realize Mike and I were just half an hour from Camp Schurman and the safety of solid ground.

  In the park service hut I learn that the two rangers are Mike Gauthier and Deb Read and the volunteers are Uwe Schneider and John Norberg. I keep thanking them as they feed me hot soup and tea. I feel like a stranger in a strange world now—all eyes on me. Someone puts me through a light medical exam and pronounces me basically okay—bumped and bruised all over, cuts and scrapes across my face, but seemingly not seriously hurt. It dawns on me how I stink after five days without a shower, but no one says anything.

  Read sits down next to me, gently rubs my back, and says, “I’m sorry for the loss of your friend.”

  “Thank you,” I say. “So am I.”

  I feel like crying but fight it, afraid that if I start I won’t stop.

  No one wants to ask, but everyone wants to know what happened. In bits and pieces, I relive parts of the climb.

  “How much ice climbing have you done?” Gauthier asks.

  “Well,” I say tentatively, “I’ve been ice climbing for about ten years, but I’m pretty much an intermediate climber. I can lead seventy-degree stuff when I’m bold, but I’ve never been able to lead long stretches of vertical ice.”

  “Well,” he remarks, “I believe you, because you say so, but I went down that crevasse and I saw that ice wall. That was an incredible ice lead. That wall was vertical to overhanging. You made a lot of aid placements, your anchors were good, and your rope work was good. I can’t believe that you consider yourself an intermediate climber.”

  “Yeah, I don’t understand how I did it either,” I say somberly. “I’ve never done anything like it.”

  Schneider joins the conversation. “It’s simple,” he says. “You had the ultimate motivation.”

  “To survive,” I say.

  “Yeah,” he agrees.

  “I feel proud of what I did, but I feel ashamed, too,” I say. “My friend’s not here and I’m afraid there’s something we did wrong, or something I could have done differently.”

  But one by one, they reassure me. We registered our route; we brought the right gear; we wore our helmets. We were skilled enough to climb the Liberty under icy conditions; we simply ran into bad luck. I appreciate their analysis and support, but already I feel survivor’s guilt swelling in me.

  My pack and gear are still in the crevasse, part of the ledge holding up Mike. In the upstairs loft I crawl into a dank, Korean War–era sleeping bag the rangers loan me and lie awake as long as I can—frightened of sleep and the nightmares I figure it will bring, frightened that I will scream out in the night. Drenched with sweat, the rank smell of the sleeping bag mixing with my own, I finally drift off.

  I SNAP AWAKE. For a few moments, I’m not sure where I am. The blackness and the fuzzy gray light confuse me, and my heart races at the thought that I may still be in the crevasse. But the clank of an aluminum pan downstairs sets me straight. Quickly enough, it all comes back.

  I get up, occupying myself with the preparations for leaving. I ask that someone in the park service call Gloria and Mike’s family—and a little later, over the radio, I think I hear scratchy confirmation that the
notifications have been made. I walk out into the sunshine with some of my soggy outer clothes and lay them out to dry, weighing them down with volcanic rocks. Someone has music playing in the hut, and Don Henley’s song “The Boys of Summer” comes on.

  The refrain echoes in my head. It’s June 22. Summer is here and Mike is gone. I move around the back corner of the cabin, make sure I’m out of the other climbers’ view, then let myself cry.

  Finally, I gather myself and my gear and get ready to go. I’m vaguely aware of the radio chatter as the rangers plan their effort to retrieve Mike’s body, and I know that more rangers with gear are coming in by helicopter.

  “We plan to send you out on a chopper, but there’s no guarantee,” Gauthier says. “You might have to walk out.”

  I visualize the 5,000-foot descent and dread the thought of hobbling all those miles on my throbbing, battered legs. Not wanting to complain, I just mutter, “I understand.”

  A little later, a copter lands nearby, and it’s time to go. I’m apprehensive—my legs are like noodles, and even the ten-minute walk uphill to the landing zone sounds daunting. I put on a helmet, step stiffly into my harness again, and notice my gashed gear, wet gloves, ripped clothing. It seems as though everything I look at reminds me of the crevasse, reminds me of the gripping terror.

  I tie a rope to my harness. Deb Read has the other end, and we trudge to the waiting helicopter. Just before I climb in, she leans in close to my ear to tell me something, but the roar of the idling chopper takes it away. I gesture confusion and point at my ear. She leans in closer and says it again, this time with her hand on my shoulder. I still can’t hear it, but when we back a foot away from each other, I see compassion on her face, and I know it was something important, and touching. I force a half smile and nod; then we exchange a quick hug.

  The chopper lifts off, and through the bubble I see the immense glaciers of Rainier stretch out below me, slit again and again with crevasses. Flying over the Winthrop and Carbon Glaciers, I spy thousands of slots, some covered with sagging snow bridges, some open. Through the window between my feet, I can see straight down their black throats.