by Pam Withers
After I’ve gulped down my breakfast, crawled into my damp wetsuit, and stuffed things into my pack, we’re off. As always, Brigit is leading, Dominik behind me.
“You have twisted taste in girlfriends,” I whisper to him when she’s out of earshot.
He grins. “I like complicated women. They are more interesting.” His face turns serious. “But cut her some slack for last night, Tristan. She is hurting just like you are. Just shows it a different way.”
“Yeah, mad instead of sad.” I refuse to contemplate her words about my father and her mother. Made up because she needs to blame someone. Her mother’s death left her a difficult life, for sure, especially with no father in the picture. Maybe I’d be bitter enough to concoct stories, too, if I were her.
She’s right about the gorge getting more difficult. The walls narrow, and the water turns deeper and swifter. I breathe in the earthy smell of moss and enjoy its electric green glow on surrounding boulders. Sometimes the stream fills the entire floor between the canyon sides, forcing us to drag ourselves through knee-deep water. Other times it turns into pools so deep we have to float on our packs, chest-down and turtle-like, splashing happily like kids in a summer pool.
Twice, Brigit swims diagonally across the stream with a rope to set up a traverse line that we cling to in order to cross a treacherous current to a safer route. Even if I’m pissed at her, I have to admit that she has strong canyoneering skills. At regular intervals, we scramble over brush, dirt, and loose rocks on ledges above the water. There, we loosen the straps on our packs, so that if we fall in without time to shed them, we can struggle out underwater before being caught in debris or swept over a falls.
“What’s this?” I ask at one point, staring ahead at a gigantic tube of rock that is funnelling the water into unknown darkness. It resembles the body of an airplane that crashed nose-down and rests, like the plunging stream bed, at a thirty-degree angle; it’s channelling the entire creek through it like a tilted culvert. And there’s no way around either side of it without climbing up massive rock slabs.
“Let me lead here,” Dominik suggests, digging his headlamp out of his pack.
“Sure,” Brigit says with a shrug. “It looks more dangerous than it is. It’s really kid stuff.”
After anchoring our rope around a secure boulder that resembles the plane’s “tail,” Dominik enters the giant tube slowly and cautiously, peeking out the occasional porthole-sized “window” as he goes. If it were a real plane, it would surely rank as one of the largest aircrafts around. The question is: What lies in the dark, wet cockpit ahead? Of course, Brigit wouldn’t let Dominik enter if she weren’t certain of his ability to retrace the route with the ascender (a mechanical device that lets you go up a rope), should things dead-end in a blockade of rocks or logs. Still, blind corners and stream beds that convert to caves or tunnels are nerve-wracking.
Minutes later, Brigit nods as we hear a long whistle from Dominik: the all-clear signal. Switching on my headlamp, I take the rope Brigit hands me and prepare to rappel down the slanted rock aisle. But as always, I double-check that it’s the correct rope strand, the one that allows me to brake at chosen intervals, rather than slide to my death.
My heart seizes up when I realize I’m holding the wrong one. “You trying to kill me?” I say, shocked.
“Just testing you,” she says with an evasive smile.
Huh? What game is she playing? I hesitate before I take the rope and enter the “plane,” backing down feet-first along its flooded central aisle, working my friction device on the rope to control the speed of my descent. Soon daylight disappears, and I’m in a wide, dark cave — the first-class section after lights out, I tell myself for fun. The black, frigid water that reaches to my calves chills me; the cacophony it makes as it rushes ahead reverberates like a crowd of panicked passengers.
“Let me out,” I say, shivering as rocks beneath the water tear at my boots, knees, and gloves, and spooked as my headlamp reveals moist walls, mud-caked boulders, and shadows that seem to be moving.
A second later, I see two things at the same time: light bursting through a slot where the water pours out below me, and a red bandana tied to a spire of rock along the right wall.
Resisting the current and ignoring the piles of rocks in my way, I manoeuvre my rope to clamber toward the sun-faded red cloth and reach out. Just shy of touching it, I feel a rush of mixed emotions: both heavy-heartedness and cautious joy.
So Dad passed through here last fall. He probably didn’t mean to, but he left me a souvenir, a sign. Dad, I’m tracking you. Where are you hiding? Let’s not play this game anymore.
It’s tied tightly, and I’m at the limit of the rope clipped into my harness, but I’m not leaving this item behind. I pull off my gloves and let my stiff, ravaged fingers untie the bandana. I examine it reverently and see his initials in permanent-ink marker in the corner. His handwriting, his bandana. I stick it down my wetsuit, put my gloves back on, and return to the water flow.
In the unlikely event of a water landing, please proceed calmly to the nearest emergency exit. Inflatable slides will deploy automatically. My imagination keeps me moving toward that plane-nose exit without panic.
I smile with relief when I spot Dominik standing shoulder-deep in a pretty pool below, waiting for me to pop out of the cockpit-turned-faucet, which spills water six feet down into crystalline blue.
I unhitch my pack, shove it over the lip, peer down at the clear azure, then execute a cannonball sure to soak my friend.
“Hey!” he mock-complains.
“Amazing!” I say as I grab my floating pack.
“Kid stuff,” Brigit repeats as she splashes down and nabs her pack.
“And look what I found inside,” I say triumphantly as the three of us stand together in the sparkling water.
Got it, Mom. And then I hear the last voice I’d ever expect down here:
“Hey! Over here! About time you showed up!”
CHAPTER 14
I swing around and try to locate the voice. It’s coming from beside the stream. Somewhere under a skirt of upside-down upper branches — the top of a giant tree that must have fallen all the way from the rim, spear-like, months earlier.
My eyes do a swift trip up to the forest and back. It’s an Engelmann spruce whose upended roots are barely visible where they lean against the bank fifteen storeys above us. I shiver. Wouldn’t have wanted to be standing here when that thing came down.
Of course, there’s only one person who would have shimmied all the way down its trunk.
“Dean?” Brigit’s face has gone stormy.
Dominik looks horrified. I’m not too thrilled myself.
“Hi, Brigit. I climbed down this tree after I hitchhiked to the canyon!” He emerges from under the tent of green needles, grinning proudly, wearing a wetsuit, helmet, canyoneering boots, and backpack. But he doesn’t seem in a rush to go near his sister.
“Dean Dowling! What the hell do you think you’re up to? You can’t be down here! And you’re lucky you didn’t kill yourself! Where is Elspeth?”
He shrugs, still beaming. “She’s easy to ditch.”
“Did she leave you with Tristan’s mom again?”
The smile fades and he turns my way. “No, Tristan’s uncle took Tristan’s mom to the hospital.”
“What?” I ask.
“The nuthouse,” he elaborates soberly.
“The what?” Brigit glances at me but without sympathy.
“Yeah, she had a nervous breakdown, the uncle said. After Tristan asked her a bunch o’ questions ’bout his dad.”
My body goes numb; I stare at our intruder to assess if he knows what he’s saying.
“Sorry, Tristan,” he says, hanging his head. “She’s going to be okay, your uncle said.”
“She — she —” I start.
“Yu
p, well, if you think you’re joining our group, you’re dead wrong,” Brigit tells her brother. “If you came down that tree, you can go back up it.”
Dominik’s jaw drops. No one, not even Brigit, would send a kid up that near-vertical, 150-foot fallen tree, even if he had managed to make it down. Not without safety gear and a guide. And even that would be foolish, given that there’s no predicting when the trunk might shift. She’s bluffing, and Dean surely knows it.
Still trying to recover from the grenade just lobbed at me, I’m too paralyzed to speak.
Dean crosses his arms. “Can’t make me. Anyway,” he says, sliding his pack off his shoulders, “I brought a harness and carabiners, so I can do Plunge Falls with you.” He jabs his thumb downstream.
“Dean —” Dominik says.
“Come here this instant!” Brigit orders.
“No,” says her brother, shuffling backwards. “I’m staying no matter what you say.”
“Brigit, if he’s got a harness —” I’m about to say I’ll take him home via the tree — however dangerous that might be — because I’ve got to get out of here, too. I’ve got to get to my mom.
“No!” Brigit stamps her foot and glares at her brother, which puts a pout on his face. Maybe she thought I was going to say Dean should be allowed to do the falls.
“Brigit,” Dominik says, “it is safer for him to come with us until we hit a side canyon that you and he can hike up and out of to safety, than it is to send him back up that tree. Seems to me we do not have a choice.”
She turns on Dominik with full wrath. “Me? You think I’m ruining my trip to haul him home? And leaving you and Tristan to finish the descent with no guide? I don’t think so.”
I speak up. “But I don’t want to finish it. I have to get home. I’ll take him out.”
In the silence that follows, I wade across the pool to where Dean stands, chewing on a piece of licorice, a wary look on his face.
“Dean, why did you climb down that tree?” I ask, even though it seems a dumb question.
He hands me a piece of licorice like it’s some kind of peace offering. I stuff it deep in a pocket. Then he leans in and whispers, “To look after her. And you.”
“Huh?”
“Have to tell you somethin’, Tristan. You know my sister cycles?”
“Of course. I’ve seen her mountain bike a couple of times —”
“Stop whispering, you two!” Brigit orders, even more incensed.
The three of us argue over Dean’s head for a good ten minutes, but in the end, it’s inevitable. The tree climb is ruled too dangerous.
For the next two hours, our new foursome trudges through the creek, slides down slippery chutes, and lowers itself over rock piles in mostly tense silence. Dean manages to keep pace and out of trouble. And Brigit puts considerable effort into keeping him and me apart, unless I’m imagining that.
It’s late afternoon by the time the roar reaches our ears. There’s no mistaking the horizon line, the soft mist that rises and wets our faces, or the powerful throb of the two-hundred-foot cascade.
“Old anchor,” Brigit declares as she points to a tattered, faded loop of webbing around a downed tree lying between two large rocks. I suck in my breath. My father always used tan webbing to minimize visual impact on the environment. This one is tan. It’s my father’s: the last one he placed before the rope attached to it failed him. At least, according to Search and Rescue.
I picture Dad rappelling down, water flow pounding him in such a way that it bounces him around on the rope, which saws against a sharp rock sticking out of the falls’ rock face. Search and Rescue said his rope got sawed through at the one-hundred-foot mark, so he fell way less than that; it takes a while for a rock to cut through rope, and the pressure wouldn’t have started till he was well under the sharp bit. He could’ve fallen thirty feet or less. Survivable if he didn’t hit rocks. Maybe even survivable if he did.
All day we’ve inched along beneath sheer, towering walls. There has been no possible exit. Tackling two-hundred-foot Plunge Falls was Dad’s only option, even if he was short of a backup rope. He took his chances and carried on down. That’s what canyoneering is all about.
I turn to see Brigit, Dominik, and Dean staring at me.
“You okay?” Brigit asks.
“Uh-huh.” Her mother may have lost her life here, too, I remind myself. “Are you okay?”
She frowns and turns to push and kick a boulder, testing it for solidity.
“It’s not going anywhere,” Dean says.
“Perfect anchor,” Dominik rules.
“Better than that tree,” Brigit adds.
It’s not the tree anchor that failed him, I want to say. It was the rope and the sharp rock. I understand that today, using a different place to anchor is all about separating ourselves from bad luck and negative energy. And yet, a part of me wants to wade out to the log and touch that last anchor, hold it to my lips for just a second — or rip it from the felled tree and sling it down the falls with an angry yell.
“On rappel,” Brigit is saying, her harness attached to the rope, her hands and feet ready to work her descent. “On this one, when you get midway down the falls, you have to traverse left to avoid the main blast of water.”
“Got it,” Dominik says soberly. “Everyone hear that?”
We nod.
As she disappears over the lip, feet presumably moving through the lightest flume, helmet bobbing until it’s out of sight, I release my breath. I didn’t even know I’d been holding it. My hands and feet are prickling, all pins and needles.
“You are next,” says Dominik.
“You’ll be okay.” Dean tries to assure me.
I look at him, galled that he, a kid, would dare to try and reassure me. “Have you been spying on us from the rim?”
“Of course. Waiting to find a tree I could climb down.”
“And on our other trip, the one with those two clients? You were up there watching us, too?”
“No.” He crosses his arms over his chest.
“What about that day Dominik and I went tracking? Did you follow us, maybe kick some rocks on me from up top?”
“No! Stop accusing me of things! I wouldn’t kick rocks on you,” he says, face contorted like he’s genuinely offended.
“Sorry.” I sigh, clip in, and move to the falls. “On rappel.”
“Go easy, and keep out of the flow as much as you can,” Dominik advises, as if I don’t know that.
I’ve rappelled down falls before. I’ve been pummelled like I’ve stuck my face in a burst fire hydrant. But this one — it’s overpowering, even in the lightest train of flow. It threatens to tear my pack, boots, and face right off. It bounces me around — and I stare warily at the razor-sharp rock sticking out mid-cliff beside the falls. With all the determination I have in me, I keep my feet on the wall and both hands on the rope, except when I’ve got to lift one momentarily to keep myself from hitting the wall. I sense, more than see, where I have to traverse left to avoid being torn to shreds — where a five-fire-hydrant blast will make a continuing safe descent impossible.
It seems like hours. My skin feels puckered beyond raw, and my hands are shaking, but finally I see Brigit through the mist below me. She’s standing on a wet rock island that extends under the falls. She’s pointing to where she wants me to land. Was it Dad’s landing spot, too? Teeth gritted, I lower my boots onto the wet rock and let go of the rope.
Brigit moves toward me, I presume to help me downstream, so I don’t slip into the under-falls whirlpool. Instead, loud enough that I can hear her above the falls’ noise, she hisses in my ear, “Did you put Dean up to it? Did you encourage him to follow us? Is this your fault?”
“Don’t be stupid, Brigit. Why would I want your brother here messing up our trip? I’m not that fond of him, sorry to say. N
ow let’s move, so Dean can land safely.”
Instead of moving clear, she reaches for the rope from which I’ve just unclipped. “If I pull it, they can’t come down,” she says, shouting in my ear as the falls thunders around us. “We’ll be rid of both of them. They’ll find a way out.”
Huh? No freakin’ way she’s going to pull that rope on my watch.
She has the bottom of the rope in her hand. Her pupils look ready to pop out. I don’t believe she’s going to do it, but before I can form a thought, I push her off the rock into the frothy water. I push her downstream of the island, away from the dangerous currents directly under the falls, so she’s not likely to get sucked down and drown. She’ll just be wet and pissed off.
• • •
A few hours later, darkness is falling as the four of us spread out our pads and sleeping bags. It’s a relief to see that Dean brought one of each for himself. Brigit, who hasn’t spoken a word to me since I pushed her into the water, seems to have a quiet, contrite Dean on an invisible leash. He doesn’t leave her side and displays none of his usual spunk or humour. She sets up their camp on a flat boulder a stone’s throw from Dominik’s and my dirt bench.
Brigit has ignored Dominik from the minute he completed Plunge Falls behind Dean, and his long face makes me wonder if she’s blaming him, too, for somehow encouraging Dean to follow and drop down to us.
Since no one is offering to start supper, I move toward Brigit’s pack to retrieve the grub.
“Don’t you touch it,” she commands in a poisonous-sounding voice.
“I will organize supper,” Dominik offers, heading to her boulder.
Brigit opens up her pack, hands him the food bag, then closes the big bag with a loud click of the buckles. Shoving it behind her back, she rests on it like it’s a sofa cushion, one to which no one but she has access.
When his sister’s back is turned, Dean catches my eye and jerks his head ever so slightly toward her fat pack.