The hole vacuumed the left side of our raft and dragged me underwater. Kicking with my legs and beating my arms, I surfaced underneath the raft. I gulped some air and forced myself underwater again and groped my way out. I hung on to the cord on the side of the raft and tried to catch my breath as water crashed against my face. There were two people beside me and three across from me. One woman’s face was ashen. “It’s going to be okay!” I yelled at her but she barely nodded.
A wave tore at our cold, tightly curled fingers. I clung to the stretched cord as the water bent me backward, gushed over my closed mouth and eyes and pulled at my hair before releasing me back to the side of the boat. When I opened my eyes, I was the only one left clinging to the raft. I gasped for air through chattering teeth as water bottles, Teva sandals and paddles cruised by. Two rafters marooned on a log mid-river called for help. I surveyed the angry water. One, two, three, four, five overturned rafts. Even the gear boat was stuck on the rocks.
Our guide’s arms cut through the frothy water. He manteled himself onto the raft in one swift motion, told me to look out, righted the raft by himself and climbed back in within seconds. He hauled me in along with four others. We had three paddles for six people. I paddled as hard as I could to shore. Just before we landed, I peppered the guide, “Did you see Jim?”
He looked everywhere but at me and mumbled, “He went in the hole.” My mouth went dry.
As the rest of the boats limped in one by one, I asked if anyone had seen Jim. I craned my neck and saw him slumped in the last raft. Jim’s features were blank, as if he had seen a ghost. I hugged him but his body moved away restlessly, and he muttered something about a warm jacket. I draped my fleece over his shoulders as he sat down and started to whittle a piece of driftwood. I sat beside him.
“Are you okay?” I whispered.
He focused on the piece of wood as he spoke in almost a childlike voice, “Yeah, yeah, um, I went into the hole.”
I leaned closer so that we were touching and asked, “What happened?”
He pushed the knife rhythmically down the driftwood and explained, “At first I tried to fight to the surface but that seemed to plunge me deeper, so I made myself go limp. The river played with me, swirled me around and around for what seemed like at least five minutes. Just when I felt my lungs would burst, that I couldn’t hold on any longer, the river let me go and I floated to the surface.”
Jim turned his head slowly to look into my eyes and shuddered. “It’s the closest I’ve ever felt to dying.” I bit my lip and squeezed him closer to me. My body sagged. We were not safe. I had almost lost him.
Over the next five days we flipped five more times. On the final day, as the river widened into a lazy flow with not a ripple in sight, we splashed each other to ease the intense heat and the tension of the trip. Several people dove in and when one woman was inadvertently jostled overboard, she began to shake and scream. Her husband bent quickly to haul her out. Jim would later submit an article about the trip to an outdoor magazine, but they responded that the story was not believable.
After five months on the road, we touched down on Canadian soil and heaved a sigh. Clean air, mountains that beckoned and a language our brains could compute effortlessly. But we weren’t home long before we headed off on another adventure. Two months remained before my teaching term began.
We drove 22 hours north in our own province of British Columbia to the Spatsizi River. We rented a canoe and drove to the put-in where we began our 10-day trip. The most difficult rapid we ran was Class III, but the consequences of an accident were severe given the remoteness of our location. Our only link to the outside world was a hunters’ lodge halfway down the river, but it was early in the season and we did not expect anyone to be there. The sun shone every day and a chill in the air kept the bugs at bay. Each morning we loaded the canoe and covered our gear with a green tarp to protect it from waves. The first few days were mellow and we dipped our paddles lazily. Caribou wandered close to the shore to drink, and we marvelled at their fuzzy antlers. We camped on sandbars to avoid the bears and wolves. In the evenings, we sat on our fold-up chairs and watched the sunset. I was exactly where I wanted to be with exactly the right person.
One afternoon we stopped to have lunch and I disappeared into the tangled alder to go to the bathroom. Jim’s yell pierced the silence: “Sue! Sue! Bear!” I waddled as quickly as I could back into the open, pulling up my pants as I went, and met Jim, who was backing away from the brush toward the river.
“What happened?” I panted. Jim’s face was a chalky white. He kept his eyes riveted to the same spot in the trees, directly behind our picnic area.
“I heard this rustle right behind me and at first I thought it was you, so I didn’t do anything. But then the sound was getting closer and I thought that it was weird that you would go to the bathroom right behind me, so I turned around. And he was right there, this black bear. He raised his big furry head, and we were almost nose-to-nose. That’s when I leaped up and called to you. The bear turned tail and ran. I think he was pretty scared too!” The bear must have swum over from the mainland. We made a mental note to be on the lookout for animals, even on the sandbars.
Our guidebook indicated we would encounter a Class II plus rapid on day three. As we navigated a bubbly rocky section, we saw up ahead that the river widened and turned a 90° bend. The waves stood up at this point and a wall of striated rock blocked the river’s course. I spread my knees wide on the scratchy floor of the fibreglass canoe to balance against the roll of the waves, and I raised my voice to compete with the roaring water.
“Rock river right!” I yelled.
“Got it,” Jim replied. Faster and faster the river pulled us toward the rock wall, where it rushed up the sides before heading right. We fought the current to avoid being sucked against the wall. “Draw,” Jim commanded. “Draw!” Jim yelled more insistently.
“I am!” I yelled back as the water splashed over the gunwales of the canoe.
“I mean cross-bow draw,” Jim corrected himself. We drew closer to the wall. “Paddle harder, Sue!” We both dug in, but the boat seemed to stall for a few very long seconds before edging forward away from the wall. My shoulders relaxed. If something happened to Jim and me out here, it would be days before anyone even thought to look for us.
The river widened and meandered through marsh, sandbars and forested banks. I leaned back against the mound of gear and dangled my legs over either side of the canoe, dipping my paddle with one hand. Jim chuckled behind me, “I guess that’s why they call it the divorce boat!”
On the contrary, my relationship with Jim matured when we faced discomfort and fear together. I learned that I could depend on him under pressure. I learned that he loved me when I was not at my best; when I was scared and withdrew and put the responsibility on others. When I was not perfect. I had felt so vulnerable and imperfect on Kilimanjaro, trying to keep up with Jim. I knew now that being vulnerable allowed our love to grow.
After our river trip, we ate and slept for 24 hours at our bed and breakfast before boarding a floatplane to the foothills of Mount Edziza.
Rainwater funnelled down the sleeve of my jacket as I pushed through the dense salal, head lowered and doing my best to ignore the wet squelching sound of my socks inside my leather hiking boots. Under my breath I counted out 30-second intervals punctuated by a shocking toot of my air horn. Around each corner, my steps faltered and my head whipped from side to side in search of dark masses among the thick, shoulder-high brush. I stopped short in front of a steaming pile of bear scat and crinkled my nose at the acrid smell of wet fur and urine hanging in the air. If we surprised a grizzly on this narrow trail, hugged on both sides by tangled brush, there would be no escape.
After six hours of trudging uphill in a downpour, we broke out above treeline onto a moonscape of volcanic rock decorated with intermittent tufts of dry grasses. The black, grey and green striations flowed upward to the striking white snow of Mount Ed
ziza. Brown fuzzy caribou shapes dotted the snow-covered gullies. We set up the tent and cooked dinner over the gas stove, mesmerized by the gentle movements of the caribou in the soft orange glow of the setting sun. Before bed I poked a needle into the bases of two bulging blisters on my heels.
The rain eased, and for nine days we crossed swollen glacier-fed streams, wandered over crushed black rock, and crunched on snow to the summit of Mount Edziza. We did not see another person. At our first water crossing, Jim crouched momentarily before leaping a metre over rushing water, fully loaded under a 27-kilogram pack. I edged forward on the wet, slanted, launching spot, knees bent, one arm ready to swing, puffing madly, gaze alternating between the muddy landing on the opposite bank and the bubbling water below. Breathe, bend the knees, swing the arms and jump! But my feet stayed firmly planted. What if I fall? Get wet? Twist my ankle? Come on! Get it together! Breathe, bend the knees, swing the arms and jump! But the more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t move. What if? My heart sped up with the ever-increasing list of things that could go wrong. I could take off my shoes and socks and wade through, but the rocks would cut my feet, it was freezing cold and the current still might pull me over. And my blisters would get waterlogged.
“Come on, Sue, you can do it,” Jim coached from the other side.
“I know. Okay, okay!” I barked. I didn’t like to be left behind. I blew two short breaths through my nose, inhaled deeply, swung my arms back and then threw them forward with my leading leg. Airborne. I watched my foot sink into the mud many inches from the edge of the water and exhaled. Once I readjusted my pack, I grinned at Jim. For me, having to be self-reliant was part of the appeal of these wilderness adventures. I ventured out of my comfort zone to learn about courage, my strengths and my weaknesses, to trust myself.
The next morning, I winced as I pushed my feet into my hiking boots. The open blisters on my heels burned in spite of the padded dressing surrounding them. I tied my boots to my pack and wore woollen socks and Tevas for the rest of the trip.
The next stream crossing was too wide to jump. Water pushed against Jim’s knees as he ferried our packs across. Jim returned for a third time and piggybacked me so that my blisters would stay dry.
On the final day, bugs of all shapes and sizes assaulted us as we descended through the forest. We walked briskly, at least four kilometres per hour, so that the biters were hard pressed to land. Sweat plastered the tightly woven cotton of our bug shirts to our skin. The mesh in front of my face drew strands of hair like a magnet, forcing me to continually blow at the clammy mess. At lunchtime we walked on the spot to discuss our options, slapping at miniature enemies on our hands.
“They’ll eat us alive if we unzip our bug shirts to eat.”
“Right. We could set up the tent,” Jim offered.
“Let’s do it.”
As we yanked the tent from my pack, spread the pieces on the ground and fumbled to put them together, I growled, “Now I know what people mean when they say ‘she went crazy and ran screaming from the woods.’ Argh! It’s too much!” My hands were covered in red welts, and anywhere the mesh of my bug shirt stuck to my skin, black flies had left little bloody craters. We dived into the nylon asylum, boots and all, zipped up and thrashed about killing any bugs unlucky enough to have made it in. Satisfied we were safe, we unzipped our mesh hoods and breathed new air.
“I like how if there is something that needs to get done, you do it, even if it’s uncomfortable,” Jim said.
“Thanks. That’s nice of you to say.” I stored the compliment for safekeeping. I watched Jim eating happily, covered in welts and stinky bug repellent and thought, he just doesn’t get riled. He’s so steady. “You’re great. I love you.” I returned his compliment although he didn’t need reassurance like I did.
Jim urged us to get going again. We lurched along for the last two hours, half walking, half running under our hefty packs. At the side of our pickup lake, we heaved our loads to the ground but remained standing to avoid contact with our clammy rain gear. The floatplane pilot loaded us in with a cheery, “Pretty wet, hey?” Jim and I laughed.
FIVE
TAKING THE NEXT STEP
(SEPTEMBER 1995–MAY 1997)
Back in Vancouver, after seven months of travelling, we invited my parents out for dinner to reconnect. Over dessert, my stepmom looked at me expectantly and asked, “So, is there a special reason why you invited us out?”
“No, not really.” I raised my eyebrows trying to guess her meaning.
“No special announcement?” she pressed.
“Oh. I get it. Ha. No.” I laughed uncomfortably.
The next day, Jim and I enjoyed a picnic at the beach in the sun. Several curt comments escaped my lips before I mustered the courage to broach the subject on which I had been ruminating for more than a year.
“So, I was wondering where we’re at,” I started.
“What do you mean?”
“We’ve been together for three years. It seems like we could take the next step,” I ventured.
“Like what?” Jim persisted with his oblivion.
Impatiently I retorted, “We could move in together.”
I wanted Jim to take the lead when it came to our relationship, to take the chances, to be vulnerable, just as he did when he was in the outdoors, but he made me ask. Jim moved into my place but was only there for a few months before the ski season began. He took a heli-ski job in Whistler instead of in the BC interior, to be closer to me, happily settling into my parents’ cabin for the winter. We fell into a pattern of me driving up to Whistler on the weekends to see him while he came to me in Vancouver on his days off.
By early spring, I tired of having a part-time boyfriend. When I arrived for my weekend visit, Jim kissed my cheek, but I neglected to give him my usual embrace. We moved stiffly around one another preparing dinner. I went upstairs to lie on the bed while the sauce cooked, and after a few minutes Jim followed. He stretched out on top of me and said, “Let’s get married.” My heart raced. The day was March 2, 1996. I knew right away that I would marry him.
A few months later I questioned my decision.
On May 11, 1996, eight people, including two experienced mountain guides, were killed. It was the biggest disaster in Mount Everest’s history. I leaned closer to the print of the local newspaper.
“Why?” I asked Jim. “Why?”
“It’s hard to say if you weren’t there. It’s too easy to judge others in hindsight,” Jim dug his hands deeper into his pockets.
“Yes, but why?” I insisted.
“Guiding a mountain like Everest is risky. The more people who go, the more inexperienced they are, the higher the likelihood of an accident.”
“So why do they guide it?” I gestured at the newspaper article.
“Because people will pay to be guided,” Jim sighed.
My mind chewed on the words.
Jim’s climbing partner arrived at our apartment and laughed the words out, “Can you believe that deal on Everest?” His body was agitated, like a toddler.
Jim rocked forward, raised his eyebrows and guffawed, “I know, it’s crazy!”
“Eight dead!”
“And Scott Fisher and Rob Hall!” Their bodies quivered with excitement. The room buzzed. I felt as if I were the only one at a party who was not high.
When Jim and I were alone, I questioned him.
“How can you act so psyched? I don’t get it.”
Jim shrugged.
I struggled on, “Mountaineering seems so selfish, such a waste of energy, and the courage and boldness that go into mountaineering could be put toward a more meaningful goal.”
“But mountaineering allows us to be courageous and bold. In any other environment we would not perform. Accomplishments in mountaineering inspire others. Isn’t that enough?” Jim countered.
“I just wonder if the cost is too great.” I thought of the satellite phone conversation between Rob Hall dying near the top o
f Mount Everest and his pregnant wife back home, of her choking out her final words to him.
“And what about us, Jim?” My throat constricted with the truth. This was my real question. I judged mountaineering because I feared the repercussions in my own life. I admired the courage of mountaineers, but I did not want Jim to die.
Jim inhaled and then released his breath with his answer, “I’m not going back to the big mountains.” My body relaxed. I did not want to ask Jim to stop doing something he loved, but at the same time a little voice nagged at me that it would be crazy to marry and to raise a family with a mountaineer who climbed above 8000 metres, in the “death zone.” My pragmatic side lamented that life would be a whole lot easier with an accountant as a mate.
That summer, we drove 22 hours up the length of British Columbia’s varied topography before cutting across the left-hand bottom corner of the Yukon. It took another two days to putter to Fairbanks, Alaska, where we boarded a plane to Bettles, followed by a floatplane into the mountains of the Brooks Range. A total of 3500 kilometres and 40 hours of driving.
Sometime during the third day, while stiffly raising my feet to the dashboard to relieve the pressure on my bum, I asked, “Why don’t we do our own premarital classes? We could each talk about our five-year goals.”
“Okay,” Jim adjusted his grip on the steering wheel.
“I’ll go first,” I offered. “Well … let’s see. I’d like to improve my climbing, find a home with you somewhere in the Sea to Sky corridor, have a baby and start an outdoor program for kids.” I turned to Jim.
He gave me a cursory glance and fixed his eyes on the road. “Okay, great. Me, well, I’d like to lead solid 5.11 and climb 50 days in the year. I’d like to write a book about Alaska. More photography. I want to be more disciplined about taking photos. And living in the Sea to Sky sounds good. Yup, that’s about it.” He nodded his head.
There was silence as I waited for the ball to drop. Nothing.
Finding Jim Page 6