Hidden Courage (Atlantis) (10 page)

“This is it. No turning back now,” Jack cried out to himself.

Jack was now committed to land. With the engine off, flaps lowered and the skis fully extended, there was nothing else he could do but wait and watch the end of the field race toward him. Looking down at the skis again, he was now inches above the ground. The speed was now rapidly bleeding off as he started to flare the nose.

Forty knots, thirty-five knots, thirty knots…

Jack felt it first as a tiny vibration – then the whole plane started to shake. He immediately glanced out his side window. He was now touching down and skidding across the field.

With his speed falling below twenty-five knots, the far end of the field was no longer far. It was a mere one hundred feet away and closing. He pulled hard back on the stick, trying to raise the nose of the plane as high as he could, using the bottom surface for aerodynamic braking.

Without warning, the tiny plane slid down into a small depression, then back up the other side, slowing it further, but launching it into the air several feet. Instantly, Jack held the stick back as far as he could to soften the drop. It was the only thing he could do on short notice.

The tiny plane hit the soft snow with a loud, jarring thud that scared Jack. He was sure something must have broken on the hard landing. Holding back the stick through the series of bounces, the tiny plane shuddered and creaked as the speed began to bleed off.

Slowing to a stop, Jack flung opened his door and leaped out of the plane to inspect for damage. To his surprise, he immediately sunk up to his knees in soft snow.

He looked back at the struts the skis were attached to. Relieved, he saw no damage. Stepping back, he reached up and grabbed a wing. Pushing it up and down, he rocked the wings and listened for anything unusual. A slow smile spread across his face as he realized he came through the landing unscathed.

“Phew, dodged another bullet,” Jack joked to himself out loud. “Just a walk in the park.”

He looked up at the mountain in front of him, then over to the ridges that cradled the snowfield. As he listened to the wind whistling past him, he suddenly realized just how alone he really was.

“Six thousand miles from home, no one around for a hundred miles and buried deep in the heart of the
Andes
… What some people won’t do for a little peace and quiet,” he joked again, downplaying the seriousness of his situation.

Moments later, Jack set up his camera on a makeshift tripod of snow and snapped a photo of himself with the plane and mountain in the background. He reviewed the photo with pride as the enormity of his feat finally hit him.

As if speaking to an audience, Jack chronicled the details of his trip out loud: “I built a tiny airplane that carried me 6,000 miles from home and landed at the base of an unknown and unclimbed mountain I found in a magazine, on a tiny snowfield that no one has ever landed on before.” With a sarcastic sigh, he continued, “It’s the little things in life I love most.”

Jack felt proud of his accomplishment. He felt if he could do this, he could do anything. Looking up at the mountain, he laughed at how silly this statement was.

“Not so fast, hotshot. The real work hasn’t even started yet. You still have to climb that damn mountain and fly home. Let’s not jinx it by celebrating too soon,” he scolded himself loudly.

Realizing the truth in his words, he tamed his vanity and headed back to the plane in preparation of his next adventure: climbing the 5,500 foot icy cliff that towered high above him.

--- --- --- --- ---

Jack stood by the propeller of his plane and looked up at the mountain. His eyes followed from the base, all the way up to the summit. Racked with apprehension and fear, he felt slight nervous tremors throughout his body. He took a deep breath of air and exhaled as he struggled to gain his composure.

Jack could see the deep fluted grooves carved into the face of the mountain very clearly now. They looked even more intimidating at his close range. Even though this wasn’t nearly as difficult a climb as some of the other climbs he had accomplished in his earlier climbing career, it carried its own dangers that in many ways surpassed even his hardest accomplishments; the most obvious danger being the remote location.

Jack’s climbing career consisted of trips to
Yosemite Valley
in
California
, the Grand Tetons in
Wyoming
, as well as the
Cascade Mountains
in
Washington
State
. They were much more technically difficult than Destination B. But if he ran into trouble in the
US
, a rescue could be mounted in a matter of minutes – not so in
Peru
. He was on his own in this part of the world. He knew if got hurt, even just a broken leg, he would almost assuredly die. It was just that simple.

The other glaring danger was the fact that Jack was climbing alone, truly alone. With his other adventures, even though he was alone, he really wasn’t alone. He had hundreds of people around him climbing close by and further out, and there were thousands in the nearby surrounding towns and cities. He could count on their support to a large degree, but in
Peru
, a hundred miles from civilization in the remotest of rugged locations, there was nobody. Jack’s life was literally hanging by thread. Every problem would be life-threatening.

Jack had folded the wings of his plane, a feature that caught his eye when he was researching the plans of hundreds of experimental planes. The wings were unlocked, rotated backward on a pivot point at the cockpit and then secured to the tail. In such a hostile environment, it was essential to break the lift of the wings by securing them in that fashion. If he left the wings extended, any wind that flowed over them could cause the plane to literally fly away and crash.

With the wings stowed and the plane anchored with ropes to the snow, he was ready to begin the climb. He lifted his enormous pack onto his back, the weight nearly knocking him off his feet. Jack’s solo climb required him to carry everything: ropes, climbing gear, food, water, fuel for boiling snow, cooking stove, shovel, sleeping bag and many more heavy items that created a load on his back weighing in excess of 80lbs. It was a crushing amount of weight to carry, especially at 12,000 feet and above, where the air was thin.

Jack started for the ridge to the north. With each step he took, he sank up to his knees. This was a laborious task.

“Dammit, I wish I’d brought my skis,” Jack lamented.

Like snowshoes, mountaineering skis spread the weight of the traveler out over the snow, allowing him to glide on the top. Unfortunately, the plane could not handle the length and extra weight of them, so they were left home in
Connecticut
.

After an hour of ‘post holing’ – a term that refers to sinking up to one’s knees in snow –he arrived at the northern ridge. It looked smaller as he looked up at it, but he knew from flying over it that it was pretty high; at least 1,000 feet at its highest point.

Looking up at the profile of the ridge, he could see the route he needed to take. Some of it looked icy and steep, with small stretches of steep, blocky rock faces. Having stripped down to a t-shirt early in the hike across the snowfield, he was now getting a slight chill as the breeze blew against his wet clothing.

He quickly pulled off his pack and retrieved two ice axes and his crampons (crampons are plates one straps to their boots that have sharp points extending out to aid in climbing on ice) in preparation for the steep icy sections he would need to negotiate. He sat down and snapped the crampons to his feet, then hauled the pack onto his back and headed up the ridgeline.

Prior to his trip, Jack had spent months training for high altitude climbing. He routinely hiked steep hills in
New England
with a pack weighing in excess of 130lbs. Although the training made him strong and agile, the effects of high altitude still slowed him down. With each step he took, he needed to take a breath of air. He would step left, breathe, step right, breathe, then step left and pause to rest under the heavy weight he was lugging on top of him.

Two hours had passed and Jack had ascended 300 feet up the ridge, occasionally needing his ice axes to balance him over the steeper sections. In front of him was the first of a series of rock and ice walls. They were short; about twenty-five feet high and looked relatively easy, so Jack removed his pack and decided to climb them without placing any protection in case of a fall. He tied a rope from himself to the pack and started to climb.

The rocks were very blocky, making the climbing easy and quick. In rock climbing, the difficulty scale is measured with a range between 5.0 to 5.14, where 5.0 is easiest. Jack estimated the ease of the pitch to be 5.1 in difficulty; relatively easy.

Twenty feet up, with his ice axes dangling from his wrists by lanyards, he could see the last portion was ice that had flowed off the top of the pitch, completely covering any exposed rock. He needed his ice axes and crampons to get over this five foot section.

Jack’s ice axes looked like miniature pickaxes. The pick of the axe was a curved plate that was sharpened so that it could pierce ice without shattering it.

Holding an axe in each hand, he reached above with his right hand and drove the point into the ice. It held firmly as he tugged on it as a test.

His crampons had two points extending out beyond the front of his boots. He lifted his right foot and drove the points into the ice. Pulling on the ice axe above for balance, he stood up on his right foot as the two front points held him in place to the ice.

Immediately, he drove the front points of the left boot into the ice, creating an artificial platform for him to stand on. He then drove the left ice axe higher, tugged on it and now drove his right axe and right front points higher at the same time, moving higher with each placement.

The cycle of climbing ice is a repetitious one: the right appendages move higher and the left moves up to match their level. Then the left appendages move higher and the right moves up to match their level. Over and over the cycle repeats itself as you gain altitude. This pattern can change as conditions change, but the concept is usually the same from climb to climb.

Jack pulled himself over the top of the icy bulge and stood on a tiny platform of snow. He grabbed the rope and struggled as he hauled the heavy pack up the short twenty-five foot section he just climbed.

He slowly hiked up the steep snow slope in front of him until he ran into another short rock and ice pitch. He climbed this one as he did the last, hauling up his pack when he finished the section.

Three hours and four more sections later, Jack stood at the top of the ridge and looked down the 1000-foot wall he just ascended. He’d made good time and felt exhilarated.

“Woohoo, a thousand feet down and only five thousand to go,” Jack shouted out, jokingly

He looked down onto the snowfield at his tiny plane. It looked very small from his vantage point. He could just make out his footprints in the snow that stretched across the snowfield, eventually becoming too small to see. Aside from the plane, his footprints were the only evidence that he was there.

He looked at the half mile of ridgeline he would have to traverse to meet the main face of the mountain. It was a knife-edge, a term used in mountaineering to describe a narrow ridgeline that steeply drops off on both sides. The knife-edged ridge that Jack was staring at was no wider than two feet at its widest point. Any misstep would result in a tumble down the 1000-foot face on either side, resulting in his death.

“What a lovely little spot for a picnic,” Jack joked to himself, then added, “Too bad I’m all out of truffles.”

Jack looked down at his watch. It was late in the afternoon and he figured he had only about three hours of light left to the day. He knew if darkness fell before he finished his crossing, the consequences could easily be fatal. Considering that even a gust of wind could knock him off the narrow path, he felt he would need at least two hours to cross the ridge safely.

“Man, that leaves me with only a one hour safety factor,” Jack said to himself. “Not good.”