The Ledge (15 page)

“That’ll be slow.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to trip.”

Mike’s right that we should keep moving downhill as best we can. But I can see he knows I’m fried, so he relents without making me feel bad.

“Okay, we’ll try it for a while.”

Turning sideways, I stretch my downhill leg below me and press the uphill edge of that boot into the snow. Next, I shuffle my higher foot down to join the lower boot, and then reset my ice ax downslope. This jerky motion is slower, but the pauses give me the half-second rests I need. I settle into a rhythm, as does Mike, and we steadily descend the glacier.

We drop another few hundred feet, and three climbers with daypacks pass us. We watch them descend ahead of us and curve to the right. The trail down the glacier is an impromptu path of footprints stomped solid by scores of climbers. It has been over a week since the last snowstorm, so all the repetitive footsteps have consolidated a track in the snow at least ten feet wide. In some sections, meandering climbers have packed it out almost twenty feet across.

The path is reassuring: Dozens of others have trod here without trouble.

When the trail cuts abruptly in a new direction, sometimes the cause is obvious—like an open crevasse, a sagging snow bridge, or a teetering ice buttress. Other times, the reason for the sudden direction change is not clear. Whatever the case, we follow the proven footprints before us. The next hundred yards of climber’s trail is easily seen, but farther ahead it intermittently disappears as it drops behind snow hills, swings below small ice cliffs, and meanders laterally across the glacier.

We stomp along for a while, passing ascending climbing teams. Some climbers notice our short ice axes and helmets and ask where we’ve been; one guy even correctly surmises that we climbed the Liberty. We are still wearing our helmets, which puts us in the minority on the Emmons-Winthrop route. An hour earlier we had
talked about taking the helmets off and strapping them on our packs. But since we’d have to lug the weight anyway, we figured we might as well keep them on our heads.

This downhill trudge gets monotonous. Mike must be feeling it too, because he suddenly turns around to talk. With a mischievous lilt in his voice, he drawls out, “Hey … Jim?”

“Yeah,” I answer.

“Whatever you do, don’t think about a hot fudge sundae.”

“Aaah, crap! Why did you bring that up?” I say in mock disgust and anger.

“Don’t think about the chocolate,” Mike goes on. “Don’t think about the nuts. I don’t want you thinking about that.”

“Thanks. Thanks a lot, Mike,” I say.

We walk in silence for a minute while I scheme. Then I shout, “I promise not to do that, as long as you don’t think about a cold, frosty beer with foam on it about two inches tall running down the side.”

Mike groans in happy longing. Ha! We’re even.

Motoring downhill, I give some serious thought to dinner. We should easily make it to the campground tonight. I know Mike’s self-discipline and meager budget means he’ll vote for generic pasta in the campground. But maybe I’ll insist on treating us to steaks and beers.

THE SUMMIT CRATER
far above us now blocks the wind, so it feels warmer, and the surface of the glacier is like wet oatmeal, three inches deep. As we descend, we pass a few climbers moving downhill more slowly than us. We zig and zag our way downhill, traversing onto the Emmons Glacier proper, and reach an elevation of about 12,000 feet.

Mike asks, “Feeling better now that the air is thicker?”

“Yep. I feel pretty good.”

“Well, let’s try and glissade.”

Glissading is basically sliding downhill on the snow; you sit down on your butt or, more rarely, stand up and ski on your boots. When the slope’s angle and the snow’s consistency are just right, glissading can be a fast way to descend, and pretty fun, too. We know that if we glissade, we must pay strict attention to avoid losing control, going over cliffs, smashing into rocks, or plunging into crevasses.

Glissading would give our weary legs a break, so it sounds tempting. But we are still on the glacier. We should probably just walk the Emmons and then glissade later, on the Inter Glacier, where there are almost no crevasses. But I don’t want to sound weak or be the naysayer by bringing this up. I’m afraid Mike will think less of me if I keep presenting risks. So I don’t say anything direct. Instead, I waffle.

“Well,” I say, “do you think we should?”

“Yeah, we’ll make better time.”

So we sit down and get ready. We remove our crampons—leaving them on would be asking for them to snag and break an ankle—and tuck them inside our packs, where they can’t grab the snow.

We strap our ice hammers to our packs, move about forty feet away from each other, and sit down in the snow. I stay on the known climber’s path while Mike places himself off the trail to my right, so we can glissade almost parallel to each other. We each hold an ice ax like a canoe paddle to steer ourselves and to use as a brake. With a mutual nod, we scoot our butts forward and begin sliding downhill on the wet snow. My nylon climbing pants hiss as they glide across the glacier’s surface.

After a few minutes, Mike halts. Since we’re roped together, I skid to a stop, too. I stand and scan the next section of glacier below us.

“Looks safe ahead, Mike. No drop-offs or anything.”

“You’re moving slower. Take your pack off and drag it behind, like me.”

So I slip off my pack and clip it with a carabiner and sling to my waist harness. We push off at the same time and resume the glissade. Mike was right: Having my pack off makes me faster. But my tethered pack keeps flipping, flopping, and crashing into me from behind—a pain.

The descent path has been mostly straight so far, but now it angles left, so we stop, stand up, and brush off the clingy snow. We pull our packs on and walk laterally on the snow trail until we are above the next linear section. Then we plop down and glissade again.

Soon the snow path has so many meandering portions that we have to walk more and our overall progress is about the same as two other climbers who are hiking downhill. We pass them glissading, and they pass us each time we stop. Because we have our crampons off, when we walk laterally we’re less secure and less speedy than the other climbers, so the two of them keep catching up with us, then waiting behind us. Mike is leading now, and as the follower I grow sick of feeling pressed by the other team’s front climber, who walks right on my heels.

“Mike,” I yell, “hold up.”

I let them go by me, which means Mike must also. I trade friendly nods with the rear climber as he passes me.

At about 11,500 feet, Mike and I see the trail below us head into a long, linear section of the glacier. This semipermanent feature is called the Corridor, and its smooth, gentle slopes are known to have few crevasses. The Corridor is in the middle of the glacier, and the unrelenting ice pressure from the two sides probably closes many of the tension cracks. I can see that the trail runs fairly straight down the slope’s fall line to about 10,000 feet. This should give us fast, easy access to the glacier’s end at Camp Schurman, located at 9,460
feet, where a little humpbacked hut of a ranger station is tucked in against jutting volcanic rocks.

The two climbers who just passed us stop to eat and fiddle with their gear. We walk past them yet again, and line ourselves up at the upper entrance to the Corridor. Jumbled garage-sized blocks of glacial ice, separated by cracks and sagging holes, line both sides of this alley. Danger hovers on either side, but the clear path down the middle seems inviting. Across the whole landscape lies a deep blanket of snow.

It doesn’t look like we can quite make a single straight run all the way down, but we will be able to slide downhill for quite a ways before having to move eastward so we can resume our descent.

I take the lead spot on the rope and step off the trail to the left. This allows Mike to stay on the wide communal trail to my right, and slightly above me. With a push of our ice axes, we are once again sliding downhill on our butts. I sit up as tall as I can and lift my head to look out for any danger.

About every hundred feet, we stop by digging the bluntly pointed spikes of our ice ax shafts into the snow. Then one of us stands to scout the trail ahead, make sure it is safe, and adjust our route if necessary. During one stop, I stand, then turn back and look over my left shoulder. We’re several hundred feet below where we left those two other climbers. A snow-covered ice hummock lies between us and them now, so we can no longer see each other. Mike and I resume sliding downhill.

The smooth snow slope in front of me looks fine, but as we descend I sense the terrain changing off to my left. I can’t see a section of the ground over there, which suggests that a drop-off lies ahead. I snap my left arm high above my shoulder with an open hand—the signal for Mike to stop. I grab my ax with both hands and brake hard.

I stand up and peer to my left. I still can’t see the actual problem,
but it doesn’t feel right. When I look up at Mike, he is rolled onto his left side, ice ax held in both hands, poised to drive it into the snow for an anchor. Not knowing why I signaled for a stop, he is ready to belay me if necessary. He lifts his head a bit, glances the fifty feet downslope at me, and yells, “What is it?”

“Not sure. I think there are crevasses in front of us.”

“Go take a look,” Mike says.

I pull on my pack, shimmying into the shoulder straps, and make sure the rope isn’t snagged on any ice protrusions. Looking upslope, I watch Mike stab the sharp pick of his ax firmly, and kick his boot toes deep into the snow as an anchor. Satisfied with his secured position, he gives me a nod. I return the nod and turn downslope.

Probing ahead of myself with my ice ax, I walk cautiously forward two steps, tightening slack from the rope. My internal danger meter kicks up a notch. I instinctively pump my left hand into a fist—the signal for Mike to watch me and hold on tight. I raise my voice: “Tension.”

My attention is focused ahead, but I feel the rope tug reassuringly at my waist. Mike has me. Holding my ax at the ready, I creep forward another half step and see the ground drop off below me. I stare into a dark hole. My stomach clenches, and I suck in a short burst of air.

It’s not a singular cliff but, rather, a series of descending vertical steps, each one formed by loose, leaning ice blocks the size of tractor-trailers. Each step drops off about ten feet more than the last, and between each tilted ice block is a gaping crevasse, mostly camouflaged by snow. It looks like an ice serac has collapsed from below and sucked the broken glacier pieces seventy feet deeper into the Earth. Beyond the collapsed hole I see transverse crevasses, all stretching east-west, contouring across the slope.

I look over my right shoulder and see the rope stretch tightly back to Mike. Still pinning himself to the ground, he is on his stomach,
ice ax muscled diagonally across his chest in a classic self-arrest position. He stares at the snow an inch from his face, focused on being our team’s anchor.

I ease back a step and the piano wire of a rope relaxes. Mike feels our lifeline slacken and looks over his right shoulder at me, but keeps us anchored. I exhale hard to force myself to calm down.

“Whoa, big crevasse down here, Mike. We’re not going this way.”

I back off a few feet to a safe spot. The slack rope flops to the ground, so Mike sits up.

“Okay,” he hollers back, pointing. “Why don’t you cross beneath me, to the right, to get away from it.”

I walk a few steps back east and stand on the broad trail of footprints. The late morning sun beats down on us. Even though we are only wearing Gore-Tex shells over a single layer of polypro long underwear, sweat soaks my skin.

I look directly uphill at Mike resting on the snow trail above me and say, “Water up.”

I drop my pack, and Mike slides out of his. As we drink, I survey our surroundings. We’re at about 11,000 feet. Another hour and we’ll be off the glacier. A few more hours of hiking over glacial scree, then through old-growth forest, and we should make it to the rental car tonight—and maybe those steaks and beers.

Time to get going. I pull my pack back on and study the communal trail ahead. By contouring to the right across the slope, I can traverse over five yards and align myself directly above the next straight downhill section of the climber’s path.

I turn upslope to Mike, fifty feet away. He is on the stomped-out snow trail, watching me.

“Ready?”

“Ready,” Mike says, nodding.

“I’m going to cut right.”

“Sounds good,” Mike answers.

I’m facing directly east, perpendicular to the slope’s fall line. I’ll go about fifteen feet or so, which will tighten the rope between us. This will leave Mike still on the snow path and put me on the right-hand side of the trail, where we can again glissade straight down.

I scan the snow-covered glacier surface before me, but I don’t see any signs of trouble. No accumulated dust in a low spot. No cracks. No sags.

THE SNOW FEELS
dense and firm as I shove the handle of my ice ax into the glacier’s surface. Satisfied, I take a step and sink ankle-deep into wet snow before settling onto solid ice beneath.