The Ledge (27 page)

Blinking rapidly, I rotate my head around like a gopher peering from its tunnel, hoping to spy another climber. I see only footprints.

I slam an ax down horizontally on top of the lumpy glacial surface. When I pull on the tool, the pick cuts laterally through the sloppy snow. I set the tool again, but it’s no better. I scratch away some garbage snow and swing again. Finally, my pick bites into firmer snow beneath, and I pull myself up a little farther. Setting my other tool also requires a few swings through slush before I finally land a decent stick. I am above the snow bridge now from the waist up.

Pulling my boot from the wall below, I rotate my hip out so I can heave my right knee up and onto the surface. The move shifts weight to my tools set in the oatmeal snow, and a strange sight unfolds in front of me, as if the ground is moving away. Confused, I look at my tools and see the picks inching through the slush.

With my tool placements failing and only one foot in the wall, I gently tip backward—right back toward the crevasse. The last two screws will never hold. With so much rope out, I will fall thirty feet
and shock-load that first screw hard, then plummet on down to the next, and the next—maybe all the way to the bottom.

I desperately shove my free leg behind me and touch something solid, momentarily stopping myself. I realize my right boot’s making contact with the far side wall of the snow hole I am crawling through. What’s keeping me from tipping over backward is the snow bridge itself, just twelve inches over from the weak spot that collapsed beneath me so long ago. With my legs splayed apart, I’m stemmed wide across black space.

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.

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 drop 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.”