The Ledge (8 page)

Standing on a ledge halfway up a cliff face, I felt almost as if I were hovering on a flying carpet. The magic that had powered us up here came from the skill, the will, and the effort we’d put in. Although my journey up the lower face had lasted but twenty minutes, along the way I had experienced doubt and confidence, fear and elation. Climbing’s intensity seemed to compress the full range of human experience into brief stretches of time.

The demands and rewards of ascending were so forceful that I was fully engaged. The focused attention it required of body, mind, and spirit was clarifying—and, afterward, calming. My love for climbing was moving beyond just an appreciation for the pretty places it took me. Life seemed more intense and gratifying when I was engaged in the challenges of climbing higher. Persevering through doubt and overcoming scary problems nurtured my sense of determination.

IN SEPTEMBER 1982
, I went west. I stepped onto the train in downtown Boston wearing my backpack and stepped off a world away at Glacier National Park, Montana. Officially, I was on my way to
Montana State University to spend my junior year there, on the National Student Exchange program. In essence, though, I was off to seek adventure in the Rocky Mountains.

After two weeks of hiking in Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks, I arrived in Bozeman, ready to start at MSU. Having already changed my major from engineering to geology, I signed up for environmental geology classes. I chose a light academic load so that I could also fit in courses with an outdoor bent, like snow avalanche dynamics, wilderness first aid, and cross-country skiing. The climbing classes and the eighty-mile backpacking trip I had taken back in New England had served their purposes, preparing me for bigger adventures in the Rockies. I took an advanced rock-climbing class that went to several different cliffs near Bozeman. It was there that I learned the fundamental aspects of aid climbing, in which you rely heavily on the gear to ascend very difficult terrain. After the snow fell, I took an ice-climbing class, scaling frozen waterfalls with spiky metal crampons on my boots and ice axes in my hands. I was spending all my spare time and money climbing. Along the way I met three experienced mountaineers, Joe Berlin, Tom Engleson, and Jim Seines, and the four of us climbed as a team through the winter. The adventures provided me with exercise, recreation, and a revitalizing energy—the exhilaration I felt confirmed that I had been right to move west and become a climber.

And something happened that I had not planned on. I fell in love.

At the welcome meeting for newly arrived exchange students, we went around a circle rattling off our names and home states. I realized that I was in a room of like-minded people—all of us had chosen to temporarily move to a very different state where we knew almost no one, with the intention of expanding ourselves. During the introductions, I was captivated by a brown-haired girl named Gloria Neesham.

During several more icebreaker events for exchange students, I kept gravitating to Gloria, who was from Bowling Green State University, in Ohio. On a white-water rafting trip, we chatted. Under the guise of getting exposed to Montana culture, I talked her into taking western swing dancing classes with me. That first date led to another, then another. Soon, we were in love.

By the spring of 1983, we had been together for half a year, but with the second quarter completed at MSU, we needed to return to our homes in Ohio and Massachusetts. We made plans for me to visit her in two months. Seeing her off at the airport, I handed Gloria a single rose, and she walked onto the plane.

I WASN’T EAGER
to end my partnership with my three ice-climbing buddies, either. So we planned our own reunion. Before leaving Montana, we committed to an ascent of Mount Rainier, in Washington, in June 1983, just three months away.

My seven months in Montana had formed new and permanent foundations for my life. I had fallen in love with Gloria, found my vocation in environmental geology, and embraced my avocation of climbing. But for the time being, I needed to return home to save money by living at my parents’ house and painting for Dad. We sandblasted and painted four-story buildings at Hanscom Air Force Base, just ten miles from home. Moving hundred-pound sandbags kept me in shape, and hanging the swing staging off the buildings honed my rope and rigging skills. Every time we moved the staging, Dad drilled into me the same rules I’d heard from him a thousand times: Double-check the system. Make sure you always have a backup.

Some weekends I went to UMass to visit college friends, but mostly I climbed. Since I had not been a mountaineer before my Montana trip, I did not know any climbers in Massachusetts. Thus I followed
the time-honored tradition of buying some gear and dragging along innocent friends. A buddy of mine from sixth grade, Mark Piantedosi, was athletic and strong from years of working for his father’s landscaping company. Even though our jobs were physically demanding, Mark and I would climb one night a week right after work—skipping dinner and staying on the rock until dark.

I had followed veteran climbers up routes in New Hampshire and Montana, but by default, I was now the more “experienced” team member. That meant I had to learn to lead. Leading demands more strength, judgment, and bravery than following. With about a year of climbing under my belt, and no one to teach me, I learned to lead the old-fashioned, risky way: I read up on it, then taught myself.

I devoured climbing books and magazines. The reading helped, but I learned protection placement mostly through trial and error. I finally got the courage to lead my first route—a short, simple climb at Crow Hill, in central Massachusetts. I sweated and groveled my way up the crack, but I made it through without any blunders.

The scheduled snow-and-ice climb of Mount Rainier was just two months off, so I began serious physical conditioning for the first time in my life, running laps up and down the creaky stairs of my parents’ hundred-year-old farmhouse. I sprinted up, creating a racket, and the pounding descents were even noisier. As I got stronger, I carried my backpack with weights in it and wore my plastic ice-climbing boots. This magnified the racket twofold, and Mom struggled to tolerate the clomping, asking if all this was really necessary. Shouting downstairs over my noisy steps, I assured her that this was how the famous climbers trained.

With a month to go before Rainier, I spent a precious $200 on airfare to visit Gloria in Ohio. Over lunch she questioned me about the upcoming climb of Mount Rainier. She knew that at 14,410 feet tall, Rainier was about 4,000 feet higher than I had ever been before,
and that the crevassed glaciers were also new to me. I assured her that I was fit, that my three Montana climbing partners had experience, and that one of them had been on Rainier before, so I was in good hands.

On our last day together before I flew home to Boston, Gloria surprised me. She pulled out a medallion on a tarnished silver chain and said, “This medal was blessed by the pope. I used to hang it from the rearview mirror of my Volkswagen Bug for protection. I want you to wear it on Rainier.”

“I can’t take this, Gloria,” I said. “It’s too special. What if I lose it?”

“I want you to take it. It’ll protect you.”

She put the chain over my neck, kissed the medal for luck, then kissed me.

“During the climb, don’t take this off. Wear it the whole time, until you’re off the mountain safe and you call me.”

Feeling the dime-sized circular medal bumping against my skin, I pressed it against my chest.

“Thank you, Glo. I’ll be careful with it. And I will be careful on Rainier.”

“Promise?” she asked.

“Promise,” I said firmly. She stared at me for two seconds, and then we embraced.

On the plane the next day, I absentmindedly fiddled with the medal hanging beneath my shirt. Worried about losing it, I decided that once I got home I’d take it off, and save wearing it just for the mountain. Rainier was going to be a big climb, and I could use all the good luck and watching over I could get.

“I DON’T THINK
this is the right way,” Tom shouted over the wind.

“I don’t know, either,” I yelled. “We can’t stay here, though.”

Thick clouds enveloped Tom, Jim, and me, dispersing the light from our headlamps. The rope coil at my feet grew smaller as our teammate in the lead, Joe, scrambled farther down into a gully of crumbly volcanic rock. When the slack disappeared, I followed him down the debris chute. Each step I took moved shovelfuls of loose rock around. With him straight below me, I knew that any stones I kicked off would get funneled right at Joe, so I treaded as gently as possible.

After I slithered down about twenty feet, I spied his headlamp beam below me. I shouted down.

“Joe! Are we on route?”

“Can’t tell. But I don’t think so.”

“We don’t think so either. You better come back.”

There was a pause while Joe accepted that his efforts had been a waste and that he had to struggle back up the manky gully. Then he yelled, “Coming up.”

We were at about 9,500 feet, somewhere above the Inter Glacier on Mount Rainier’s northeast slope. It couldn’t be far to the safety of Camp Schurman, but we didn’t know which way to go. Although this would have been straightforward in daylight, our late start and the extra few miles of approach hiking along a closed road had left us short of camp three hours after sunset.

Near the top of the rock chute, we huddled to make a quick decision. We’d been on the move for nearly eight hours and were tired. We were not really lost, but in the darkness and gathering clouds, we might stumble around for hours before we found the rangers’ hut at Camp Schurman. This could readily turn into a mess, or even a major debacle if someone got injured. Dad’s words echoed in my mind: “Better quit before someone gets hurt.”

We made the call to stop for the night, retreating to a flat spot we had seen earlier. After struggling to pitch the tent in rising winds, we crammed ourselves inside to eat candy bars and drink hot chocolate.
Disappointment showed on everyone’s faces. The day had been filled with compromises already, and now we found ourselves unable to reach Camp Schurman.

Our original plan had been to try the steep and technical Liberty Ridge, a classic arête that cleaves Rainier’s avalanche-swept north face. But after arriving at the park earlier that morning, we had learned that the weather was predicted to sour in a day or two. Even with good weather the Liberty Ridge was a severe challenge. Although only moderately experienced—me least of all—we were smart enough to know that heading onto serious terrain like the Liberty was a bad idea when the weather was expected to deteriorate. So we had switched to the more modest goal of trying the Emmons Glacier, a crevassed but technically easier way to Rainier’s summit. Scaling back to the Emmons-Winthrop route had been the right move, but even that left our chances of summiting in doubt. If the weather cleared in the morning, we would be in a reasonable position to make a strenuous one-day push to the top. If it didn’t, we might not even see the summit, let alone reach it.

That night I fell asleep at around twelve-thirty, hoping for some decent rest. Just an hour later, I awakened to a flapping tent wall beating my face. The boys fumbled with lights, and someone was trying to get dressed. In a tired stupor, I asked, “What’s up?”

Tom, our most experienced climber, said, “Big winds from the south. A pole has snapped. We have to lash it down before it shreds the tent.”

The wind screamed around our domed shelter—if the tent came apart while we were half-dressed and surrounded by unsecured gear, we would instantly be in epic disarray. We stowed loose items and hurried to pull on our climbing clothes.

Dawn was several hours away, so we hunkered in the tent, fully geared, and waited. With each big gust, I’d grab the nearest pole and hang on to support it. During lulls, we sat in the dark, waiting for
time to pass. I kept pressing my fingertips against my jacket to check for Gloria’s blessed medal. Feeling the round shape sink into my flesh calmed me. Around four
A.M.
, we emerged from the tent and broke camp. As I wrote to Gloria in a letter after the trip:

“It was weird to be out and moving so early in the morning. The clouds were going crazy in the wind, doing things I’ve never seen them do before. The red sun gave the whole mountain a strange glow.”

We shuffled down the Inter Glacier, across scree slopes, and back to the snow-covered trail. Far above us, the winds continued roaring at about ninety miles per hour. Battered, blistered, and exhausted from hiking twenty miles round-trip, we were back at the car less than twenty-four hours after we’d left the White River entrance. Mount Rainier had merely swiped at us and we had turned tail and retreated. I was chagrined at such sudden defeat, but knew we had made the right call.

We licked our wounds in Seattle for two days, then rallied for a consolation mountain. We chose the more modest Mount Baker, a 10,778-foot glaciated peak in the North Cascades. Though Jim’s aching knee prevented him from joining us on summit day, Joe, Tom, and I roped up and climbed the glacier to the summit, under great weather. As I wrote to Gloria:

“YEAH—My first big mountain! We made the top at 10:25
A.M
. on June 16th, 1983. The view was incredible.”

I flew to Ohio on the Fourth of July to see Gloria. We spent the holiday hanging out with her friends and watching the fireworks over Tanglewood Lake. The next day, I tried giving her back the borrowed medal.

“This kept me safe, even when things got rough,” I said. “Thank you so much.”

I held out the medal, etched with the profile of Pope Paul VI, but she didn’t reach for it.

“Are you going to climb more big mountains?” she asked.

“Probably. Well, yeah, definitely.”

She gave me a slightly aggrieved look, but then the tension dropped from her face.

“Then you should keep it. It will always protect you and always remind you of me.”