Page 47 - 20145 AMA Spring

For the last hour I had watched a storm track across the range. We went to work cutting a ledge from the snow. It wouldn’t be long before bad weather hit. It was 5 p.m.; an hour and a half of daylight remained.
The storm came in, hitting us with snow and hail. The wind gusted and the views disappeared. The night arrived as we were enshrouded in our vertical world. I squeezed alongside Powell, shoulder to shoulder inside his homemade bivy bag.
“I suppose we can sit it out for a day if this keeps up.”
For once I didn’t have to strain to hear his quietly-hissed reply.
“No need. We can climb through this.”
I thought of the slopes above loaded with fresh snow and how little it took to knock me off last year.
“Aye, I suppose we can,” I replied, though with not quite as much determination.
Through the night the clouds passed over and to my great relief the sky cleared. As we eased the stiffness from our aching limbs, the sun came out, and the mountain began its morning song. Six pitches of weaving and groveling followed. Climbing vertical unprotected mush ate into the time somewhat, though moving together for a while clawed a little of it back.
Moving together is a part of mountaineering that doesn’t usually worry me. In fact, most of the time I prefer it: the ground is covered quickly, and there’s no messing with belays. This face was different. The uncertainty of the ground taxed the nerves, the chances of being hit by falling debris taxed the nerves, the weather and conditions taxed the nerves. The simplest formalities on this mountain were serious. I watched Powell kicking a stance beneath another vertical, rotten wall of despair and forced myself to get on with it.
It was with joy I tunneled through a wafer-thin cornice and crawled onto the East Ridge. At last the dark and foreboding face had been left behind. We were no longer threatened by the headwall of death and despair. We were also no longer on new ground: Austrians Toni Egger and Siegfried Jungmair had climbed the ridge in 1957. Celebration took the form of a fun-sized Mars Bar.
A panoramic vista opened in front of me: new valleys, intense blue lakes, grass, new mountains. I felt alive.
Dropping down from the overhanging cornice, I traversed to belay at the side of a large ice umbrella. The sight of Jirishanca Chico tempered my joy. A growing sense of guilt began to threaten my contentment. The police had left the previous day. The chopper blades thudding in the early morning had mingled with the sound
of crashing ice. I knew the bodies of the two Austrians had been found: I could see the holes in the snow where they had lain. We would later learn it had taken two days to remove them from the avalanche site. Had they been pushing too hard in ques- tionable
conditions, trying to get acclimatized to beat Powell and myself onto this route? Was it worth it? Is any of this worth it?
We had aided in the search for the Austrian’s bodies, leading the police through the icefall on the first search. The police were a happy bunch, just doing a job. Pointing to the southeast face, we told them we were going to try to climb Jirishanca. They looked at us like we were aliens beamed down from The Planet Pointless.
“You should go to the beach and meet women,” one of them said. After the last two days, I had to wonder if he hadn’t been right.
For the first time I had witnessed the pain of loss caused for those left behind. Was I selfish to pursue a life of satisfaction for myself? Perhaps; but an existence of work, warmth, comfort, and mundane regularity simply didn’t cut it, didn’t give me the reward I sought.
I wondered how people would view my demise if it came now. He lived life to the limit and died doing what he loved, I hoped they would say. A cliché, but true: the reward from climbing will always be worth the risk for me.
Powell traversed across and joined me, disturbing my morbid thoughts. He continued to climb the slope until beneath the wildest umbrella of ice, where he fixed a belay.
“You’re going to love this!” he called.
As I climbed to meet him I didn’t think I was. Belayed underneath the umbrella at the rear of a cave formed by erupting ice, Powell sat, a fly in the jaws of a Venus flytrap. At his feet was a hole looking directly down the face. I traversed a wall of thin, corniced snow that hung over the hole.
“Careful!” Powell yelled quite loudly. “You haven’t seen how far that overhangs!” I hadn’t, but as I minced around the hole to join him it became obvious.
“Why is nothing on this mountain normal?” I whined. “Everything has to be bigger, scarier, more rotten, steeper.”
Powell ignored my moaning and set about digging a five-star bivy ledge. When he was done, we had a pulpit that overlooked a con- gregation of fine mountains.
The night drew in and for the first time in three days the afternoon bubble-up didn’t result in a storm.
“The weather looks to be settling again—just in time for our summit bid, eh? Couple of hours, maybe?”
“Hmm,” came the whispered reply. “Still a long way to go, I reckon.”
Bastard, I thought. Why does he always have to spoil my illusions with the truth?
Setting off at 7 a.m. the following day, I tiptoed across the knife-edge ridge, then crossed a thin bridge of icicles that shone in the sun. Multi-colored prisms of light danced as if through a stained-glass window. I was petrified. Staring at the bridge all night had freaked me out. It was so thin, and the whole face dropped away dramati- cally beneath it.
The climbing above continued in a vein similar to that of the day before, never as hard as the first day but sustained, uncertain and always serious. Slots were cut, crumbling rock crawled up, overhanging ice pulled through. Mid-morning found me tackling
a steep buttress head on. It wasn’t until I was in
ARMY MOUNTAINEER 45