Monster Girl Mountain by Edward Lang

Author:Edward Lang [Lang, Edward]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

17

After I returned to the cave, we started our preparations.

There were three areas that were of huge importance:

We needed to be able to protect ourselves…

We needed supplies…

And we needed to be able to travel as fast as possible.

So I devised a plan, and we began to work on all three.

As far as protection, the number one threat we would face was wolves. So we began to practice getting up into trees as fast as possible.

It wouldn’t be practical to assume we would always find a tree with branches low enough to climb, so we began practicing with a rope.

The process went something like this:

I found a rock that weighed several pounds and tied it to the end of a 40-foot rope. The rock was purely for weight. It allowed me to swing the rope around and throw it as high as possible – basically like a hammer throw in track and field.

I had to crisscross the rope over the stone many times and tie over a dozen knots to keep it in place – but in the end, I was sure the stone wasn’t slipping out.

Once I swung the rock and got up a good speed, I would throw it over a limb about 20 feet up.

The stone would fall back to the ground, trailing the rope with it. Of course, I kept the other end in my hand so the whole rope didn’t end up flying over the branch.

Once we retrieved the stone end, I attached the rope to Lelia’s climbing harness (actually my climbing harness, still on loan to her), which she wore over her furs.

I would use my weight and strength to pull her up. In reality, it was more like I was counterbalancing her weight, effectively making her as light as possible so she could scramble up the tree using my ice axes. She would spike them into the bark and use them as handholds to pull herself up.

Once she was up on a high enough branch, she would detach the rope from her climbing harness and tie it off to the tree limb – theoretically. And at that point, I would climb it – theoretically.

The problem was, the rope was too small for me to grip effectively. I didn’t have the same freakish grip strength that Lelia had, nor her light weight. I needed knots in the rope for it to work.

But having knots in the rope would make it way more difficult to pull over the tree limb, and would make it useless (or at least a lot less useful) for other purposes, like mountain climbing and belaying.

So we designated a second rope just for me, 30 feet in length. I tied knots in it every two feet, doubling and even tripling them up in size so that I could easily grab hold and use them to climb.

Once Lelia climbed high enough up – 15 feet was sufficient – she would use a carabiner to attach the knotted rope to a limb, and I would climb the knotted rope to safety.

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