The Next Everest by Jim Davidson
Author:Jim Davidson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
27
When I swung my right ice tool into the steep slope, the pick sank an inch into the ice. A handful of displaced frozen crystals arced past my head into the cloudy Colorado sky. Like a mild seismic aftershock, a gentle vibration resonated through the ice ax handle. The deep thud of the sharp steel pick melding with the mountain told me that my tool placement was good, and the ice was solid. Up I went.
Since it was my fifty-third birthday, I was spending the day as I had a dozen times before: ascending autumn alpine ice with a buddy in Rocky Mountain National Park. The moderate climb provided a fun challenge that still got me home by dinnertime to celebrate with Glo and the kids. Crisp fall air pushed the elk from the high country and drove the summer tourists from the trails. The solitude felt like having the national park to ourselves.
Alan and I started early, so we were hiking through an aspen grove when the morningâs first sunlight slanted through the golden canopy. Clouds built thicker all day, though, so we raced to finish the climb before the rain started. We were ascending the middle Ptarmigan Finger on the north side of Flattop Mountain. The deep cleft always held snow through the summer, so by my September birthday, the snowfield solidifies into a firm gully of pliable alpine ice.
With 700 vertical feet of ice below us, only 100 feet of technical climbing remained. I kicked in my crampons and swung a short ice tool in each hand as I led the last pitch. Alan was belaying me from below, paying out rope as I advanced and he stood ready to hold the rope fast if I fell. I stopped to place a final piece of protection before I pushed for the top. After turning an ice screw into the ice field, I clipped the rope to it with two carabiners and a nylon sling, then I exhaled to relax. The intermediate protection would reduce the length of my fall if I slipped off. The final headwall reared up steeper than sixty degrees, so I needed to climb well.
Four months after Everest, some of my hard-won fitness remained, but kicking my crampons several hundred times into the dense ice had tired my calf muscles. I focused hard on each tool swing and every crampon placement, striving for smoothness and efficiency. The farther I got from my last screw placement, the greater my potential fall, so climbing well was my best protection.
I pulled over the headwall lip and stepped onto the flat top of the ice gully.
A rock buttress ten feet ahead offered some cracks where I could stop and bring Alan up. After constructing a solid belay anchor with three metal pieces of rock protection, I tied myself in. Thirty-three years of alpine climbing had taught me never to trust my life, or my partnerâs, to a single piece of gear.
I yelled down into the gully, âOff belay!â
âBelayâs off!â he screamed.
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