Savage Mountain

by John Smelcer

  It had happened many times.

  Sebastian led the way across the glacier with his ice ax in his hand. James followed a hundred feet behind, with his ice ax also at the ready. Halfway across, Sebastian came upon a crevasse, which was about ten feet across with no way around it. He stopped and waited for his brother.

  “Think we can jump to the other side?” he asked.

  James peered over the edge. The crevasse looked fifty or sixty feet deep, the icy, blue-tinted walls nearly vertical and narrowing toward its yawning depth.

  “No way,” he replied, nervously backing away from the edge. “Maybe in gym class wearing shorts and sneakers, but I’m not gonna try.”

  Sebastian pretended to push his brother closer to the edge. Startled, James just about jumped out of his boots in fear.

  “I was just pulling your leg.” Sebastian laughed. “I wasn’t going to jump either. Let’s find a way around it.”

  Leading the way again, with the hundred feet of rope connecting them, Sebastian worked his way across the glacier, staying far from the gaping crevasse. Suddenly there was a loud crack. Sebastian froze instantly. They both knew the sound. Sebastian was standing on top of a crevasse, only a thin layer of crusted snow between him and the frozen depths.

  “Don’t move!” James shouted.

  “What do you think I’m doing?” Sebastian yelled back, his tone sarcastic but full of fear.

  “Hold on,” replied James, stamping his feet hard on the glacier, one foot in front of the other, so that the crampon spikes dug deep into the ice.

  “Okay!” he shouted when he felt his foothold was solid. “Walk back toward me! Slowly!”

  Sebastian took one cautious backward step.

  The surface of the glacier complained with a loud pop.

  James pulled in the slack.

  Sebastian took another step, sliding one foot ahead of the other, the way people check for thin ice on a frozen pond.

  The glacier complained again, even louder.

  James pulled in the slack again and hunkered down a bit, readying himself.

  “Steady,” he shouted.

  Sebastian took another step. This time the crusted snow gave way and Sebastian plummeted into the chasm. The sudden force yanked James to his stomach and dragged him across the surface of the glacier toward the edge. He drove his ax pick into the ice in a maneuver called a self-arrest, the sudden anchor swinging his body around violently to a stop. With the pick planted into the surface of the glacier, James clambered to his feet, planting his crampon spikes into the ice so he could bear the weight of his brother.

  “You alright?” he shouted.

  “I’m okay!” Sebastian shouted back, his words muffled from inside the crevasse. “Get me outta here!”

  “Hang in there,” replied James. “I got you.”

  James pulled the rope, hand over hand, foot by foot, drawing his brother from the abyss. Finally, an ice ax arced from the hole and stabbed into the ice, and was followed by Sebastian’s grimacing face. A moment later, after scrambling over the edge, Sebastian was lying on his back atop the glacier, several feet clear of the crevasse.

  “Oh man, that was close!” he said. “I’d have been a goner without you.”

  “Good thing we were roped in,” replied James, extending a hand to help his brother to his feet.

  After catching their breath and calming their nerves, the boys descended a hundred yards below the crevasse before continuing their trek across the glacier, avoiding a moulin they encountered on the way. An hour later they were once again standing on terra firma. Behind them was the perilous glacier; before them was a 500-foot free fall. Above them was an ominous ridge line that ran nearly 2,000 feet.

  Sebastian started stacking a pile of rocks.

  “What’s that for?” asked James.

  “So we remember to cross here on the way back.”

  While Sebastian made the marker, James took out a baggie of marijuana from inside his parka, rolled a fatty, and lit it.

  Sebastian smelled the smoke and stopped what he was doing.

  “Is that what I think it is?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” replied James. “I brought some Mary Jane. Want some?”

  “Sure,” Sebastian replied with a disarming smile, reaching out to take a hit.

  James handed over the dooby after a long drag.

  Instantly, Sebastian snatched the plastic sandwich bag from his brother’s hand and tossed it over the cliff face, flicking the joint over as well.

  “What the hell are you doing, man?” shouted James, exhaling a cloud of smoke and shoving Sebastian. “That weed cost me thirty bucks!”

  Sebastian shoved back.

  “No drugs. You’re staying clean on this trip,” replied Sebastian.

  James shoved Sebastian so hard Sebastian fell off the rocky outcropping onto the glacier.

  “You’re not the boss of me!” he barked.

  “You’re not getting high on this trip!” Sebastian yelled, getting onto his knees.

  “Get off my case!” James shouted, jumping down and standing over his brother with both fists clinched.

  Still kneeling on the ice, Sebastian grabbed James’s feet and pulled them out from beneath him. James fell over, and they wrestled on the glacier, rolling around, each trying to get atop the other to punch him in the face.

  Finally, Sebastian got his brother in a headlock.

  “You gonna stop?” he shouted, tightening his grip so James could barely breathe.

  James struggled to escape, but Sebastian’s grip was too strong. Finally, he relaxed and lay still on the cold, hard ice.

  “I . . . give,” he croaked.

  Sebastian let go of James and they both stood up, wiping snow from their clothes and each eyeing the other suspiciously. Sebastian returned to look for more rocks to place on the marker. James stood looking over the cliff for his baggie of pot, an updraft blowing his hair into his face.

  “Man, that ain’t right . . . throwing away perfectly good weed.”

  He was mad at his brother, but he also accepted that the dangers of climbing required clear thinking, steady hands, and fast reflexes. The incident with the crevasse was a perfect reminder of the impending dangers.

  “Let’s take a breather and make some coffee,” said Sebastian, removing his back pack and digging out the little camp stove and pot. “Besides, I think I have to take a dump after getting the crap scared out of me.”

  James chuckled.

  While the water heated, they sat on rocks facing the glacier they had just crossed.

  “Remember when we were kids sitting around the campfire and Uncle Herb told us those stories about the giant ice worms that live on glaciers?” asked James.

  “Yeah. I remember. And I thought the stories were true,” replied Sebastian.

  “Me too. I thought they were like a hundred feet long and ate caribou and mountain sheep.”

  “When I got older I didn’t believe in them anymore,” said Sebastian, “until we started exploring glaciers on our own and learned that the worms really do exist, only they’re tiny—like an inch long—living in the ice, coming to the surface to eat pollen blown onto the glaciers from surrounding hillsides.”

  “Goes to show you that myths and legends like that aren’t true,” said James.

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” replied Sebastian. “I think it means that myths have some grain of truth to them, only parts of the story get exaggerated over time,” replied Sebastian.

  “Kind of like that gossip game where one person tells another person something and that person tells the next and so on until, by the time it gets to the fifth or sixth person, it’s not even the same thing anymore.”

  “Yeah, sort of,” replied Sebastian.

  When the water came to a near boil, Seba
stian poured two cups of instant coffee, handing one to his brother.

  “Thanks,” said James, after taking a sip. “I’m still pissed about the weed.”

  “So sue me,” replied Sebastian with a broad smile, cupping his hands around the hot metal cup.

  After the break, they resumed their ascent, climbing up the steep ridge drifted with deep snow and with dangerous overhangs that could unexpectedly break away, sending them careening thousands of feet over the edge. For safety’s sake, the boys were again connected by 150 feet of rope. At the higher altitude, the temperature dropped and the wind increased. Sudden gusts threatened to sweep them from the mountain. Both boys wore their goggles to protect their eyes and had their thick hoods pulled up. It took several hours to climb a vertical distance that a person could have walked horizontally in a matter of minutes. To make matters worse, a dense cloud bank was blowing in from the north, bringing with it the possibility of a blizzard.

  More than once they grumbled, questioning what they were doing. Their friends were all back in town where the temperature was in the 80s. They were sleeping late, watching television, listening to records, going to movies, and hanging out together at the mall. They were mowing lawns, washing cars, riding bikes, working temporary summer jobs, and swimming and suntanning at local lakes.

  Their friends were taking it easy, enjoying summer vacation.

  But Sebastian and James trudged on, for reasons neither cared to try to put into shared words, forcing their way upward, hell-bent on getting to the top, in some way proving their worth to their father. Both were exhausted. Sebastian thought about the line where Hamlet says, “To sleep, perchance to dream.” While he understood that Hamlet was contemplating the nature of death, Sebastian just wished he was home asleep in his nice, warm bed dreaming of distant mountains.

  He thought about something else as well.

  Looking down at the world more than 10,000 feet below, he knew there would be no rescue in the event of an emergency. In their secrecy, neither he nor his brother had told a living soul where they were really going. If something happened to them, no one would come looking for them on the mountain. Other climbers would one day find their frozen corpses half buried on the snowy slopes, resolving the mystery of their disappearance, but that might be years hence.

  For an instant, the true nature of their predicament made Sebastian sick to his stomach.

  Maybe climbing the mountain wasn’t such a good idea after all, he thought.

  At about 12,000 feet, they called it a day and set up their tent on the only flat spot they could find, a precarious ledge about nine feet wide by fifteen or sixteen feet long with a 3,000-foot free fall below. They secured the tent’s guy-lines to pitons hammered into the cliff face, so the tent wouldn’t blow off the ledge with them inside. Climbers call such a precarious perch on a mountainside a bivouac. They were both exhausted, unused to the physical demands of climbing a high mountain in deep snow with a wind blasting in their faces. No amount of training prepares climbers for the actual rigors encountered once on the mountain, though it certainly doesn’t hurt to stay in shape. Climbers frequently lose significant weight on expeditions, returning home gaunt as ghosts.

  After a dinner of reconstituted chicken teriyaki with rice, Sebastian examined both pairs of crampons, checking the leather straps for damage and sharpening any spikes that had dulled. He knew it was imperative to take care of their equipment.

  Their lives depended on it.

  Later, once again lying inside their green sleeping bags on their blue pads, James played his harmonica while Sebastian was rereading the soliloquy where Hamlet asks himself the famous question, “To be, or not to be?” The play really spoke to Sebastian, who was only a few years younger than was Hamlet and equally confused. He didn’t know any better than Hamlet what to do. He didn’t know what course of action he should take. He felt as if no one in the world would understand what he was going through. He was often overwhelmed with a sense of being alone.

  Just like Hamlet.

  Sebastian folded the corner of the page he was reading and settled the book across his chest.

  “I don’t know why he hates us so much,” he said casually to the tent ceiling.

  “What?” asked James, stopping mid-song.

  “Your question last night . . . about Dad . . . about why he hates us.”

  Neither brother said anything for a long minute. James played a few depressing notes on his harmonica and then stopped.

  “Which one of us do you think he hates the most?” he asked.

  “That’s a dumb question. He hates us both.”

  “I think he hates you more because you were the one who first ruined his life,” said James matter-of-factly. “You made him a prisoner by having to get married young because Mom was pregnant with you. Maybe he had other dreams for his life and you took them away.”

  James remembered the afternoon when he’d came home and heard his father shouting and breaking all his trophies.

  “He really hates you for that. Maybe he sees how bright your future is going to be and he resents you for it. You keep trying to impress him, like climbing this stupid mountain, but all you do is make him hate you more. I bet he wishes you were never born.”

  “Shut up! Shut up!” Sebastian shouted, violently shaking his fist inches from his brother’s face, as if he wanted to punch him in the mouth to stop him from talking. “He hates you more! You’re nothing but a loser! You’re the one he wishes didn’t exist!”

  Sebastian went outside and sat on the ledge, his feet dangling in space. He could hear his brother sobbing inside the tent.

  For a long time Sebastian watched the sun creeping low on the horizon. He looked at the wide, green plateau far below where they had begun their ascent of the mountain by fording the river. He looked at the summit above, almost a vertical mile away, feeling as if his whole life was like this predicament: caught in between something insurmountable—between a rock and a hard place.

  How easy it would be just to slide off this ledge and end everything, he thought.

  But he didn’t do it. He wouldn’t leave his brother to face the mountain alone. He wouldn’t leave him to face their father alone either.

  When Sebastian finally crawled back into the tent, James was curled up on his side asleep.

  DAY FOUR

  Independence Day, July 4, 1980

  THE TENT WALLS WERE FLAILING HARD when the boys awoke. They took their time getting up, their muscles stiff and sore. Both had headaches from mild dehydration. After a leisurely breakfast of pancakes, powdered eggs, and instant coffee, Sebastian got dressed and crawled out from the tent and stretched.

  He stood on the ledge and surveyed the world.

  The cloud cover seemed denser than it had been the day before. Sebastian studied their ascent route, which looked less perilous than the knife-sharp ridge they had climbed the day before. The snowy slope was steep, but not technical, meaning that it could be climbed without establishing a main line with pitons. He couldn’t see what lay above the slope, but he knew from the map that they’d be within a couple thousand feet of the summit once they got beyond whatever lay hidden from view. His only concern was the snow load, which looked heavy. He could see an overhang at the top and where little avalanches had already slid down the chutes and runnels, natural gullies that channeled avalanches like a riverbed.

  James crawled out from the tent and stood beside his brother on the narrow ledge, looking at the perilous 3,000-foot drop.

  “The first step’s a doozy,” he joked.

  “That’s for sure,” replied Sebastian.

  “Whew! Chilly,” said James, pulling on his wool cap over his ears.

  “Where do we go from here?” he asked.

  “I think we can summit today. We’ll work our way over there, around that snow chute, and then cross over to there,”
replied Sebastian, tracing their proposed route in the air with his index finger. “Once we make it above this slope, we should be able to reach the summit in an hour or two.”

  “We gonna pack up camp?” asked James.

  “No. We’ll leave it here. We should be able to make summit and climb back down just in time for dinner, with maybe an hour or two to spare. We’ll travel light and fast, carrying our packs with just our climbing gear and some quick-energy snacks.”

  “Speaking of lightening the load,” said James, unzipping his pants and whizzing over the edge, the stream of pee traveling over half a mile to the bottom of the cliff.

  Sebastian joined him.

  “Hey,” he said with a grin. “I bet we’re setting a world record for the longest pee.”

  James laughed.

  Leaving the tent set up with the sleeping bags, pads, cooking stove and pot, stainless-steel dishes and utensils, food, and extra clothes inside, they struck out for the summit. They used their ice axes to help as they made their way up the slope through deep snow. Once again, a rope connected the brothers, who stopped often to catch their breath, leaning over their ice axes, beholding the amazing scene below. At almost 14,000 feet, they were above the neighboring mountains as well as the clouds on the horizon.

  The view was spectacular, but time was too short to spend in sightseeing.

  Suddenly, a loud rumble bellowed from above. They looked up just in time to see a wall of snow coming at them down the chute.

  “Use your ax!” Sebastian shouted, dropping to his knees and planting his ice ax into the snow and hanging on for dear life.

  James managed to use his ax just in time.

  But their actions were futile against the wall of snow thundering toward them. The avalanche engulfed them, tumbling them head over heels down the high ridge for a thousand feet. Sebastian still gripped his ice ax, but it was worse than useless, more likely to impale him than to aid him. When he finally came to rest, he was only partially buried. He had lost his wool cap and one of his gloves. After pulling himself out of the compacted snow, he looked around and discovered he was only a couple hundred feet from the edge of the precipice. Then he looked for his brother. James was nowhere to be seen on the jumbled field of snow.