Savage Mountain

by John Smelcer

  Within minutes, exposed fingers were nearly frostbitten.

  Around six in the evening, after repairing a line that had snapped, James crawled back inside the tent and shimmied into his sleeping bag.

  “God, it’s cold out there!” he shouted above the howling tempest, rubbing his gloved hands together to warm them.

  “What?”

  “I said it’s cold! I’m hungry!”

  “What?”

  “I said I’m HUNGRY!” James yelled above the sound of the shuddering tent walls. “What’s for dinner?”

  Sebastian rooted through his open pack, pulling out a package of dehydrated food.

  “And the winner is . . . chili mac,” he declared with a giant grin.

  “No! No! For the love of God! Anything but that!” James pleaded. “What else is there?”

  Sebastian reached in and fished out another package.

  “How about beef stroganoff?” he shouted, reading the label.

  “Anything’s better than chili,” replied James. “My nose couldn’t survive it.”

  DAY SEVEN

  Monday, July 7, 1980

  THE NIGHT PASSED MISERABLY for the boys trying to stay warm inside their sleeping bags. Almost hourly, the tent guy-lines broke, causing the slack wall to flutter so hard and snap so loudly that it was impossible to sleep. Sebastian and James took turns going outside to repair the damage.

  “Get up. It’s your turn,” Sebastian groused.

  “I did it last time,” moaned James, turning over and snuggling deeper into his green mummy bag.

  The scenario played out numerous times.

  When the brothers finally did decide to get up and have some breakfast and coffee, it had stopped snowing, but the tempestuous winds hadn’t let up a knot.

  “I don’t think we can climb down in this weather,” said Sebastian. “A gust could blow us right off the mountain. Besides, even with our goggles on we might not be able to see through the spindrift blowing off the ridges. I say we wait it out a little longer . . . see what happens.”

  “I hate sitting in here. There’s nothing to do,” replied James, brooding. “And it’s really starting to reek of funk.”

  “Knock-knock,” said Sebastian.

  “Seriously?”

  “Come on. Knock-knock.”

  “Who’s there?”

  “Ugh.”

  James sighed.

  “Ugh who?”

  “You sure are ugly!” Sebastian sniggered.

  “That doesn’t even make sense. I gotta get outta this tent.”

  By noon, the wind had died down considerably, but the temperature still hovered around zero. Sebastian took stock of the food in his backpack.

  “We can’t stay up here much longer,” he said. “There’s only enough food for a couple days, and it’s a long way to the truck.”

  Both knew the importance of food in mountaineering. As strenuous as it is—sometimes fourteen to sixteen hours of rigorous climbing a day—climbers need lots of energy. Also, it’s hard to stay warm on an empty stomach. The body needs calories to convert into energy.

  “Great! We’ll starve and freeze to death up here,” declared James. “So, what are we gonna do?”

  “I think we give it a shot . . . get down the mountain while the getting’s good.”

  “You mean right now?”

  “Right now,” said Sebastian, getting onto his knees and rolling up his sleeping bag. “Let’s make like geese and get the flock outta here.”

  “That joke is so lame,” said James, shaking his head in disbelief. “But anything beats sitting in here for another day.”

  Half an hour later, a hole in the snow where the tent had stood was the only evidence there had ever been a camp on the ledge.

  Before setting out, the boys studied the route down the mountain. The knife-edged ridge line they had traversed several days earlier was buried in snow and drifts, making the descent ten times more difficult than their ascent. Blanketed as it was, with heavy overhangs, it would be nearly impossible to discern the topography underneath. One misstep could spell disaster. The 3,000-foot fall on either side would be deadly. Below the ridge, the boys could see the wide glacier, its crevasses concealed more than ever.

  “Boy, this could be bad,” said James, adjusting his goggles.

  “Hey, look at the bright side,” Sebastian replied happily.

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  “We still have the package of chili mac.”

  “Oh, joy,” replied James, rolling his eyes.

  They played it safe, long-roping their way down the ridge. James took point, leading the descent about a hundred feet ahead of Sebastian, dragging fifty feet of slack rope behind him. The blasting winds had sculpted the overhangs so that the crest of the thick-snowed ridge was precarious. Sometimes, chunks of packed snow the size of a car broke away beneath James’s feet and hurtled down the 3,000-foot vertical cliff face.

  Sebastian was careful to step in his brother’s footprints, thinking that if James had made it safely, then he should as well.

  The two tiny specks had worked their way down the ridge for an hour when, suddenly, Sebastian heard a scream. He looked up just in time to see James vanish off the north side of the mountain. The slack rope between them reeled rapidly forward. In an instant, Sebastian knew what had happened. The snow had given away, and James had plummeted off the cliff face. In a second, the rope would be pulled taut and yank Sebastian off the mountain as well. The brothers would perish together at the base of the cliff, more than 2,000 feet below. Straight away, Sebastian launched himself into thin air off the south side of the ridge, praying that the rope would hold. With a jolt his free fall was arrested, and he was slammed against the rock face. The impact hurt his right shoulder.

  Snow and ice from above avalanched down on him.

  Sebastian hung motionless at first, forcing his mind to stay conscious and taking stock of his situation. The fact that he wasn’t falling meant that James was still connected to the other side, a counterweight. But he didn’t know if his brother was still alive or dead. Sebastian shouted, but the wall of mountain between them blocked any communication.

  Sebastian wasn’t sure what to do. He couldn’t just climb back up to the top. Once he stood on the crest, his brother’s weight would pull him off the north side of the mountain. He certainly couldn’t cut the rope. He slowly formed a plan and began climbing toward the top of the crest. When he was close, he hammered a piton into the rock face and connected himself to it with a carabineer and a short piece of rope; anchored that way, he couldn’t be dragged off the other side.

  Fortunately, when Sebastian scrambled onto the snow-thick ridge, he saw James just climbing over the north side less than a hundred feet below him.

  He cupped his hand around his mouth and shouted to his brother.

  “You okay?”

  James gave a thumbs-up with his gloved hand.

  Sebastian responded with the hand signal that meant hold up. He disconnected himself from the anchored rope and worked his way down, careful to step in his brother’s footprints. James’s nose was streaming blood, running down his chin, bright red drops dripping on the pristine snow.

  “I think I busted my nose,” James announced when they were standing side by side.

  Sebastian removed his pack and dug out what looked like a dark blue hand cloth.

  “Here, use this to stop the bleeding,” he said.

  James took the wadded up cloth and pressed it against his bloody face.

  “Holy smokes! That was scary! I thought we were dead,” Sebastian declared with a smile and sigh of relief. “Don’t ever do that again!”

  “I think I crapped myself!” James muffled through the cloth.

  “I can’t believe we survived that.” Sebastian laughed li
ghtheartedly, looking over the precipice.

  “That was pretty smart thinking . . . jumping off the other side like that,” said James.

  The brothers slapped a high-five.

  “I saw my life flash before my eyes,” said James. “I can’t wait to get off this damn mountain.”

  “I’m sure glad there was some slack in the line,” said Sebastian. “Otherwise, we’d both be dead by now.”

  After a couple minutes, James removed the blue cloth to see if his nose was still bleeding. A puzzled expression came over his face as he unwadded it.

  “Wha . . . What the hell?” he exclaimed in horror. “Dude! This is your dirty underwear!”

  “It’s all I could find in a hurry,” Sebastian said.

  “Oh, man! I was nose deep in your nasty skid marks! Sick!”

  “You’ll live. Besides, it’ll give me something to rag you about for the rest of your life.”

  “Oh, man . . .” said James, tossing the bloody underwear off the side of the cliff. “I can’t believe you gave me that!”

  “How’s your nose?”

  James gently pinched the bridge of his nose and wiggled it.

  “It’s not broken,” he said. “What about you?”

  Sebastian massaged his shoulder and shrugged a couple times.

  “I hurt my shoulder. But it seems okay. Probably gonna have one hell of a bruise.”

  After a brief respite to calm their nerves, the brothers resumed their descent. This time Sebastian took point.

  They made it safely to the edge of the glacier. Sebastian searched for an hour for the stone marker he had made to indicate the spot where they had crossed days before. But deep and drifted snow from the blizzard had buried everything, making it impossible to discern the stack of rocks from the white landscape.

  “I think this is about the right spot,” Sebastian stated reluctantly, after studying the surrounding geography to reckon their route across.

  “I don’t know,” replied James with doubt in his voice. “I thought it was way back up there. It all looks the same to me.”

  “Well, we gotta cross somewhere. We can’t stand around here forever,” said Sebastian, climbing down to the surface of the glacier.

  The boys long-roped their way slowly across the mile-wide ice field. The blanket of new snow made it difficult to see differences in the topography, but worse, it concealed crevasses. The brothers took turns leading the way. Whoever was at the rear carried Sebastian’s ice ax, in case the leader fell into an icy abyss.

  After an hour, the boys came upon a moulin canyon made from meltwater flowing on the surface of the glacier, carving its way down into the ice and blocking their progress. As far as they could see, the smooth-carved streambed snaked its way down the glacier for a long way in both directions.

  “I think we have to cross it,” said Sebastian.

  “No way I’m crossing that!” replied James, remembering what had happened to the boy who fell into a moulin and would lie frozen beneath the glacier for a thousand years.

  “I’ll go first,” said Sebastian, pulling out one of his ropes. “I’ll rappel down this side, jump over the stream, and climb up the other side using the ax. Once I’m safe, I’ll help you up.”

  James agreed. Digging the teeth of his crampons deep into the ice, he braced himself and payed out rope steadily as Sebastian rappelled down the canyon-like wall of ice.

  When Sebastian was at the bottom of the ravine, he jumped across the shallow, four-foot stream, and began climbing the opposite wall, plunging his ax into the ice and using the forward-facing toe spikes of his crampons to climb up. The rope hung loosely from Sebastian’s waist as James belayed from the other side, just in case he fell into the rushing stream of snowmelt with its smooth-polished bed. It was strenuous work, but Sebastian made it to the top of the other side of the canyon.

  “Alright! Your turn!” he yelled across the icy chasm.

  “Piece of cake!” James shouted back.

  Before rappelling, James drove a long piton into the ice at an angle away from his descent. He hooked a carabineer to it and clipped in his end of the rope. That way, once he was safely down the ice wall and across the moulin stream, he could untie himself and Sebastian could pull the rope through, leaving the piton and carabineer embedded in the glacier forever, a monument to indicate where the brothers had crossed.

  After James made his way down, jumping across the stream, Sebastian tossed down the rope and pulled him up.

  An hour later, after avoiding several crevasses, the boys had made it across the glacier. They were exhausted.

  “I’m starved. We haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast,” James griped.

  “Me too. Let’s set up camp and have something hot to eat,” replied Sebastian. “I need to get this pack off my back. My shoulder’s killing me.”

  After setting up camp, Sebastian took off his sweatshirt to examine his shoulder.

  “Whoa! That’s a doozy!” exclaimed James. “Looks like you got hit by a freight train.”

  “How bad is it?” asked Sebastian, who could only see the top of his shoulder.

  “Dude, your entire shoulder and upper back is black and blue. Does it hurt?”

  “Not really. Just where the shoulder straps were.”

  James jabbed a finger into the bruise.

  “Ouch!”

  “I guess it does,” said James.

  Sebastian put his shirt back on and rummaged through his pack looking for something to cook for dinner. He found only the package of dehydrated chili and macaroni. Almost frantically, he started pulling out everything from his pack.

  “They’ve gotta be in here,” he said to himself.

  “What’s wrong?” asked James, unrolling his sleeping bag atop his blue foam sleeping bad.

  “I swear I had four more packages of food in here,” replied Sebastian. “Enough for two days.”

  James looked concerned.

  “Did you check the side pockets?”

  “Of course!” Sebastian barked.

  “Hey, don’t get mad at me,” said James. “How could you not bring enough food?”

  “I bought enough packages so that we could have two hot meals twice a day. I know I did.”

  “Well, where are they?”

  “I dunno. I remember seeing them in a white plastic bag before we packed camp . . .”

  Sebastian suddenly remembered what he had done with them.

  “Oh, shit!” he cried out. “I set the bag outside when we were taking everything out of the tent. I must not have noticed it in the snow when we left.”

  “Great! I’m not crossing that glacier again and climbing back up that ridge for nothing,” declared James. “No way! How much food is there?”

  “Besides the chili and mac, just a little bit of oatmeal and some trail mix,” replied Sebastian, holding up a partial sandwich baggie of mixed nuts, M&Ms, and dried fruit.

  “Well . . . Crap! We’re a hell of a long way from the nearest grocery store! I can’t believe you lost our food!” James shouted, inches from his brother’s face.

  “Get off my back!” Sebastian shouted, pushing James away.

  James calmed down. He knew he wasn’t strong enough to take Sebastian.

  “What are we gonna do?” he said.

  Sebastian looked into the empty backpack again, shaking his head in disbelief.

  “I guess we eat the friggin’ chili tonight and stretch out the oatmeal for as long as we can.”

  “Great! Chili in a tent!” said James. “Just shoot me now.”

  That night, snug in his sleeping bag, Sebastian had a series of nightmares. In the first one, an army of topless teenage girl zombies were chasing him, but Bruce Lee magically appeared and helped him escape using Kung Fu. In another, James bashed his brains out with
a rock and was roasting one of his legs over the small cook stove, seasoning it with salt and pepper. Sebastian woke up, startled. The sound awoke James, who opened his eyes only for an instant, grunted, coughed, and then rolled over, farted, and fell back into his sonorous sleep.

  Sebastian lay with one eye open for a long time.

  DAY EIGHT

  Tuesday, July 8, 1980

  THE LAST DAY ON THE MOUNTAIN. That’s what Sebastian thought while rubbing sleep from his crusted eyes when he awoke in the morning. As his hands touched his face, he felt his course beard and moustache—the result of eight or nine days without shaving. He looked at his wristwatch.

  5:43 AM.

  Deciding to let his brother sleep a little longer, Sebastian quietly dug out his book and read the last pages. When he was finished, he set the book down, pulled his hands inside his sleeping bag to warm them, and stared at the tent ceiling. Tears formed in the corners of his eyes. Sebastian didn’t want the story of his life and struggle to end the way Hamlet’s did, with his own death, surrounded by destruction, as if he took the whole damn world down with him. He wanted a better resolution, one he could live with, even if uneasily at times.

  But almost as much as Sebastian worried about himself, looking over at his sleeping brother, he worried that James might not fare as well . . . that the end of his story might be more like Hamlet’s end—volatile and self-destructive. Such was his brother’s querulous nature. At only seventeen, Sebastian already understood that too many people waste their lives wishing to relive bygone moments when one event or one bad decision led them down a miserable path.

  He knew because he was one of them.

  When he thought it was time to get moving, Sebastian unzipped the tent door and scooped snow in the pot to melt for water. As always, the small stove warmed the tent. James awoke to the smell of coffee.

  “I’ll take a cup of that,” he said groggily, sitting up in his sleeping bag and running a hand through his tussled hair. “What’s for breakfast?”