by Jan Redford
This wasn’t fun anymore. Hugging the rock, I started to hyperventilate. I couldn’t go up, I couldn’t go down. I wanted Jocelyn to swoop in and save me. I wanted to be back at the cabin, roasting wieners and marshmallows. I closed my eyes and attempted to pray to a god I didn’t even believe in. “Please, please, God, just a few more feet.” But the sky failed to open and God did not send forth Jocelyn or a team of angels with ropes and climbing gear.
I started to yell. “Dad! Dad! Help!” My anger at him dissolved. He’d know what to do. He’d survived the Korean War. He’d survived a night out in a storm on Ungava Bay with a pregnant Inuit woman, an interpreter and a bunch of chickens. Maybe he’d have a rope in his pack. He could drag me over the lip of this cliff and save me.
Eventually I stopped yelling. My father would be into the Scotch by now. It was just me. Alone. On a steep rock face that didn’t give a shit if I could do the flexed-arm hang.
It was getting cold. And late. Goosebumps sprang up on my legs and arms. I had to do something. There was a small tree growing out of the grass at the top of the cliff, several more feet to my right. I took a deep breath, forced myself to edge along the ledge until I was directly below it, then reached up and grabbed the trunk. It was about the size of my wrist. I pulled, and rocks and dirt trickled down on me. I pulled harder, watching the roots to make sure they’d stay in the ground. The little tree seemed pretty tenacious, so I started to walk my feet up the wall, kicking moss and loose rock out of my way, my eyes still fixed on the roots. If they popped out, I was screwed. Just as I reached the edge, Uncle Dunk and my sister came out of the trees above me. “What are you doing?” Susan sounded close to hysterics.
I dragged myself over the top, flopping on my chest like a seal with my feet kicking. As I stood up, blood beat against my temples and I could barely breathe. But I pushed out a laugh, raised my fist and flexed like a muscle man.
Dunk looked over the edge, his Leica camera swinging out from his chest. “Good God!” he said.
Susan peeked over, but wouldn’t go too close. “Why didn’t you just take the trail like we did?”
I rolled my eyes and brushed the dirt off my cut-off jean shorts and T-shirt. I was as proud as if I were standing on the summit of Everest.
Back at the cabin, Dunk told everyone about my rock wall. “Close to a hundred feet,” he said.
We all hiked back to the top of the cliff, found my little tree and looked over the edge. Uncle Steve whistled, shook his round bald head. My mother’s face crinkled up with worry. “Aie, Jésus!” she said, as though swearing in French wasn’t really swearing. I knew she wouldn’t let me out of her sight for a while.
My father stared at the boulders at the bottom, his black hair flopped over his glasses, then looked back at me.
“Jesus Christ! Did you really climb that?”
* * *
—
That night, still basking in the warmth of my father’s approval, I wrote in my diary: I’m going to be a mountain climber when I grow up.
1
ON THE ROCKS
There he was, the Beast, my eighty-pound backpack, squatting on the snow-covered parking lot in the Wind River Range of Wyoming. My pack was definitely he, not she. No she would put another she through this kind of torture. My skis were on and it was time to go. I just had to get the Beast on my back.
My pack was so heavy that when I pulled it out of the back of the bus after we’d arrived, it fell to the ground like an anchor, dragging me with it, and I lay there on top of it, my hands still gripping the metal frame, with thirteen guys laughing at me. The other three girls in our group weren’t laughing. They let the guys unload their packs.
In the Lumberyard, the equipment-issue building back in Lander, Wyoming, I’d practised getting it on and off, but that was before strapping skinny 180 centimetre boards to my feet. I’d only cross-country skied with my outdoor education class in high school, and a couple times near Mont-Tremblant with my Uncle Steve. I wasn’t sure how far I could get on skis even without the pack.
My mother’s voice popped into my head. You can do anything you set your mind to, Jan. You have so much potential. But she hadn’t seen the Beast. Maybe my training regime of the past three months could have been more rigorous. I should have spent more time running laps around the track at the Ottawa Coliseum and less time reading self-help books and saying affirmations. I should have done more crunches. And I definitely should not have been taking drags on my sister’s cigarettes.
Panic washed down my back like a melting snowball. What if I couldn’t do this? What if I was too small, too weak, too out of shape, too female? I couldn’t go running back to my parents with my tail between my legs, not after they’d paid three thousand non-refundable American dollars for tuition. My father had made it clear that this was it. They would pay for an outdoor school or college, but not both.
And what would I tell my friends? For years I’d been bragging that I was going to hitch-hike across the country, live off the land, climb mountains, be a ski patroller, a photographer, a writer. I was going to have a big life. Everyone thought I was being dramatic, but right after high school, I had escaped Munster. I’d joined Katimavik, the nine-month volunteer program for Canada’s youth, expecting to be transformed into the muscular, tanned, chainsaw-wielding environmentalist in a red plaid jacket and hiking boots on the brochure. Instead, after spending all those hours milking cows, picking rocks and weeding gardens in BC, and clearing land with the Dene in 30-below temperatures in NWT, I’d turned into a shaggy-legged, directionless hippie, ten pounds overweight from a vegetarian diet of bread, pasta and beer.
But now here I was. In Wyoming. On my way to becoming a mountain climber. This was what I’d imagined for six years, ever since climbing that crumbling cliff in the Laurentians. I could not fail.
We were on day one of a three-and-a-half-month semester course with the National Outdoor Leadership School—NOLS. Apparently, this was the best training for outdoor leaders. Better than anywhere in Canada. Three weeks each of ski touring, desert hiking, mountaineering, then two weeks of caving and two of rock climbing. At the end of it all, if I performed well, I would be recommended for the NOLS instructor course.
The orange bus, our only link to civilization, chugged back out to the road belching a cloud of diesel, and the second-last group glided off into the woods with Richie, one of the instructors, in the lead. I wanted to be in his group. He was twenty-two, only two years older than me, and already an outdoor instructor. And he was cute. Blue eyes, blond hair, and cheeks rounded by a wad of Red Man chewing tobacco. He’d hefted his eighty-pound pack as though he were perching a baby on his hip.
That left only six of us in the parking lot: Tony, the instructor, us four girls, and Gunter. Young, gangly Gunter from Europe, with the coordination of an overcooked noodle. He was the only one who wasn’t here by choice—his parents had sent him. The rest of us had our own agendas, most of us wanting to push ourselves to our limit in the wilderness. Some were planning to go on to take the instructor training with NOLS, some wanted to escape soul-sucking jobs in New York or Albuquerque for a few months, and for others this course was a rite of passage after graduation from high school or university. My own goal was modest: to emerge from the fires of NOLS transformed, like the phoenix, into a completely different person. One who was in control of her life.
So far, my year and a half out in the big bad world had been anything but controlled. My survival was nothing short of miraculous. During the first Katimavik rotation, near Lund, BC, I’d almost been lured up Toba Inlet—an area so remote it was accessible only by boat—by a middle-aged sex-offender hippie; I’d signed up for—and was saved by friends from—three weeks of fasting and Dianetics indoctrination in some Scientology leader’s basement in East Vancouver; and I’d almost moved into a trailer with a mill worker from Powell River, whom I’d met and necked with at a party. That was just in the first three months away from home, and just the hig
hlights.
In the second three-month rotation, up in Fort Simpson, NWT, I fell in love with my guitar-playing, Quebec-separatist group leader, Guy, and was subsequently dumped by him on my nineteenth birthday at the end of the program. Maybe because I hadn’t filled out the manuscript-sized compatibility questionnaire he’d sent me during my third rotation in New Brunswick.
After the nine months, I’d set off back to Lund, where I’d felt the most free, to find a hippie commune. Hitch-hiking alone across BC, I took a ride from two guys in a windowless van who were on their way to a dog show, with no dogs. Not wanting to appear rude, I accepted an invitation up to their hotel room in Kamloops, only to narrowly escape being raped. After finally making it to Lund alive, I worked as a cook for four loggers and dodged their advances by hooking up with the youngest and only unmarried one, Calvin, a near-albino in a black Stetson hat and grey Stanfields. After a month of heavy drinking and country music, I escaped by taking a job as a cook’s helper and chambermaid at a fly-in fishing camp on Great Slave Lake in NWT. I jogged the one bear-infested road to the lake daily and wrote, Je suis seule dans ma peau—I’m alone in my skin—in the sand, overcome with loneliness, but in reality, I didn’t have any peau. I was skinless. Open and raw and exposed to the world. Maybe that’s why, when I crawled back to my parents’ new house in Ottawa and promptly assumed the fetal position around my self-help books and journal, they’d been willing to fork out the money for NOLS. Maybe they knew I had to learn to protect myself.
Either that, or my father was trying to get rid of me. He had said, “You can’t hang out in my basement reading I’m OK—You’re OK for the rest of your life.”
Nancy from New Jersey had somehow managed to get her pack on her back and was standing rigidly on her skis. Sue, also from New Jersey, was halfway there, eighty pounds balanced on her knee. Gunter was bent over at the waist, recovering from his last attempt, and Tony was trying to comfort our Texan, Laurie, who was crouched beside her pack, almost in tears.
One consolation was that the more we ate, the lighter our packs would become. We’d packed food rations for ten days, enough to get us to our resupply halfway through the three weeks. My tent mates, Dave from Calgary, the only other Canadian, and Vince from California, and I had divvied up the group equipment—the first-aid kit, stove, fuel, cookware and tent—so our packs all weighed the same, even though Dave had at least forty pounds more body weight than me. Vince had about eighty.
Tony coaxed Laurie back to her feet, while Sue, a competitive soccer player for Princeton University who was about my size, somehow got her pack on her back while staying upright on her skis. The duffle bag of gear she’d strapped to the pack’s metal frame towered more than a foot higher than her head, and the ten-pound NOLS sleeping bag strapped onto the bottom extended almost to her knees.
With my eyes fixed on my pack, I whispered my worn-out affirmation: I am strong and fit and emotionally prepared for this. Widening my stance, I leaned down to grab the straps of the pack. Air whooshed out of my lungs as I heaved it onto my shaky bent knee, where it wobbled dangerously for a few seconds. This wasn’t the first time I’d reached this stage, but each time my pack had gone crashing to the ground. I repositioned my hands, slipped an arm through the far strap, then twisted my body sideways to set up for the next shoulder. My back arched as the weight pulled me backwards, but I ground my teeth and threw my body forward, regaining control.
I can do this. I am in control. I am my own best friend.
A little wiggle and dance as I edged my arm into the second strap. A few feet in front of me, Gunter’s skis skidded out and he crashed to the ground, backwards. Tony rushed to help him.
Leaning forward, I inched the pack onto my back until both my arms were in the straps, then straightened up. I locked my knees as the load settled on my back like an apartment-sized, beer-filled fridge. I was still vertical. Nancy and Sue, legs splayed out like newborn moose under the weight of their packs, glanced over in my direction. We all smiled, but not too much.
My ski poles lay on the snow, parallel to my skis. I stepped outward to stabilize myself and get a bit closer to the ground, took a deep breath, and bent forward at the waist. I reached for the poles. My quadriceps muscles strained to hold me in position, my back tightened like a fully loaded slingshot. My fingertips were inches away, almost there. I bent a bit more till my fingers wrapped around the cold metal. Before I could start my ascent, my pack—not yet cinched at the hip—started to shift. Dropping the poles, I grabbed at the hip band, but the Beast was on a roll, like a fully loaded toboggan on a steep, icy slope. He slid up my back, dragging me with him, till the metal frame jammed to a halt on the packed snow of the parking lot and I was doubled in half, my nose almost touching my knees. I spun my arms like windmills, trying to right myself, but my pack had me pinned.
“Help! Tony!”
Within seconds Tony was beside me, hauling me to my feet. I wobbled back and forth, trying to regain my balance, then stared back down at my ski poles. They looked a mountain range away. Tony picked them up and handed them to me. I took them gratefully.
The Beast was on my back, and I was still upright.
* * *
—
We shuffled through the woods. Nancy was in front, then me and Sue, and Tony was bringing up the rear behind Laurie, following the tracks of the thirteen other guys and three instructors who were by now miles ahead of us. Gravity had increased, and my poles were the only things keeping me upright. I tried to keep my eyes fixed on the track in front of me so I wouldn’t tip over, but I couldn’t resist sneaking quick looks at the white and blue mountains peeking through the trees, way off in the distance. We were heading into the Ramshorn Basin. Today, apparently, we were only covering a few miles of mostly flat terrain, but soon we’d be in the mountains. It was such a relief not to think about what to do with the rest of my life, where to live, how to make money, who to be. All I had to focus on was getting from point A to point B without killing myself.
Sunlight glinted off the snow piled waist-high on either side of our track. It was bright, even with my glacier sunglasses, which had leather sides like blinders on a horse. I slid my skis forward, one then the other, trying to ignore the pain building wherever the pack straps made contact with my body. I stopped to cinch the hip strap to take weight off my shoulders, then a few feet later stopped again to cinch up the shoulder straps to take weight off my hips, but there was nothing I could do to relieve the ache of my vertebrae compressing into my pelvis, or the chafing under the shoulder straps that I was sure was about to draw blood.
“No!” Laurie’s voice pierced the quiet, followed by a soft thump. I twisted around to see her lying sprawled on her back on top of her pack, her skis sticking straight up in the air. When I turned back, Sue was falling over sideways in slow motion in front of me. She landed with another soft thump. Nancy and I looked from Sue to each other and burst out laughing. Giggles rose out of Sue’s hole in the snow, and Gunter behind us joined in. Only Laurie remained silent. When I bent forward into my laughter, which was now verging on hysteria, my poles plunged deep into the snow and my body followed, till I lay collapsed on my side on the opposite side of the track to Sue, my arms hugging my aching stomach muscles.
“Oh my God. We are so fucked!”
Our laughter petered out as quickly as it had begun. Sue, Laurie and I started wallowing around in the snow, trying to free ourselves from our packs, as Gunter and Nancy watched, bodies rigid, trying not to tip over too. I undid my hip buckle, loosened the shoulder straps, wiggled out to a squatting position, reached for my bindings, released my feet, and stepped off my skis. Immediately I sank over my knees in the snow. I dragged my pack out of its crater and stood it upright, then stepped up out of my hole onto my skis and clamped down the bindings. Planting my poles beside me for support, I reached for my pack. I took three more falls trying to heave it onto my back. Tony had to help. By the time Sue, Laurie and I were ready to go again, h
alf an hour had passed. As we started our slow shuffle, I looked back to see how far we’d come. The parking lot was still within sight.
* * *
—
It was dusk by the time we straggled into camp—seven tents scattered throughout the trees. Our little group was completely silent; the nickname Tony had given us, the Giggly Sisters and Gunter, no longer applied. The past few hours had been full of curses and tears. We’d lost count of how many times we fell, but a safe estimate would have been thirty falls each. Thirty times we had to take off our packs and skis, find a raised area like a stump to set the pack on, or rely on each other’s help, then put our skis and pack back on. My last crash occurred as I tried to step over a fallen tree about the diameter of my ankle. I lifted my foot, and there I was again, on my back in a crater, tears of frustration mingling with sweat and melted snow.
It’s all in your head, my mother had said about my “imagined” fears of this course. But she was wrong. My fears were all very real. A month shy of my twentieth birthday, I was one of the youngest in the group. At five foot one and a half, I was the smallest, though I was carrying the same weight as the two-hundred-pound guys. I was a walking illustration of the term “the weaker sex,” at least from a biological perspective.
“Hey, Jan! Over here!” Dave waved a billy pot over his head, a big metal ketchup can with wire for a handle. He and Vince stood in a dugout snow kitchen in front of our two-man tent. It looked so far away. The aroma of food—sausages, melted cheese and hot chocolate—wafted toward me and my knees almost gave out.
