by Jan Redford
My girl. I still felt like Brad’s girl, six months after leaving Fernie. But Dede was Brad’s girl now. I stood on my front points with the hand holding my new ice axe wrapped around Dan’s neck and gave him a noisy kiss on the lips, then shoved one of my old axes into my pack. It would be a good spare.
Dan had shown the same persistence courting me as he had climbing this waterfall with a faulty foot fang. He would come into the Rose and Crown while I was waitressing, and the cook would say, “Your milkman’s here again,” and there was Dan, sitting on a blue milk crate at the back of the kitchen, his Alpha Milk truck parked outside. I’d finally agreed to dinner at Georgio’s in Banff, which led to too much wine, which led to my inability to drive home to Canmore, which led to spending the night, which led to us becoming an item. Jan and Dan. He was tickled pink. I was conflicted. Waffling. One foot in, one foot out. He’d said, “Come on. If you don’t end up with me, you’ll end up with some other guy anyway.” Which was probably true.
As I slipped the rope through my belay device, Dan swung his tools above his head, sinking them with a dull thud into the ice. “It’s in good shape,” he said.
He stepped up the ice, pulled out his tool and swung again, first one, then the other, dancing his way up the waterfall. He climbed the way he skied. In complete control. Expending only as much energy as he needed to.
A vapour mushroom billowed from my mouth as I breathed out the glacial air. I pulled my neck tube over my face, breathed through the old saliva-smelling nylon. Stamped my feet to keep my toes alive. Fed out the rope. Belaying was the worst part of ice climbing. Standing in one spot, trying not to freeze to death. It was also hard on the back. I bent over sideways, trying to stretch it out.
Dan pulled over the lip at the top and disappeared onto the flat section between tiers, off to find the bolt anchor. He hadn’t put in one ice screw as protection. He was only tied into the rope so he could bring me up.
“I’m off belay,” he yelled, and started pulling up the slack. He’d used most of the 150 feet of rope. When it went tight on my harness, I started climbing.
Stretching high, I swung my new ice axe with a flick of my wrist. The dull thunk meant a secure placement. Then with my old ice axe I swung one, two, three times before I got a good placement. Kicking my front points into the ice, I stepped up, keeping my feet flat, trying to hang off straight arms to conserve energy. I’d learned some technique from a three-day ice climbing course with the Yamnuska Mountain School four years ago, back when I’d had big plans to become a badass female ice climber. It hadn’t taken long to figure out climbing rock in the sunshine was a more pleasurable way to go.
Tap tap tap. Tap tap tap, tap tap. It took several tries to get each axe in this time. To me, the ice was brittle. To Dan, because it was more than a few inches thick, it was “primo.” I scrabbled instead of danced my feet up, forgetting to drop my heels. The waterfall was so steep I could have stuck out my tongue and licked it. The higher I got, the more difficult the axe placements, and I sent off cascades of shards as I dug for a secure hold. My calves felt like they were being branded and my hands were numb from my death-grip on my tools. The only upper-body strength training I’d done since my fall trip to Yosemite had been holding a tray full of food over my shoulder, and that had exercised only my left arm.
“This is fucking steep!” I yelled up. No response. He either couldn’t hear me, or he was choosing not to. He had a tendency to ignore me at times, which was irritating. I knew he couldn’t figure me out. Hot and cold. One day, willing to fall in love, staying over at his place in Banff; the next, retreating to my loft bedroom in Canmore, curled up with my book, The Cinderella Complex, and yellow highlighter pen, half hoping he’d given up on me.
Finally, at the top, I pulled myself over the lip onto flat ice. Dan was at the base of the next tier, another steep bulge of ice, about the same height as this one. He was stamping his feet, trying to keep warm.
“There’s my sweetie!”
He was grinning a full-face grin, hunched over slightly, probably trying to keep his core warm but it made him look like he was taking a little bow. He was so open about his feelings for me. On our first unofficial date I’d made him a breakfast omelette at my place halfway through his milk run. We’d kissed, just a little peck on the lips on the porch before he left, and he’d run all the way back to his milk truck, jumping and hooting.
My roommate Sharon had said, “He’s a really sweet guy, you know. You should give him a chance. And he’s beautiful too. You’d be nuts to pass that one up.”
“He’s almost too nice,” I’d replied.
She knew what I meant. We both seemed drawn to guys with an edge. She still missed Rafael and I still missed Brad.
Dan was not a “free spirit” like Brad. He was a monogamist and had stayed with his previous girlfriend for four years. I’d only made it to a year and a half with Brad and about the same with Jim but, even so, I’d managed to completely throw myself into their orbits. If I ever spun around one man for four years, I was sure I’d whittle myself down to space dust.
Sometimes I felt like the only cure for whatever I had was to live in a cabin in the bush, alone with myself, where no one could influence my decisions, my lifestyle, what I ate, said, did, or felt. I was a chameleon; if I sat down beside a blue person I’d turn blue, beside a green person I’d turn green. I didn’t have my own colour. The only thing that had seemed like my own was climbing, but compared to Dan and his group of hardcore Banff climbers, all my accomplishments seemed trivial. I’d been climbing molehills but mistaking them for mountains.
The other day at the Rose and Crown I’d served Sepp Renner, a famous Rockies guide, and I’d asked him if he had any advice for an aspiring guide. He’d said, “Go to university.” I was starting to think he was right. My sister was finishing up her degree at Trent and my brother had quit drinking, completed his high-school education, and was now studying engineering at Carleton. My father had his master’s, my mother was a nurse, and I was a waitress and climber. Maybe it was time to grow up. Get a real life. Maybe I should become a teacher.
When I reached Dan under the next pitch I said, “I can’t believe you solo this shit!” and shook my arms out.
“Do I get a victory kiss?”
He leaned down and I let him kiss me. His lips were soft. Not as soft as Brad’s but pretty soft for a guy with muscles growing on muscles.
The second pitch went more smoothly. It was all coming back to me. My muscles seemed to have stored the knowledge, even after so long. Halfway up, I started thinking this wasn’t so bad after all. With a bit more time on the ice I could even start swinging leads with Dan. Be an equal partner.
At the base of the third pitch, after I’d bestowed the second victory kiss on Dan, I studied the ice. This section was shorter, not quite as steep. It was time for me to get a victory kiss instead of give one.
“I’ll lead this,” I said.
“You sure?” Dan’s face scrunched up with concern. “What about your back?”
“It’s holding up,” I said, arching backward. I’d seriously wrenched my pelvis in an accident while working with the ski patrol a few weeks earlier, and Dan was getting sick of being my physio exercise slave. Every time I lay down on the counter and begged him to hold my leg while I pushed against his hand to put my pelvis back in place, he groaned.
“You don’t have to, you know. I don’t mind being your fearless leader.”
“I don’t need a goddamned leader!” I growled.
He held his hands up as though I’d grown fangs and claws. “Here, take the rack. It’s all yours,” he said, handing me the ice screws.
I clipped them to my harness while he put me on belay, then I turned to face the ice, to the left where it looked easiest. I glanced back at Dan. He smiled, and his blue eyes disappeared into those loveable crescents, the ones I’d been trying to resist. I wanted to ask him for a guarantee, maybe in writing and signed in the presence of a l
awyer, that he’d always be there for me, that I would never, ever walk in on him in bed with some hot chick who could climb harder than I could and never whined. That he wouldn’t ditch me when he really got to know me.
I crunched a few steps back to him, dragging the rope behind me, then stood on my front points and gave him a kiss.
“Sorry.”
“I forgive you.”
“Good.”
I crunched back to the ice, swung one tool and got a satisfying thwunk! I sank the other tool and stepped my feet up. After a few more moves I looked down. This pitch was shorter, but still about 130 feet. I was at least thirty feet up.
I unclipped an ice screw and started twisting it into the waterfall. The sharp teeth caught right away and the hollow metal tube spat out a cylinder of ice as it slowly sank up to the hanger. I clipped the rope and let out a whoosh of air. It took more energy to protect the climb than to climb it. No wonder Dan didn’t bother. I shook out my arms, each of my legs. My calves were cramping up.
I continued, close to the edge of the waterfall. Being near bare rock gave me a false sense of security. Rock I knew. Ice, not so much. Another thirty feet up I placed another screw. Dan was stomping his feet, slapping his arms, trying to stay warm, but he yelled, “You’re doing good!”
Another thirty feet, another screw. Each screw took an interminably long time to place, but each reduced my fall to a maximum of sixty feet. Still too far by my standards, but better than hitting the deck. The irony was I could end up falling from the sheer effort of trying to minimize my fall.
“That’s where my fucking foot fang fell off,” Dan yelled as I was placing another screw. I couldn’t imagine hanging here with only one crampon on barely formed ice.
“You are fucking crazy!”
By the time I got to the lip, my calves were totally seized up and my arms were pumped with lactic acid, but my back was holding up. I dragged myself over, turned and faced the valley and let out a yelp of triumph. My best lead on ice yet! I’d barely whined. I hadn’t even come close to shitting myself.
I clumped over to the chains of the anchor and clipped into the bolts. By the time Dan had taken out my four screws and reached me, the sky felt close. It was getting late.
“Good lead! Takes a lot of strength to put in so many screws,” Dan said with a grin.
“Ha ha,” I punched him in the arm. “Victory kiss?”
“Coming right up,” he said, and leaned in.
* * *
—
We moved together, still roped up, on two short tiers of ice and flat stretches of snow till the last pitch came into view. It was a whole waterfall in itself. A steep 150-foot column, with bulging overhangs at the top.
“Probably don’t have time to do the last pitch,” Dan said, “but we’ve got a good view of the Terminator. That’s it, on the far left.” He pointed at one of three thin lines of ice hundreds of feet above Professor’s last pitch, on the upper part of the mountain. The Terminator was a long, thin drip that hung suspended, like an icicle hanging off a roof. Last year, Dan and his friend Joe had climbed its four pitches of grade seven, overhanging, fragile ice. It had only been done twice before, partly because there were so few climbers who could survive it (the grading system goes up to only seven), and partly because it rarely formed enough to touch down.
“The Terminator.” Dan deepened his voice to an ominous growl. “We made it up in eight hours from our bivy.”
From here, it looked stupidly impossible. The exposure would have been incredible, hanging by two tools on thin ice, thousands of feet over the valley, not knowing if the icicle would break off under their weight and come crashing down. It could easily have happened. They’d discovered two horizontal cracks in the ice, one of them four inches wide, almost completely severing the pillar. To date, it was one of Canada’s hardest ice climbs.
“The fucking pick on my tool malfunctioned on the third pitch, then the pins broke in my third tool and the pick folded up like an accordion,” Dan said. “Had to set up a hanging belay, three hundred feet up. It was so out there it was absurd.”
He’d left out that little detail in his earlier rendition of the climb. That was way worse than malfunctioning foot fangs on Professor. My hour-long lead of 130 feet of less-than-vertical ice with four ice screws looked like an amble up a green run at the ski hill in comparison. I felt my badass, superhero female ice climber slink away, leaving a vertically challenged waitress with an expensive ice tool and a badass, superhero boyfriend.
I turned and looked out at the mountains. Cascade was glowing in the lowering sun, like a giant pink pyramid. “We’ll end up spending the night if we don’t head down soon,” I said.
“Guess we’ll have to get out of bed a few hours earlier next time so we can do the last pitch.” Dan chuckled. He knew I wasn’t a morning person.
We dragged the ropes over to the rappel chains and got busy setting up for the descent.
9
WE’RE GATHERED HERE TODAY
“We’re gathered here today to celebrate the life of Alan Deane.” The minister’s voice burst out of black speakers suspended in the corners of the room. The shuffling feet and muffled whispers ebbed away.
“Alan was a devoted father, husband and dentist, who was proud to be a member of the vibrant climbing community here in Canmore.” I smiled at the minister’s words. From what I knew of Alan, he would have liked being described as a climber as well as a dentist. Unlike a lot of us, Alan had moved back and forth comfortably between two worlds. He’d had a grown-up life during the week, then snuck out to climb wild, frozen waterfalls on the weekends.
I looked down the row of folding metal chairs at the jeans and hiking boots, the scattering of dress pants. Niccy, Wendy; Barb and Joe; Dan’s roommates, Grant and Ian. It was easy to pick out the climbers in the crowd. The farther back in the room, the scruffier the clothing. We hadn’t even made it to the main part of the church. We were the overflow. The family was in the front pews in the main church, the women in sombre dresses and the men in suits and ties.
The minister’s voice bounced off the sterile white walls and laminate flooring, taking on the tinny quality of a small-town AM radio station. I was always surprised when otherwise rational people held a ceremony in a place like this. This adjoining room reminded me of my year and a half of brainwashing in the Pentecostal church basement near Ottawa. Being told at thirteen that my parents and siblings and friends were all going to burn in hell unless I saved them had instilled in me a permanent terror of death—and religion. If I ever got around to making a will, if I ever owned enough to bother making a will, I’d put in bold capital letters not to have my funeral in a church. It had to be outside in the open air with not one mention of a god who was sadistic enough to take a healthy young man away from his wife and four-year-old daughter.
“Let us bow our heads and pray.” Rows of heads bowed obediently, but I stared straight ahead and imagined Alan’s wife, Cathy, with her daughter, Molly. How was she surviving this? I hoped Cathy was getting some comfort from this place—that it wasn’t just their families who’d arranged this ritual.
I leaned my head against Dan’s shoulder and stared at the fleece jacket in front of me. My snot and tears were flowing once again. Dan slipped his arm around me, pulled me against his side. He still hadn’t cried. Not one tear, after spending so much time climbing with Alan. Yet I was losing it over a guy I barely knew. What was the matter with me? Maybe it was because Dan and most of my friends were climbers. Because I was a climber. I never wanted to put my family through this.
My friend Jeff, a.k.a. Dr. Risk, squirmed on the other side of me, making his chair creak. We’d worked together at a climbing store in Calgary and I’d bought my first harness from him. After that I’d climbed with him a few times in the Rockies and Yosemite. Of all the climbers in this room he was probably the most aware of his own mortality. He kept taking huge falls in the mountains. One of his biggest had resulted in his pa
rtner breaking both femurs. And he’d been there when Alan fell.
The minister droned like a mosquito trapped in a tent. I squinted, trying to bring the pictures of Alan, arranged on tables up front, into focus. He’d been such a good-looking guy. Dark hair, intense blue eyes, clean cut, professional. At twenty-six, he’d already completed seven years of university, established a dental practice, built a huge home, and started a family. He’d been only two years older than me. Dan’s age.
The minister invited Alan’s brother to come to the front and I tried to steady myself by holding on to my contempt of religion, but it was no use. Tears dribbled down my face faster than I could wipe them away with my sleeve. I hadn’t brought any Kleenex. I glanced at Jeff. His eyes were dry, like Dan’s, but he looked as if he was going to be sick. He stared at his boots even though the prayer was over. Was he wondering how many lives he had left? I reached over and squeezed his hand and he looked grateful for a moment, then turned back to his boots.
Alan was supposed to rope up with two of our friends, Clive and Choc, but he’d gotten to Slipstream, a serious waterfall, ahead of them, and for some reason had decided to solo without a rope. No one knew what had gone wrong, maybe a spindrift avalanche, maybe a cornice broke, maybe he tripped over his crampon strap, but he’d ended up falling from the top, about 1,300 feet. He fell right past Jeff, who’d been halfway up. Jeff told me he’d heard him breathing as he plummeted past.
“Cathy has given me something she’d like me to read.” Alan’s brother was not a climber. Cathy was not a climber. No one in this family but Alan had ever climbed. How did this poor guy address a church full of people who would be strapping on their crampons, maybe even the very next day, to head up a frozen waterfall like the one that had killed his brother? Maybe even the same one.
“Do not stand at my grave and weep; I am not there, I do not sleep. I am the thousand winds that blow; I am the diamond glints on snow….”
