by Jan Redford
I’d needed to do this little check-in with Ian to make sure I wasn’t overreacting. It was as though my interpretation of reality wasn’t valid unless someone else confirmed it. Maybe it had something to do with growing up in a crazy household that denied its craziness. Karen had also thought the day was insane, but she wasn’t a climber. Niccy and Doug had had a grand old time.
“What if one of my cadets had fallen?” I grabbed the cocoa. Heat seeped through my gloves and sent shivers through me. Liquid chocolate, oozing down my throat, almost made up for the stress of trying to get my cadets over the rock band. None of them had fallen, but Benoit had started to cry halfway up. Maybe I’d done my throat-slitting gesture one time too many. While I’d coaxed from above, the other boys had screamed obscenities from below.
I knew what was really bugging me. It wasn’t Doug. It was me. How come I couldn’t stand up to him? If I’d pushed a bit harder for the easier route he probably would have agreed. But then he would have known I was a chickenshit. And how come Niccy and I looked at the same route and I saw blood and entrails and brain matter and she saw fun?
“Doug would never have let you take cadets up there if he thought you couldn’t hold them. You’ve gotta have a little faith in yourself,” Ian said.
Lots of people seemed to have faith in me, not just my mother, but it wasn’t like I could stick them in my pocket and pull them out halfway up a climb when I started shitting myself.
“I don’t think guiding is my forte. Maybe I should go back to school. Become a French teacher. I can’t kill anyone in a classroom.” I’d just received the catalogue for the University of Calgary in the mail and was highlighting all the courses I’d take if I could ever get my butt accepted there. Apparently, my high school marks were too low to get in (it was more fun to smoke up under the Jock River bridge than go to class), so I’d have to redo grade-twelve English first.
“Just mess up their impressionable little brains.” Ian laughed and raised his arms, defending against my punch.
“Seriously. Don’t you ever get scared in the mountains?” I asked.
“You kidding? I’m scared shitless half the time. Sometimes I can feel death following me up a climb.”
But Ian’s threshold for fear, like Dan’s, was leagues higher than mine.
In the fading light, Grant, the last guide back, trucked toward camp with his cadets stumbling behind him. He stopped by our tent, pulled out a cigarette.
“We did three peaks,” Grant bragged as he lit up. Five cadets sagged on the rope, their eyes glazed with exhaustion. They reminded me of horses run to death in cowboy movies.
Grant grinned, his teeth flashing white against his leathery tanned skin. He looked like the Marlboro Man. He used to be Dan and Ian’s roommate. Now he was renting a room in a basement in downtown Banff, but still hung out with the mob in our living room.
“Grant, you’re a slave driver.” Ian shook his head.
“Hey, man, this is the army.” He pulled on the rope and the six of them slogged toward the cadets’ tents. They still had to make dinner, the poor slobs. They’d probably just eat their army rations right out of the foil pouch, cold.
“I’d hate to be on his rope,” I said when they were out of earshot. But there was something magnetic about Grant. He was one of those bodice-ripping types. He was quiet about his accomplishments, but he was one of the hardest climbers in the Rockies, with his name in several guidebooks for the new routes he’d put up.
“He’s the fastest guy I’ve ever climbed with on mixed rock and ice,” Ian said. “I’d do any route with him.”
Dan, Ian and Grant had been doing big alpine routes and extreme ice climbs all winter together. Some of the scariest stuff in the Rockies. From one day to the next I never knew if Dan was going to come home.
I rinsed out the cup with snow and we gathered our gear, stuffed everything into the tent. As we crawled into our sleeping bags, I pictured Grant’s eyes, spots of brilliant blue leaping from his face, like a sepia photograph with painted-on colour. Almost too blue.
“I’m glad you and Danny are together. It’s fun having you at the house,” Ian said.
Shaking off the image of Grant, I joked, “A little feminine touch?” I felt about as feminine as the guys who lounged around our living room every night.
“Yeah, you do add a feminine touch. What’s wrong with that?”
“Get serious.” I studied his face to see if he was mocking me, but he wasn’t. He couldn’t hide anything. His face was too revealing: smooth and narrow and boyish. Unpretentious. He seemed young, but he was twenty-three, just a year and a half younger than me.
“I’m really falling for the bugger. It scares the shit out of me,” I said.
“Well, you couldn’t fall for a better man. I could see you two getting married someday.”
A warm little soft spot sat at the base of my belly as I snuggled deeper into my bag. Tomorrow at this time I’d be curled up with Danny in my own bed, in my own bedroom, in my own home.
12
CLIMBING GIRLFRIEND
“Jesus, Jan, you just put in a piece. You couldn’t fall if you tried to!”
Dan looked up from the ground where he was belaying me, rubbed his arm and stamped his feet, trying to warm up. From the top of his head to the bottom of my rock shoes, a height of about twenty feet, I could count four pieces of protection. And here I was, pulling another friend off my rack to place a fifth. The whole ordeal had taken over half an hour. His neck must have been killing him, he might have been almost hypothermic, and I had fifty feet to go.
“Fuck off.” I pulled back the triggers of the friend and crammed it into the crack, let go and it expanded against the rock. I pulled up the rope, clipped it through the carabiner, studied the next move.
“It’s only 5.9,” he said, referring to the not easy but not desperate climbing grade, one that I was more than capable of leading.
“It’s fucking hard for a 5.9. It’s not Yosemite 5.9, it’s Rockies 5.9.”
The quartzite here at Lake Louise was steep and blocky, more intimidating than Yosemite granite, but I knew these routes, had even guided the cadets up the easier ones all summer. And Dan and I had just gotten back from a week in Squamish, so I should have been climbing well. But even on coastal granite, I hadn’t felt any braver. In fact, that trip had obliterated any leftover scraps of my shaky climbing ego. I had led what I thought were some good pitches, but they hadn’t been enough to impress Dan. He wanted a girlfriend he could swing leads with. He wanted me to be that ballsy girl he’d watched climb in Yosemite over a year ago, when we first met. I wanted to be her, too.
“Come on, Jan. It looks like it’s going to rain.”
I studied the crack above while Dan stared up at me, impatient.
Dan wanted so badly for me to climb well, but my heart didn’t seem to be in it these days. I didn’t know if my lack of motivation affected my climbing, or my chickenshit climbing affected my motivation. I did know I didn’t seem to be climbing for me anymore.
I shook my feet out, one after another. They were cramping up in my climbing shoes. This was such a good rest spot, a nice ledge that fit almost a whole foot, and the problem with good rest spots was I wanted to stay on them forever. But if I could just make myself climb, I’d be at the bolted anchor in a few minutes and it would all be over. But if all I wanted was for it to be over, why was I climbing? And what was the point in my even leading this stupid route if Dan could just whip up it in a quarter of the time, with a quarter of the protection?
Shut up in there! I screamed at the gerbil that kept running around and around in my brain. Why did everyone else slip into “the zone” when they climbed, like a bunch of Buddhist monks, and I slipped into gerbil brain?
I made a few more moves, then with my last piece at my knees, stopped to take another friend off my harness. Dan sighed so loudly that even fifty feet up I could hear him.
“How come you shit your pants on an easy lead, t
hen cruise up the harder routes I lead with no problem?” he yelled up.
Because of you! I wanted to yell back, but I knew it wasn’t his fault. I was the perfect poster girl for the “Cinderella complex.” The absolute worst feminist walking the earth. When I climbed with Dan, for some reason I felt like he should look out for me. The same thing had happened on the river with Brad. I’d been all alone in my very own boat and somehow I still thought he could save me from anything.
A few more moves, another piece. My stopper fit perfectly in the crack. Dan fed out the rope and I clipped in. Safe again for another few feet. I looked down.
“So. Remind me again. Why am I doing this?” I was only half joking.
“Okay. This is stupid. Why don’t you just come down?”
“No, no. I want to do it.”
“No, you don’t. I’ll lower you. I can finish the route.”
“No! I’m doing it!”
When he wanted me to go up, I wanted to come down, and when he wanted me to come down, I wanted to go up. I stepped off my little ledge and moved up the rock. I had spent the whole summer dragging cadets up these climbs without killing a single one. I was going to get to that goddamned anchor or die trying.
I climbed on, anger fuelling me, finally made it to the big ledge at the top, pulled up some rope and clipped into the bolts.
“I’m secure!” I yelled, then let out my victory whoop. A post-lead, orgasmic euphoria washed over me. I loved this feeling! So why couldn’t I skip all the drama in between and just climb? I always reached the anchor in the end anyway, in spite of myself.
I leaned over the edge, hanging off the bolt. “That wasn’t so hard!”
Dan grinned up at me, happy now that my glacial lead was over. “How about you just rappel? I don’t need to climb it. There’s a guy in lederhosen yodelling in front of the Chateau. We can’t miss that.”
He looked beautiful standing there, like Hercules. His hair glowed, bleached almost white from a summer of sunshine, his eyes looked so blue against the navy collar of his jacket, even from here. It almost hurt to look at him.
* * *
—
The rain started as we merged onto the highway into the dribble of traffic heading for Banff. Tourist season was obviously over.
“Shit!” Dan cursed as he turned on the windshield wipers. “That could be the end of the rock season.”
I watched a cloud of black descend on Mount Temple and felt something close to elation.
Winter coming meant I didn’t have to climb for a while. It meant I could bake, make jam, knit Dan’s sweater, and work on my distance grade-twelve English course before my ski patrol job started. I wanted to paint the house, rip out the floor in the bathroom and put in tiles, repot the plants. Anything but climb. But I couldn’t tell Dan that. I could barely admit it to myself. Climbing wasn’t enough anymore.
“You still love me?” I asked as I slipped my hand into the crook of his elbow.
“Of course I love you. You’re my girl.” He turned for a moment to smile at me.
We said I love you every day, sometimes several times a day. It had bugged me at first, like he was trying too hard. But maybe it was an indication of a healthy relationship. I couldn’t remember ever hearing my parents say that to each other, and they’d only said it to me when I planted myself in front of them and refused to budge unless they said those three stupid little words.
“Even if I snivel up my leads?”
“Yup.”
“Even if I go to university?”
“You won’t go to university. You’re a climber.”
Dan kept his eyes on the road. He didn’t want me to move to Calgary, even if I was home every weekend.
The rain turned to sleet and slapped against the windshield. Some days I wanted to marry him and have ten babies, and some days I knew I had to be alone, to finally make my own way in the world. So, I’d made a decision. I was going to university to get my degree in education. I’d move to Calgary and come home to Banff on the weekends. I’d be my own person during the week, and Dan’s girl on the weekend. Until I could figure out how to be both at the same time. I just had to figure out how to tell him.
13
THE FINAL LAST STRAW
I leaned my forehead against the bar of the chairlift, watched Bill in his red ski-patrol jacket digging his edges into the steep icy run, then closed my eyes against the glare of sunlight bouncing off the snow. My head pounded. Dan and Ian were up on the Grand Central Couloir on Mount Kitchener, a serious route of ice, snow and rock—essentially a funnel for avalanches and rockfall. Before he left, Dan had been sorting gear on the kitchen floor, humming with energy, and I’d taken a snapshot of him in my mind, like it was going to be the last glimpse of him I’d ever get. The feeling was so strong I was sure it was a premonition. I’d slept in Dan’s T-shirt and sobbed for hours, then finally took Gravol. Now I had a Gravol hangover.
The radio on my chest started to crackle. A 10-10 at the intersection of Upper Homestead and Eye Opener. I groaned. I was so close to this accident I was almost on top of it. I had to take it. I pushed the button on my radio. “Dispatch, this is Jan. I’m just getting off the Silver Chair. I’m in position to respond.”
“Dispatch, this is Andrew. I’m at the top of Gold. I can take this one.”
It was tempting to press the transmit button and say, “Yo, dickwad, I said I’ve got it!” but that would not be proper radio protocol. Now I wanted to take this call, just because I knew Andrew didn’t think I could do it.
“Copy that, Andrew, but Jan’s got this one,” Dave, the dispatch said.
I found myself saying fuck every second word on this job to overcompensate for being the only female patroller. Bill said I swore more than the guys he’d fought with in Vietnam. Though I loved them all like big brothers, I was still thankful another woman would be joining us soon. We needed a bit more estrogen on the team.
When the chairlift deposited me at the top, I skied over to the warming hut where the rescue toboggan was leaning against the wall, ditched my poles, cinched the harness of the toboggan around my waist and headed downhill. As I skied, I could feel my heart pound against my radio. The guys all fought for 10-10s, while I got full-on anxiety attacks every time the radio crackled. I hated not knowing what I’d find. The Nakiska runs were steep and icy, so we got a lot of sliders. Most didn’t stop until they hit a tree.
Ahead of me were two skiers sitting in the snow; one looked like a child. When I pulled up beside them, a little girl lifted her head off her father’s lap, her blue eyes rimmed red. Her chubby, freckled cheeks and eyelashes were wet. I unstrapped the harness of the toboggan and stepped out of my skis.
“Hey, kiddo,” I said, kneeling beside her. My voice automatically went up an octave. “My name’s Jan. I’m a ski patroller. Did you hurt yourself?”
She nodded. Her lower lip jiggled, but she didn’t cry.
Maternal juices injected into my blood stream like a morphine pump on an IV. I wanted to scoop her into my arms and hold her, sing the teddy bears’ picnic song my mom used to sing when I was about this age, up in Fort Smith.
“And what’s your name?” I felt a bit like an idiot, like I was talking to a puppy. When had I last spent any real time with kids? Only one of my friends, Jeannette, was a mom, and she lived in Field, so I rarely saw her.
“Leetha,” she said in a tiny voice.
The man looked down at his daughter, tucked a lock of red hair under her tuque. It was the gesture of a good dad, who would protect his little girl from anything. I thought of Dan, holding his newborn niece in Calgary a few weeks ago. He’d handled her like an egg, terrified of dropping her, and I’d felt like flushing my birth control pills down the toilet.
“How old are you, Lisa?” I said as I pulled gear from my pack.
“Thixth.”
We chatted while I removed her skis, did an initial examination, then stepped away to radio in a fractured tib/fib and a request for
an ambulance.
“Do you need backup?” Dave asked.
I looked over at the father, who was standing there with his arms hanging uselessly at his sides, waiting for my next instructions. He trusted me completely with his daughter. Without one of the guys breathing down my neck making “suggestions,” I actually felt competent.
“No. Everything’s under control. I’ll be down in thirty.”
After I’d splinted Lisa’s leg, the father and I loaded her into the toboggan together, but I could have done it myself. She weighed as much as a small sack of potatoes, nothing like the three-hundred-pound suspected heart attack (who had turned out to be an epileptic) I’d had as my first accident. It had taken five of us to lift him. I’d let Andrew take the toboggan down that time.
Lisa’s round face peeked out from the grey blanket like a papoose, and her tiny body spanned only half the length of the toboggan. She hadn’t cried the whole time.
I harnessed myself into the toboggan and pointed my skis downhill.
* * *
—
At the end of the day, I grabbed a seat by myself on the Nakiska van for the ride back to Banff. I was glad it wasn’t my turn to drive. My worry over Dan and Ian on their climb was back full force. A chinook was rolling in and warm winds did not mix well with winter climbing. I watched the mountains reel by as we headed toward the main highway, then propped my knees against the back of the seat in front of me and closed my eyes for a nap. Maybe I should just move to Saskatchewan where my biggest fear would be falling into a bailer.
Lisa had been so brave. I wanted a little girl like her. I wanted something permanent in my life. On the drive home from Calgary after seeing Dan’s niece, we’d talked about having kids together one day, but I’d snapped out of my maternal buzz when he’d started packing his climbing gear for this next death route. After he left, I went to the post office and mailed my application to the University of Calgary. No more dicking around. Being a widowed mother making $5.50 an hour as a ski patroller did not appeal to me. I needed to get my degree.
