The Abominable: A Novel

free sow’s-belly curve of rock 250 feet up. On that sort of rock, I’ve always used the softest shoes I can find—my American equivalent to the grippy-soled soft shoes that the new generation of German rock climbers call Kletterschuhe. So today it’s my old tennis shoes with the holes in them.

Jean-Claude and I rope up and begin the climb. We’re soon using the crack, and it’s even nastier than I’d thought. My hands—already toughened and well calloused for such rock work—are bleeding profusely before the end of the first pitch. My tennis shoes soon have more holes in them, and I feel as if my bruised and torn feet do as well.

But we’ve found our rhythm, and very soon we’re climbing as quickly as the frequent stops for belays in the crack allow. Jean-Claude watches for the improbable places where I jam my hands or set my toes for a hold, follows my lead well, and our climbing soon flows smoothly upward. Only our occasional curses—in American English and more expressive French—echo down to where the Deacon lounges against a tree, only occasionally watching us.

When we’re three pitches and about 100 feet up the crag, something that had been in the back of my mind comes to the forefront of my thoughts: most rock climbers prefer crags and rock challenges close to a road. Falls from vertical rock faces can be terrible for the victim, and if the man survives the fall but is immobilized with broken bones and an injured back, it’s important to get him to medical help quickly—if he can be moved at all—or to get medical help to him quickly if he can’t be moved without killing him or snapping his back or neck. The two- hour rough hike in to this crag, no way to get a car or even a horse-drawn buckboard in here across the boulders, showed me that Mallory, the Deacon, Harold Porter, Siegfried Herford, and the others had been displaying impressive confidence and courage climbing here before the War. Or perhaps a certain arrogant stupidity.

I should talk about other people’s arrogant stupidity, I think as I clench my aching and bloody left hand, turn it into a wedge blade again, and jam it into the crack as far as I can reach above my head. Then, feet secure on nothing, I begin pulling myself up yet again.

When I find spurs in the crack where I can get at least one of my torn tennis shoes set, and find a real hold for at least one hand, something better than a mere friction wedge, I call “On belay!” and wait while Jean-Claude closes the ten meters or so until his head is just below my free, dangling sneaker.

At about 200 feet up the crag, we pause to catch our breath—hanging too long in such temporary holds will just tire us out more, but we have to stop for a few seconds—and Jean-Claude says, “Mon ami, this climb is merde.”

“Oui,” I say, using up half of my collection of conversational French. It’s possible that the little finger on my left hand is now broken—it feels broken—and this does not bode well for a Mount Everest attempt, even though such an attempt would have to be at least eight months away.

“Jean-Claude,” I call down, “we’re going to have to go all the way to the top of this damned crack to have any chance of a traverse. All the way to the overhang.”

“I know, Jake. You’ll have to half-free-climb swing, half-down-slide your way to the pipe ledge. But it has to be almost twenty meters across that bad patch of smooth, almost vertical rock. We’ll tie on an extra rope between us—if we can find a belay point for me up there—but if you want my opinion, I do not believe it can be done. When you slide off the dome, you’ll pluck me out of my belay point in the crack like a cork out of a wine bottle.”

“Thanks for the image and the encouragement.” Then, in a louder tone, “Climbing!” I wedge my possibly broken left hand as deep as I can in a three-inch crack far above my head and let that support all my weight as I scramble for another fingerhold, or a crack spur for my tennis shoe.

Pressing our bodies against the rock here just under the six-foot-wide overhang feels oppressive, as if that ceiling might force us out of our tenuous holds in the last skinny remnants, now almost horizontal, of this damned crack. The view from twenty-five stories up is fine, but neither of us can take the time or attention away from our tenuous and painful holds to appreciate it. Since we’re only 40 feet or so higher than the grassy ledge—which seems about half a mile away across the smooth curve of near-vertical rock—the friction-sliding I have in mind is going to be trickier than I’d hoped.

Gingerly, only one hand free, I remove my until-now-useless ice axe from its rucksack loop and set the long, curved pick side of it as deep into the horizontal crack as I can. Luckily there’s a downward V to the crack. Then I release my handhold and put my full weight on it. There’s a downward-sloping camber in the slot that nicely matches the curve of the ice axe’s pick.

It holds, but I wouldn’t bet the farm—well, I guess I already am, in truth—on its holding too long.

“Here’s your belay point,” I say to Jean-Claude, who’s moved to my right along the dying crack, actually ahead of me, and eye to eye with me for the first time in the climb.

“Hanging. From your ice axe,” says Jean-Claude in a flat tone.

“Yes. And with your left boot in this part of the vertical crack that just tore up the front of my tennis shoe.”

“My legs aren’t long enough to reach the crack while hanging from your axe,” J.C. says without unneeded emphasis. This climb has taken a lot out of us already. I know in my heart that Jean-Claude would prefer to try to free-climb this impossible overhang to reach the summit than try to help get me lower to that accursed pipe ledge.

“Make one of your legs longer,” I say and hand him the end of the second 50-foot coil of rope I’ve hauled up the crag. J.C. is better at tying knots than I am.

We get ready, and tied in to the new rope, I have 80 feet of tether between Jean-Claude and me. It’s necessary for the amount of naked rock I have to traverse, 60 feet to the ledge and some slack for up-and-down work, but it would mean that J.C. would have to arrest me after an 80-foot fall. I look at his belay stance. He’s made his left leg longer but only by hanging almost horizontally, one boot on a ridge higher in the crack than I’d been, his body hanging from his left hand gripping the ice axe and his right forearm holding much of his weight along a three-inch-wide ridge he’s found below the crack.

I think of the image that Jean-Claude’s provided: if I fall, he’ll be plucked out of his tenuous hold like a cork out of a wine bottle—or in this case more violently, more like a champagne cork.

But if I’m going to belay him over once I get to the pipe ridge, we need the connection. I think that if I were J.C., in my free right hand I’d have my knife unfolded and ready to cut the belay rope before it goes taut when I fall. Perhaps he does; I can’t see that hand well because of the rock and position of his body.

“Okay,” I say. “Here goes nothing.”

The Deacon and Jean-Claude usually enjoy my more American Americanisms, but this time it’s wasted: the Deacon looks like he’s dozing 250 feet below us, his back to a warm rock and his tweed hat pulled down over his eyes, and Jean-Claude is in no mood for my chirpy vernacular.

I step out of the crack and onto the near-vertical smooth rock face.

I slide only a foot or two before friction stops me, spread-eagled on the rock, shirt and face and belly and balls and thighs and very tensed lower legs begging for friction, most of which is being provided by the toes of my tennis sneakers, which are bent almost at right angles to the rest of my shoe and foot. This is a bit uncomfortable, but not as uncomfortable as falling 250 feet.

I can’t stay there. I begin slipping and sliding to my left, toward the damned pipe ridge, which is about 25 feet lower than I am and perhaps 60 feet away.

My fingers seek holds, even the slightest wrinkle in the rock, but this is an obscenely wrinkle-free rock face. I keep moving to the left, held against the near-vertical cliff just by friction and speed. If you’re fast enough, sometimes gravity doesn’t immediately notice you. My tennis shoes are doing 80 percent of the job of holding me onto the sow’s belly of curved rock.

It’s tricky playing out the rope to Jean-Claude as I crab-shuffle to the left. Most of it is in my rucksack, which keeps trying to pull me back and off the face with just the weight of the extra rope and a few other small things in it, but some I’ve had to loop over my right shoulder to keep playing out to J.C. The coil of rope itself pushes me away from the arresting friction of the cliff, and every time I play out more to Jean-Claude, I slide down a little bit until I’m free to slap my palms and fingers and forearms against the rock again.

I’ve made it a little more than halfway to the pipe ledge when I slip. My body just comes away from a glazed section of the great rock face.

I try to self-arrest madly, my fingers clawing toward any grip, any ridge, any irregularity in the rock, but I keep sliding, slowly at first, and then picking up speed. I’m already below the level of the pipe ledge still far to my