The Abominable: A Novel

afternoon is what I think of (to this day, after using them thousands of times since) as the “dance steps”: pied a plat–piolet ramasse, for instance—flat-footing upslope while simultaneously using the short ice axe in a graceful cross-body position to find the next anchor. J.C. did this so beautifully on a steep but less-than-vertical slope that it was a delight to watch—left leg bent inward until he was slightly knock-kneed, short ice axe held in both hands and pressing down higher up the slope, then the right leg crossing over the left as if in a tricky dance step, and then, when the tip of the ice axe and 10 of the 12-point crampon steel teeth on the right boot were all pressing down into the ice again, swinging the left leg higher upslope until 10 crampons on the bottom of that foot got a solid bite.

And then starting the dance all over again.

Jean-Claude showed us various ways to rest on such an exhaustingly steep slope, but my favorite was the simple pied assis—leaning back on the slope until your butt almost (but not quite) touched the ice, left leg bent and left foot under you with all crampons pressing down, right leg further outward with ankle turned so the right boot and its crampons were at almost a 90-degree angle from the direction one’s right knee was pointing. You didn’t need your ice axe or ice hammers to hold this position, and the result was that, as long as the muscles in your legs and thighs didn’t start cramping, you could hold this position for an extended time, ice axe in both hands, giving yourself plenty of time to look out over the slope and up and out at the landscape below.

But the bulk of the afternoon into the lovely Welsh sunset was spent learning how to use the shortest ice axe and the ice hammers in basic low-dagger and high-dagger positions, front-pointing (using only the forward two crampons of the twelve) in anchor positions, front-pointing in traction positions, front-pointing in high-dagger position (the way we’d climbed the vertical ice wall), the three-o’clock position using both ice hammers ahead of you on a steep slope with the right leg curved and slammed down behind you, front-pointing on a terribly steep slope so that your weight was over the ice hammers with picks down in a low-dagger position (climbing with both at once, essentially under you), and so forth.

Traverse and descent techniques on the ice—especially the rapid descent (I’d always loved glissading down a steep snowfield, using only my regular ice axe as a rudder and then for self-arrest near the bottom, and J.C. showed us how we could flat-foot down on crampons, using the cross-body position with the short axe or trailing the axe behind us in anchor position, almost as quickly and on much more dramatic inclines)—took most of the rest of the afternoon.

Later that afternoon, on a steep snowy slope below a rock face, Jean-Claude showed us his last technological tour de force.

It was a small and relatively light metal wedge-shaped device that had steel springs—released by hand pressure, tightening automatically when you exerted no pressure—that could slide along a fixed rope. J.C. had laboriously climbed the slope in his new 12-point crampons, attached the Deacon’s Miracle Rope to a long ice axe driven deep into the ice under the boulders some 150 meters above us, reinforced that belay with several ice screws, and then removed his crampons and expertly glissaded down the steep slope to us. The rope lay like a long black fault line on the blindingly white snow.

Then J.C. showed that he had one of these hand clamps for the rope for each of us.

“It is simple, non?” he said. “Release the hand pressure completely, and it locks tight to the rope. One could dangle if one chose. Squeeze ever so slightly with one hand, and the mechanism glides along the rope as if the rope were a guide. Squeeze hard, and the mechanism—and you—no longer has… how do you pronounce it? Friction? Friction on the rope.”

“What do you suggest we use this gadget for?” I asked, but I saw that the Deacon had grasped the idea.

“It would be best if it were attached to some light climbing harness,” said the Deacon. “So that one could have both hands free while staying attached to the fixed rope.”

“Exactement!” cried Jean-Claude. “I am working on precisely such light leather and canvas harnesses. For today, though, we try the one hand, no?”

And with that J.C. clamped his little device onto the fixed rope and began sliding it up as he climbed steadily, even without crampons. The Deacon went next, getting the hang of when to apply pressure, when to release it, within a few paces. It took me longer, but soon I realized the added security of climbing with this silly little spring- driven device gripping the fixed rope harder than one’s heavily mittened hand ever could. It would give even more assurance if it were attached, say, by a line and carabiner, to the climbing harness that he and the Deacon had been talking about.

At the top of our 150-meter 50-degree slope, we huddled together as a cold wind rose. The sun was setting behind peaks to the west. The moon was rising in the east.

“Now we use it for a controlled descent,” said Jean-Claude. “You will see, I believe, that one could use this device even on vertical fixed ropes. It is, how do you say it? Proof for fools?”

“Foolproof,” said the Deacon. “Show us the fast descent.”

So J.C. unclamped his device from the double line of fixed rope—double so we could retrieve the rope after our rappel down the slope—retrieved the ice axe so that only the deep screws held the doubled line on belay, re- clamped onto the line below me, and began a rapid, no-crampon glissade that he controlled only by the spring pressure of the device in his hand.

“Incredible!” I gasped as the Deacon and I reached the bottom after one of the fastest glissades I’d ever experienced.

“We shall practice more later before we leave and during the trek in to Everest,” said Jean-Claude.

We were in twilight shadow now and it suddenly became very cold. J.C. was already pulling the rope free of its needle-eye ice screws and retrieving the long line.

“Do you have a name for this device?” asked the Deacon.

J.C. grinned as he expertly wrapped the long coil of Miracle Rope from his fist to his elbow, coil and coil again. “Jumar,” he said.

“What does that mean in French?” I asked. “What does it stand for?”

“Nothing,” says J.C. “It was the name of my dog when I was a boy. He could climb a tree after a squirrel if he chose. I have never seen a better dog-climber.”

“Jumar,” I repeated. Odd word. I wasn’t sure that I’d ever get used to it.

“I’ve been worrying about that last ice wall between the Rongbuk Glacier to the North Col on Everest for some months,” the Deacon said quietly as we approached London and the murky winter sunrise.

I nodded awake. “Why?” I whispered. “In ’twenty-two, you and Finch and the others found snow slopes up to the Col and cut steps for the porters. Last June there weren’t any snow slopes, but there was that fissure—the ice chimney—that Mallory free-climbed and dropped fixed ropes and then Sandy Irvine’s jury-rigged rope ladder down.”

The Deacon bobbed his head slightly. “But Rongbuk is a glacier, Jake. It rises, subsides, fissures, faults, moves, crumbles, creates its own crevasses. All we know for sure is that it won’t be as it was last year for Mallory—a chance to show off his climbing techniques—or for Finch and us the year before that. This spring that ice wall may have climbable fissures or new snow slopes—or it may be two hundred feet of vertical ice.”

“Well, if it is sheer vertical ice,” I said, tiredly but with a new sense of bravado, “J.C. and his front-point crampons and silly little ice axes and the whatchamacallems—jumars—have given us a way to climb it.”

The Deacon drove in silence for a moment. I could see the dome of Saint Paul’s coming over the horizon with the sun.

“Then, Jake,” he said, “I shall have to assume that we are ready to go climb Mount Everest.”

Chapter 9

I just wish this Lord Bromley-Whatsis, his serene buggering Highness, had bloody well buggered himself down to Calcutta from the hills and helped us bandobast these buggering great heavy crates to the bloody freight depot a full buggering day earlier, is what I damn well wish.