“I will go with you,” she said happily.
“Uh, no.”
She frowned. “Why not?”
“Because you don’t climb.”
“I climb!” she said indignantly.
“You don’t climb mountains.”
“I climb mountains!” she shouted even more indignantly.
“Look, I have safety equipment,” I said, pointing to my harness and all the ropes. “You don’t.”
“Then I will use yours, too!”
“We can’t use them at the same time.”
She was looking more and more pissed off. “You do not know where the people were! I know. You need me with you to show you!”
Shit, she was kind of right.
I had no idea where she’d come from, and no idea of the lay of the land. She might be able to identify landmarks that her tribe had passed by.
If I was Lewis or Clark, I definitely needed a Sacajawea.
“…fine,” I grumbled.
She was ecstatic when I gave in.
The problem was, now I needed to figure out how to safely get her up the cliffside.
In the end, I decided the best thing was to give her the safety harness. I was no Alex Honnold – basically the best free climber in the world; dude never used ropes or safety equipment, and was basically a man without fear – but I could make it up the side of a 150-foot cliff with my crampons and ice axes alone.
It helped that it wasn’t a sheer cliff. It more of an 85-degree slant than straight up, and there were plenty of cracks and footholds.
But in order to get Lelia up there, we were going to do a technique called belaying from above.
Without getting too technical about it, I was going to attach one end of a rope to Lelia’s harness. (Formerly my harness, which I was loaning to her.)
Then I was going to climb the cliff first. I would go 30 feet above her while she stayed put behind me. I would carry the other end of her rope with me.
Then, using pitons, short sections of rope, and carabiners, I would attach myself securely to the cliff face so I couldn’t fall. That secure attachment was called an anchor.
Then I would thread her rope through a locking device, which would be attached to the anchor.
Then I would use good old-fashioned manpower to safely help her scale the cliff.
Every time she ascended a foot, I would take up the slack and keep her line taut.
If she fell, no sweat – the device attached to the anchor would make sure that the rope locked, and she couldn’t fall further than a foot or so.
And if she couldn’t actually free climb, I could haul her up all on my own… though I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that. Hauling 90 pounds of hot blue elf chick up a cliff face is still hauling 90 pounds.
Once she got up to me, I would lock her off at the anchor, then we would repeat the process all over again until we got to the top.
It actually went off without a hitch. I explained the process to her several times until I was fairly sure she got it. The most important parts were she had to know when to STAY, when to CLIMB, and when to STOP.
She performed flawlessly.
She stayed put inside the cave until I climbed up 30 feet.
I set the anchor, then used the rope to help her climb.
She was actually really good at free climbing; her incredible grip strength was a huge help in ascending the cliff. She slipped several times, but I was fanatically taking up the slack, so the rope snapped taut and she never dropped farther than two inches.
The first time she fell, she screamed.
“Are you okay?” I called down, though I knew she’d just had a momentary scare and nothing more.
As she dangled there in the air and came back to rest against the cliffside, she realized that she was in no danger – and she beamed up at me.
“Yes! Fun!” she cried out, and immediately started back up the cliff as I pulled up the slack.
Within 30 minutes I reached the top of the cliff – or at least what I had initially thought was the top.
There was a short plateau of about two hundred feet, and then the cliff started up again.
Turns out that what I thought was a cliff was just the first stage of another mountain in the chain.
Which went up, and up, and up in a series of staircase-like rises, leading to a final peak that dwarfed the 500-foot mountain now off to my left. This new peak had to be 2000 feet at the very least.
I hadn’t been able to see this new mountain peak from inside the gorge because I was always at the bottom looking up.
It was like being in New York City and trying to see a 100-story building a quarter mile away when you’re standing at the base of a seven-story building. You can’t see over the top of the seven-story building for shit. In fact, you can’t see anything but the first couple of stories of the building right in front of you.
Now, for the first time, my view of what lay just above our homey little cave was unobstructed.
There was a LOT of real estate between me and that 2000-foot-peak.
And it was covered in snow…
A lot of snow.
Like… thousands of tons of snow.
On precarious cliffs all around me.
Hell, even the snow on top of the plateau was up around my waist.
My heart began to beat faster.
I imagined one of those high peaks suddenly sloughing off a wedge of ice and snow, which would hit a lower slope and knock loose more snow, which would tumble down, triggering…
An avalanche.
I remembered how it had felt to dangle at the end of my rope at Denali and see the world get blotted out by the white cloud above me.
A thin sheen of sweat broke out on my brow, and I began to have trouble breathing.
Slow down, Jack… breathe, motherfucker… BREATHE…
I struggled to regain control.
It was obviously
