First You Scream

The evening before the climb we sat on our snow bench by the camp stoves eating our various rehydrated suppers from their pouches. I had Organic Wild Mushroom Couscous. We compared the sodium and potassium content of each meal. No one wanted to summit low on potassium or calories. We watched some clouds move in from the north. Phil had a little gadget that predicted that freezing level would be at so many thousands of feet and winds would be 30 mph. This was not too bad, but worse than the day before. I groaned inwardly and wished we had already summitted in the perfect cloudless, windless weather. Phil asked Sue if she had chanted her mantra for good weather. Phil said he would pray for good weather. Laurel said she would too. I piped in "Me, too!" It was three to one, prayer to mantra with two abstentions. Moments of doubt followed. Perhaps we were thinking of the people, that Phil had just told us about, who are still buried in the snow below our campsite, who died in an avalanche years ago.

Phil thought out loud, "There but for the grace of God go I. What's that about?"
"I think that grace, like life, isn't fair," I said.
"Oh, is that how it is?" he replied.

The sun was going down and it would be cold soon. I washed my dish - I licked my spoon and put it back in my fanny back - grabbed my bottle of hot water to sip and snuggle with through the night and climbed into my tent. We climbed in two by two; Sue and Cindy; Juan and Phil; Anne and Laurel. Juan said, "So now we just have to lie here for six hours?" None of us, except for the two who took sleeping pills, felt drowsy so early in the night but we needed to get six hours of sleep before midnight when my alarm would wake the team and we'd have an hour to eat and dress before starting our summit attempt. We chattered back and forth from tent to tent for a while till all was quiet except for some snores and the sound of rocks falling in the distance, except that they didn't really sound like they were in the distance. I tossed and turned and tried to steal Sue's body heat as I alternately shivered or felt clammy. At five feet and just under 100 pounds I didn’t have a lot of extra insulation.

I had the same problem the night before. Sue was aghast when she discovered that I was sleeping in the same clothes that I had climbed in. “You always have to change,” she told me.

“I’m sure all the sweat has dried, I’m not wet,” I protested, not wanting to get naked and get cold - but I changed anyway and discovered that my shirt was damp. I got back in my sleeping bag and Sue told me that I was welcome to snuggle as close as I liked to stay warm. All night long I struggled to snuggle uphill. Now the next night I asked if we could switch sides and again I felt that I was struggling uphill to my heat source.

I also tried to sleep with my head downhill hoping it would keep my heart from beating so fast. I kept rearranging the face around the cocoon style sleeping bag trying to find a way to keep my face warm while getting oxygen and moisture to my nose which was becoming a raw red on the inside and too stuffy to breathe through. I hadn't thought that the hardest part of climbing would be lying down. The struggle to sleep was eventually interrupted by the urge to pee. I slipped my boots back on and wiggled out of the tent. I was alone with the sky and the stars and a beautiful orange moon above the eastern horizon. Crunch, crunch, crunch, as quietly and quickly as I could I walked 50 feet or so over the bumpy frozen snow away from the tents to take a speed pee and and ponder frostbite of the bum. I wanted to take a picture of the moon; instead I stuffed my shivering self back into my sleeping bag. I still pine for that picture of that full moon. When will I learn to suffer for art?

Back in the tent, I had plenty of sleepless time to occupy my mind. I prayed for the things I usually pray for and again for good weather and safety. I remembered my husband asking our church to pray for safety for me and my climbing buddies. An older man who had climbed Rainier and many mountains in the Northwest, sometimes with one of those famous Whittaker climbing men, prayed for long life for me. It put a smile on my face again. My phone alarm was set to wake up the team. I worried that if I did fall asleep it would not go off. It did.

I was eager to sit up and breathe more easily, eat some of my Kashi bar and get going. I stuffed my face before I got out of the tent. Before I left on the trip I had unwrapped all of my food bars, cut them into bite-size pieces and put them in a baggie which I then put in my fanny pack for easy access. On the hike up to camp they melded together in the heat and were now a block of food bar about five inches square. I knew it would freeze on the way up, but I thought I'd deal with that later. I put on my sunscreen, fleece layer, my wind and water-proof zip-up-the-sides pants layer, my synthetic "down" jacket, a balaklava – the weird looking ski mask I borrowed from my husband, helmet and headlamp, sock liners, wool socks, mountaineering boots, crampons, glove liners, wool gloves, ice ax, backpack, fanny pack and 2 and half liters of water. Someone, I think, Phil, made me tea. I was ready to go. I began to get chilly as other team members finished their preparations. I decided to pump my arms up and down to get the circulation going like the "hundred" exercise in Pilates. I had to explain my odd behavior. They wondered if I had been trying to fly away. maybe I could have found something to do to help them. We clipped our harnesses onto our rope knots and set off with Sue in the lead, 20 feet of rope ahead of me, and Phil 20 feet of rope behind me. The weakest climber goes in the middle. I was the only member of the team who had not summited before. And I wouldn't even be there if Phil hadn't sponsored me and Sue hadn't invited me to join the group that climbed the mountain that day on her permit. Next came Juan, Anne and Laurel on their own rope.

The snow route was fairly flat until we approached the rocky area of Disappointment Cleaver. Wands were all over the place marking various routes to the top. The trail in the rocks was harder to pick out than the obvious one in the snow. We began a route that was very vertical with the rope dislodging rocks, and me trying to guess which way to dodge them, but we soon found a safer, more traversing route. We came around a corner, found the snow route again and rested on a rock outcropping. When we stopped Sue said to put on our down jackets, (because we were likely to get cold while resting) but I had had mine on since we started. We had definitely reached the freezing level and the wind was blowing steadily. I reached into my fanny pack and pulled out a frozen block of food. I put my back to the wind and tried to become a pill bug as I munched on the corner. It was too hard. I ate my emergency jelly beans. We moved on quickly and gave the next three the rock to rest on. We kept moving upwards and the wind kept blowing from the left. My cheek felt numb. In my own little world, 20 feet of rope away from my team members, I began to mumble with every step, "Please make it stop. Please make it stop. Please make it stop.” Finally I said, "You and I both know that it doesn't have to be this bad." Then, I remembered that it could be much worse. The wind could pick me up and blow me away. I bargained, “Could you at least bring some feeling back into my right fingers?” At other times I requested a thaw for my left toes. I kept moving my fingers to keep the circulation going. It was odd how the numbness would move from left to right and sometimes affect my fingers and sometimes affect my toes. I had a pair of down mittens in my backpack, but to put them on, I would have to stop, take off my back pack, put my mittens on, and put my backpack back on. I reasoned that I would stay warmer if I just kept moving. At times all my extremities would feel warm at once as though I was like luxuriating in a hot bath at home. It put a smile on my face even while I sobbed with every step. I stopped trying not to cry and gave into it. It seemed like a variation of pressure breathing. It got air into my lungs, gave me energy and moved me up the mountain.

The sun began to peak over the horizon. I eagerly awaited its warming rays. We were above the clouds now, a perspective I usually only get in an airplane. It felt as though we had just started out, but we had to have been walking for five hours already. We stopped to bask in the beauty and take photos. We kept tacking upwards. Since I was in the middle of our rope team, every time we came to a switchback, I had to holler, “All stop!” to give me a few seconds to step over the rope to keep it on the downhill side as well as switch my ice axe to the uphill side. I wanted to gaze about at my surroundings, but the danger of tripping and falling down an icy slope, dragging two friends behind me was too great. I kept my eyes down on the route. Finally we came to a formation that blocked the wind. Both teams pulled in the ropes and gathered at this spot. Below the formation that blocked the wind was a huge crevasse. Above the formation the moon hung in a deep blue sky. To get over the crevasse we would have to cross a foot wide snow bridge about 7 feet long. Beyond the snow bridge on the other side of the crevasse was a red fixed rope anchored into the snow. The commercial mountain guides that had been taking groups up the mountain all season had put it there. Juan put a snow pick in the ground as an anchor. As he was making the preparations for us to cross I ate half of my emergency organic coffee/chocolate bar that my husband had bought for me. It was cold and hard and didn’t melt in my mouth the way chocolate should. I took the other half of the candy bar and shoved it up my sleeve hoping that my body heat would warm it. Sue attached to the rope with her belay device and was the first to cross. I came next, glad to feel the points of my crampons firmly gripping the snow. I clipped into the fixed rope on the other side and waited for Phil to come next. Our team was safely across, unclipped from the anchor, and continued our ascent. After a while Phil noticed that the other team was not within sight. We waited. I ate the rest of my candy bar which was still hard and cold. The other team showed up and we continued.

The mountain is considered a holy and healing place by many. It occurred to me that the mountain, in its beauty and majesty and power could be confused with the God who made it. I had more oxygen-deprived thoughts: The mountain is like a big cookie jar in the sky. Its beauty beckons you to take a closer look. It tempts you to keep coming, keep coming, just a little farther to the top and your sweet summit reward.”

The mountain welcomes you with open arms. It warms you and charms you with its flowers and rippling brooks and furry marmots. Then, it makes you sweat, and then it just about freezes off your fingers. It gives you a place to pitch your tent, but it could also swallow you whole or cover you forever with a blanket of snow. It gives your feet a path unless it blows you off to fall into the depths of its beauty. If the mountain was a god, it would be a capricious one.

Around 8:30 or 9:00 we made it to the rim of the crater. We unclipped our carabiners from the rope. Phil and Sue and took off their packs, but I kept mine on as a windbreaker. I sat my happy but weary self down and remarked to Phil that a mountain was as good a place as any to cry. Sue sat down and ate the leftover pizza she had brought for the occasion. I took pictures. I hunched over in my pill bug position. Sue wondered if I was going to throw up. It happens to people who get altitude sickness.

“No, just trying to stay warm.”

“Well come sit over here. I don’t have issues,” she said. So I sat cozily next to Sue as we drank in the view and waited for the other team to reach the rim. Phil got out a heavier pair of mittens for himself and gave me his extra pair – two huge red mittens. I don’t remember what I ate on the summit, but it probably included some crackers or other tidbits of Phil’s that he often fed me along the way as if I were a little bird. When I got off the mountain I planned to eat three filet-of-fish meals and maybe large fries with that.

When all six of us had made it to the rim, we took off on the 45 minute walk across the crater to the true summit on the other side. The crater dips slightly down and is surrounded by a rocky rim so that it was somewhat protected by the wind and was comfortably warm despite the freezing temperature. The icy snow stood up in cones of filigree pattern. I tried to capture it with my camera. I tried several angles and just as I was about to be satisfied the camera froze up. That was my last photo, but Sue and Phil and Juan continued to document our trek. When we got to the true summit we took pictures, and everyone but Sue signed the guest registry. This time I didn’t let the heavy lid of the guest registry box slam down on my fingers as I did on Mt. Shasta, making for a rather odd mountain climbing injury. We saw steam escaping from the heat vents, a reminder that we were standing on the rim of a volcano. I had wanted to do that since my third grade teacher went to Hawaii and brought back pictures of erupting volcanoes. It would have been nice to spend the day at the crater – Sue once camped overnight there – but the sun was getting higher and would be softening the snow bridges and encouraging rock falls. We needed to be back to camp around 2 pm. Several of us had to pee before we began our descent. There is not a lot of rock cover in the open crater so the etiquette is to ask everyone to look the other way.

We began to descend. Juan, Anne and Laurel took the lead. We crossed the huge crevasse. Anne and Laurel urged everyone to hurry up; they felt the snow was softening quickly. Just on the other side of the huge crevasse was a small snow bridge over a narrow crevasse that we had stepped over earlier. Now Juan placed an ice pick in the snow beyond it. With a member of our team clipped into the snowpick, we each took a running jump over the narrow crevasse. Phil was the last over the crevasse. He pulled up the snowpick and stowed it on the outside of his pack. We continued our descent. It was getting hot, but I kept my balaclava on to protect my ears from sunburn. Also to take it off would have involved stopping, removing my helmet, and repacking my back pack. Often, as I would jab the snow on the side of the path with my ice pick for balance, the snow would give way to nothing, a continual reminder of the softening snow.

We made it to Disappointment Cleaver. Again it was tricky picking out the route among the rocks. We pulled in our rope to about 5 ft. between each of us to keep from catching it on the rocks and dislodging them. Earlier that morning, on a rest stop among the rocks we had to be very careful not to lean against any of them. I sat gingerly on a large boulder while keeping most of the weight on my feet. It seemed stable for a few minutes, but I could soon feel it shift under my weight. The rocks could be a bad accident about to happen. As we perched precariously on the rocks and rested for a few minutes, we could see our camp as tent specks below us. As we hurried off Disappointment Cleaver a miniature avalanche of rocks chased us onto the snow route.

I let out the rope for Sue ahead of me. Phil let out about five more feet of rope for me. The scary stuff was over, the descent was fairly level now, and we would soon be back at camp and I could take off my hot and heavy clothes although they would then be replaced with a heavier backpack filled with the camp gear. The only thing left to do was endure.

Then I was in free fall. The snow-packed trail had disappeared beneath my feet. First I screamed. I couldn’t believe it. What would happen next? Was this the end? In an instant I stopped. I was looking down: "This is a cool, dark, green place. Feels refreshing after the hot sun." My entire body was hanging in my harness almost touching the side of the crevasse. I looked into the wall , nose to snow: “I didn’t want this to happen today. I’ve been so careful.” Then, “I’m too tired to use the prusik ropes to pull myself out of this hole.” I looked to my left and there was a snow ledge. I stepped onto it and looked up. My head and shoulders were above the snow. Phil says that my head never disappeared, but I felt disappeared. I jammed my ice axe into the icy snow but didn’t get much of a grip on it. Sue was on her hands and knees crawling back towards me. My fall had pulled her down and she had fallen on her back. I had fallen down and to the left so that I was at the tail end of the opening. Sue started to crawl past the end to get to the other side of the crevasse. Phil assured her that he had me. First he had stopped my fall by digging in with his crampons and then he whipped out his snow pick, rammed it into the ground and wrapped the rope around it. Phil yelled to Sue that the rope was going around my neck and to get me to turn around. Sue said that I was too shook up.

“Am not!” I thought and pulled the rope over my head and turned around and leaned on the other side of the crevasse which at this point was just about a foot away. I left my ice axe on the other side.

I asked,” What should I do with my ice axe?”

Sue said, “Don’t do anything.” Instead, I turned around and grabbed my ice axe and brought it to the other side.

I said, “I’m ok. I’m good. I’m on a ledge.”

Sue peered down into the abyss beyond the tiny ledge I was perched on and looked over at Phil. “No she’s not good. It’s very deep.” At those words, my legs began to shake uncontrollably. I decided to ignore the legs.

Phil was worried that I had broken bones. Sue was thinking that Juan had said that the first thing you do in a crevasse rescue is use brute force. Sue couldn’t think how she could pull me out of there. She yelled, “Juan, help!” Phil blew his whistle. I was not going to let them outdo me on yelling so I chimed in with a couple of my own cries for Juan! And Help! That done, there was silence. We looked into each others’ eyes. I told them that I was going to anchor my ice axe in the snow. I flashed onto a picture I had seen in the mountaineering bible that showed an ice axe stuck in the snow as an anchor tail first. I bellowed like a sumo wrestler and stuck the tail end of the ice axe in the icy snow. Not far enough. I turned it around in the usual self-arrest style; bellowed and struck again. Still not good enough. I bellowed again, struck, tested it. It would have to make do. I told them that I was going to throw my leg over the side and come out. They held on to the rope forming sides of an angle to my left and right. I gripped my ice axe, bellowed, and tried to throw my leg over the side while they pulled on the rope, but the rope dug into the snow and held me fast against the side of the crevasse. Sue told me to use my crampons to dig into the side and climb up. I dug and the snow under my ledge fell away softly. I was undercutting my precarious ledge. I told them I was going to try throwing my leg over again. I knew I could do it. I just needed some upward as well as forward motion. I bellowed and over I came.

I lay on my face and asked, “What do I do now?”

Sue said, “Roll over toward me.” I did. I was safe. And then I cried.

Phil said, “Good. Let it out.” A few seconds later I sat up and spit the dirt out of my mouth.

“Ewww,” I said. “I probably ate ice worms.”

Juan appeared on the crest of the hill as I wiped my eyes and began to scold, “What are you doing so close together? This is glacier travel!” He directed our path to get back on the route, but first, Sue took pictures of the crevasse. I was glad of it because I didn’t want to look, but I wanted to see. We walked well below and beyond the opening and then moved back up to the well-traveled route. We had to step over five or six more small crevasses before we got back to camp. Separated again by twenty feet of rope, I called back to Phil. “Hey you got your wish!”

He didn’t know what I meant. I reminded him that the first time we climbed this mountain he and our climbing partner, Brenton, hoped that something would go wrong so they could rescue me. Male White Knight Disorder. Then it occurred to me that my friends had saved my life and I hadn’t said thank you. And what about God? Had he saved my life? Had he answered my prayer and kept me safe? What exactly is his safety net policy for those who engage in risky behavior? He’s the one who put that tempting cookie jar there. He knew we would come. The whole thing was his fault. Phil suggested the possibility of angels. I hadn’t even considered that. It rains on the just and the unjust. It snows on the just and the unjust. Blizzards blind the just and the unjust. Some people fall into crevasses and die and some people don’t. Life’s not fair and grace is not fair, but did I get some? The worth of my life is no greater than any other ordinary persons’. As an extra in this cosmic drama my role could have ended with this episode. But it didn’t. Had God intervened on purpose or was my measure of grace a natural consequence of training with pilates, traveling with experienced mountaineers and falling on random snow ledges? Phil said he didn’t know; it was my story. My conclusion? I still had life. Breath is a gift from God, so I am thankful to Him for it. Which is another way of saying that I don't know either. But I lean to a listening God.

We got back to camp. Sue asked who needed protein and I said, “I did!” She handed me a pouch of tuna fish and I wolfed it down. Laurel said she had heard my scream and gave an imitation. Want to hear her do it again? I caught up with Sue and Phil, “Did I mention, ‘thank you for saving my life’? Thank you for saving my life.” Sue said she had felt like crying at the time but knew she shouldn’t. She had felt so relieved when I got out of the hole. I realized then that my rescuers too had had an intense experience. Maybe they needed to calm down with a bag of tuna. Sue got the “what ifs.” If Phil hadn’t been so close on the shortened rope, I might have fallen farther. What if Phil had fallen instead of me? Phil would have been much heavier and harder for us to stop. A team of large men were behind us. If one of them had fallen in they too might have fallen much farther. It started to sound like a good thing that I had fallen. Word got around camp that a crevasse had opened up on the route. Be careful. A climber called across the snow for a description. It was cool, and dark and green.

We changed into lighter clothes, stowed our tents and stoves and heavier gear into our packs, roped up and headed out single file. As we passed other campers Anne would announce that one of us had fallen into a crevasse.

“Which one?” they called out and I raised my hand. They gave me the thumbs up and said, “Glad you’re still with us.”

“It’s good to be here,” I replied. We moved down through Cadaver Gap and onto the snow field before Camp Muir. We crossed many crevasses in the field, but instead of stepping over them as we had done on the way up, the line leader would jump across as the other two would hold the line behind. Then all would move forward until the next person was ready to jump across while the one in front and behind held the line in ready in case the trail collapsed and the crevasse widened when we crossed it. We made it to Camp Muir and the solar composting toilets. I attached my ice axe to my backpack and got out my trek poles for the last segment of the trip. Meanwhile Anne and other team members had been chatting with a ranger about the crevasse. He told them that it was very rare for anyone to fall into a crevasse on Mt. Rainier. When I caught up with the group the ranger said that since I got out all right my team must have used proper rope technique. I hesitated for a second to confirm that, thinking about the short rope thing, but with Juan nodding his head, standing behind the ranger, out of his line of vision, I enthusiastically agreed, “Yes, they did.”

Several yards below Camp Muir the world was socked in by a fog. We descended into the soup. Anne was tired and Sue wanted to walk out slowly with her. Juan and Laurel went ahead. Phil and I hung back with Anne and Sue, alternately going slower and then getting far ahead as we slid down glissade chutes . With the beauty of the wildflowers all misty with the dew, the relaxation of knowing we were so close to home and the camaraderie of conversation, we missed a turn on the trail. We tried following other trails back but kept running into dead ends where the trail had been closed. Finally we ended up at the bank of a raging creek which couldn’t possibly be crossed. We had to double back even though we were tired. We found another trail which led to a parking lot, but not the right one. We almost split two and two at this point, but we all decided to go in the same direction which turned out to be the right direction. It was 9:30 at night and it was beginning to rain when we made it to the visitor center. Anne and I waited under the overhang – the center had been closed for hours - while Phil and Sue went to get the truck from the parking lot. Juan and Laurel had been waiting for two hours having a cup of coffee in a restaurant.

We loaded up the truck and Sue drove the three hours home. We stopped at McDonalds and I ordered three fish fillet sandwiches and one large fry. Juan got to eat the sandwich I couldn’t finish. When we got to an area that had cellphone coverage, I called my husband to tell him that we were safe, we had summitted and were heading home. I spent some time thinking about how to tell my husband that I fell in a crevasse. Sue advised me to tell him soon because we live in a small town and he might find out from someone else first. Anne’s husband was waiting for her when we pulled into Sue’s driveway some time after midnight. “Cindy fell into a crevasse,” she announced. Sue and I exchanged glances. I got in my car and drove the fifteen minutes home. I jumped into bed and said, “I summitted Mt. Ranier and only fell into one crevasse.”