Volcanoes

I'm lying in the bed I built in the back of my Toyota Highlander, snug in my sleeping bag. It's early July so the weather is kind, but Timberline Camp sits 6,000 feet above sea-level, so I'm thankful for the warmth. It's almost midnight, and I can't sleep. No surprise. I never sleep before summit bids. Outside, I can guess the crenelated summit ridge of Mount Hood rising above the ponderous mountain mass like a row of fangs. It's an intimidating beast, all the more so because I plan on climbing it alone.

I look at my watch for the umpteenth time. For the umpteenth time it's still not one in the morning, my projected departure time. Screw it. I'm not sleeping -might as well start up. The earlier I go through the Pearly Gates (a narrow gap between prominent rock towers that guard the final summit), the higher the chances of avoiding day-time temperatures softening the ice and snow that keep the rock nice and congealed...and more importantly held together rather than raining down on climbers!

I wriggle out of my bag and step out. The wind chills me right away in spite of my compression under-layer. Gotta get moving. I go through the familiar motions of sorting out my gear. Unlock headlamp, pack spare batteries, put on extra layers, double-check summit pack, strap on ice axe, assemble three-piece trekking poles, lace up double-boots, snap on gaiters...it's an endless and familiar process.

I head out at half past midnight. My double-boots, fit for an astronaut, clunk along the pavement as I pass rows of cars before making my way onto a dirt trail leading to the ski slopes. I follow it horizontally, making my way to the edge of the groomed snow, and start heading up. The parking lot and the trails recede, replaced by dusty, volcanic moraine. It's a bleak landscape in the night. I push on my trekking poles and follow the scampering halo of my headlamp. Soon, the darkness closes behind me. Ahead, the entirety of Mount Hood hovers above the gleaming snowfields and the black fields of hard rock.

I'm scared, and I whisper encouraging words to myself as I push on in the dark. There's nobody else on the mountain, no other headlamps piercing the night. I stop and look around. I can barely see anything. Just the distant glow of the parking lot, growing ever smaller, the distant, thinly delineated edges of the mountain on either side of me, melting into the night, and far, far above, the brooding rocky peaks.

I take another step, and another, swallowing hard, breathing hard, thinking hard. And with each step, I fear that the mountain, or the night, or whatever it is that drives me to be here at this precise moment, will swallow me whole and give nothing back.

*          *          *

I'm sorely lacking oxygen at 12,500 feet on the upper flanks of Mount Rainier. I've been climbing for two hours after leaving Camp Muir, and now I'm on top of the Disappointment Cleaver, a thousand-foot rock wedge that splits the Emmons Glacier. The sky is clear and the starlight is a welcome supplement to my headlamp beam.

“Found it!”

The rope goes taut on my harness' belay loop. I take a few steps forward, rest-stepping and breathing heavily. Up ahead, Paul is bending over a large crevasse. I join him on the snow lip and look down. The bottom is indiscernible -filled with cold, blue night. A ladder has been strapped across the six-foot opening with snow stakes, planks, and rope. Paul starts out with ease as I pay out the rope. He's across in a matter of seconds. I follow as he watches the rope, struggling to keep my balance as my crampons bite into the soft wood. I make sure to place my foot down so that the rungs are between my crampons and make it safely across.

Paul's already off like a demon, and it's all I can do to keep up with him so that the rope keeps a nice bend that only grazes the snow. Every now and then, he outpaces me so much that I have to accelerate as the rope goes taut between us. We climb over a small hill and Paul disappears behind the snowy slope.

“Oh, no!” I stop in my tracks.

The rangers had warned us about this, but it's quite a different thing to witness it. To avoid a cluster of impassible crevasses, the route is going straight down, dipping down 500 feet on the glacier.
“Fuck this so hard,” I mumble under my breath.

There's nothing more disheartening than losing hard-fought altitude, especially with the summit still 2,000 feet above us...and soon to be 2,500 feet.

Every step down is easy and restful, but I can't enjoy any of them because I know that we have to go back up. We're making headway on the route, but each step forward is wrenching me further down from the summit. We turn the corner of a mansion-sized serac, and, to my horror, the broken trail plunges even deeper down the mountain -at least another hundred feet. I look at my altimeter: we're back down to 12,100 feet. Far ahead, on the other side of the serac, and so far down below, I see the bend in the route where it finally meanders back up the mountain.

“This sucks,” I tell Paul.

I'm too bushed to care that I'm acting like a whiny toddler. Paul doesn't seem tired, just vaguely amused.

“Come on, down we go!”

I follow him miserably, picking my crampon placements on the hard ice. Soon we're at the dip, and then the torturous ascent resumes. The loss of altitude is playing tricks on me. It's as if every step I take, every foot of elevation I regain, is exacting twice the required amount of strength, as though I'm climbing up twice at this very moment rather than just climbing up a second time.

“Paul, hang on!”

I sit down in the snow. I look at my altimeter -we're back at 12,500 feet. We've been climbing for four hours. From Camp Muir, we're about halfway there.

“What's up?” Paul asks.

“I can't breathe,” I tell him. “I can't go on anymore. I don't think I can do this.”

I'm panicking and sucking hard on the thin air. I'm exhausted, my legs are dead weight, and the summit is so far. Could it be over already? Maybe I don't have what it takes to climb this mountain. That thought in itself is frightening. Shaking, I take out a water bottle and try to drink. It's tough to swallow. I feel like crying.

My summit bid's over.

*          *          *

I'm about halfway up the headwall on the upper part of Mount Adams. It's steep -much steeper than it seemed from our camp on the Lunch Counter at 9,100 feet. The air at 10,500 feet is getting thin, and I'm heaving as I make deliberate movements up the hard snow. It's three in the morning and the mountain's shrouded in cold frost. I have to stab my axe and crampons into the snow to get them to stick. I know all too well what a slip would mean on this section of the headwall -the chances of arresting a fall on this compact snow are low. At the bottom of the slope, the sharp boulders of the moraine await anyone unlucky enough to take the big tumble.

Fifty feet below me, a globe of light is laboring up the slope. It's Brandon. He's never been on a big mountain before, so I've done my best to show him how to use his axe and crampons properly, and how to self-arrest if he falls, but he's on his own now. No point in roping up besides turning one fall into two.

I reach a small plateau where the snow is formed into hard sun-cup formations. I step into the large, icy bathtubs, making my way to the next steep part of the headwall, and then resume the climb. The angle is so severe that I have to front-point in many places. Below me, a snaking line of headlamps is meandering up the lower moraine. Finally, climbers are rousing themselves out of camp.

Good thing we left so early before the entire slope turns into a circus. I've talked to

many climbers at camp who had no helmets, crampons or ice axes, and planned on going for the summit anyway. I didn't want any of them climbing above us, so we left in the middle of the night.

I know the false summit is at around 12,800 feet, and then it's a short climb across the crater to the true summit...still a long way to go. Or is it? I'm not sure anymore; my altimeter's been acting up for hours. I have no idea where we are, and I can't see the top of the headwall in the dark. Just the few feet in front of me, illuminated by my headlamp. I trudge on.

Where is that blasted false summit?

*          *         *

I'm trying to catch my breath at 10,500 feet on Mount Hood. The summit isn't far, but the hardest part is yet to come. I've made my way across the crater and its drifting fumaroles that reek of rotten eggs, and I'm standing about fifty feet below the infamous bergschrund.

In 2002, a climber fell just below the pearly gates, his rope catching eight others descending below him. The catastrophic domino effect ended with all nine men plunging into the huge crevasse. Only six made it back out alive -most of them with serious injuries. Even more shocking was the crash of a Pavehawk helicopter sent to airlift the survivors. A nasty tailwind sent it into a spin, and its rotors caught the snow slope. The hawk crashed right next to the bergschrund and went rolling down the mountain. I've seen the footage about a dozen times. The bergschrund, that gargantuan gash in the mountainside, is an enemy I've been waiting to confront for years.

I want to keep climbing, but I'm terrified. There are several fracture lines on the slope, and the large snow bridge that usually bisects the bergschrund has melted with the summer heat. Only a few wispy-looking bridges to the right edge could potentially grant me safe passage across. I stand there for a long time, unsure what to do. So many people have died on this mountain -people who climbed in groups. I'm alone. I haven't seen a soul all day.

I look down, and would you believe it? There's another climber in a blue jacket peeking over the edge of the crater. I breathe a sigh of relief.

“Good morning!” I call out, trying to hide my earlier fright.

“Morning!” he calls back.

He gets closer and my facade falls away.

“It's really good to see another person,” I confide. “My name's Jean.”

“I'm Bill.”

“Good to meet you! So, I'm going to try to cross this thing on those snow bridges. If you see me fall in...I guess...get help? Thanks.”

Visions of me disappearing in the bergschrund without a witness have vanished, and I confidently start out across the snow bridges. The first one feels weak. I whack it with my ice axe and poke a hole right through it -I can see into the bergschrund. That's not gonna do it. I try another one, and it seems more solid. I venture out across it, weighting each step carefully and holding my breath. A couple of small, quick leaps bring me across, and I start breathing again. I show Bill where the bridges are solid and start climbing.


The slope's insanely steep. It'd be next to impossible to arrest a fall here, so I move slowly and deliberately. I kick good, deep steps into the untrodden snow, and sink my ice axe to the hilt to anchor myself before moving one of my feet. Below me, Bill's crossed the bergschrund and is following up in the steps I'm kicking. He offers to take over but I feel good, so I tell him I can keep going for now.

We're around 11,000 feet. The summit's not far. Above me, the rock towers of the Pearly Gates hide the final slope. A snow couloir ushers us towards a wind-raked ridge.

Christ, I hope nothing comes raining down on us.

*          *          *

“Congrats!”

A climber's walking down from Columbia Crest, the true summit of Mount Rainier. I return his congratulations, and he gives me a fist bump before continuing down. Four more people follow him, each saying congratulations as well and giving me a fist bump of their own. Is this real? Am I going to summit Rainier today? I've dreamed of it for so long. It can't be true. And yet...we climb above a small dusty crest, and there, just a hundred feet away, I see the final snow mound where there is nowhere left to go up.

I'm crying with happiness. I really thought I wouldn't make it. I hit a wall at 12,500 feet, but with Paul's patient encouragement, I pushed on, 500 feet of elevation at a time. And now, finally, under the warming sun, I'm taking the last few steps on the upper part of the summit crater.

At last, I step onto the summit. I feel a boundless joy. Paul disappears behind a screen of tears. I pull him into as much of a hug as two people in harnesses and bulky down-jackets can share.

“Thanks so much man,” I wail. “I wouldn't have made it without you. You don't know what it means to me to be here.”

It's Paul's second summit of Rainier, and my first after a two years of training and effort, including an attempt over a year ago that was thwarted by poor weather. And now I'm here. At last. I look out into the boundless sea of clouds and up at a sky that is only this shade of deep, dark blue at high altitude.

The joy. The pure, unadulterated joy. I can't believe how much I've longed for it.

*          *          *

12,000 feet.

We've spent an hour on the summit of Mount Adams, taking in jaw-dropping views of Mount Rainier to the North, and now we're trudging down. We're both exhausted, but we have to remain vigilant. Ninety-five percent of mountaineering accidents happen on the way down, and the terrain's especially treacherous today. We cross the crater and stand at the top of the headwall. A group of climbers is waiting there.

“We're gonna wait an hour,” one guy tells me. “The snow's still too hard, it'd be pretty sketchy going down right now.”

I test out the snow. It's no softer than this morning, but no harder either. Of course, going downhill is always harder. Instead of leaning into the slope and hugging the terrain, you step out into nothingness, your eyes riveted to the three-thousand foot drop down to the Lunch Counter...a long way to fall. Still, we can't afford to wait an hour...we have a six-hour drive back to Seattle. I'd still wait if the snow was truly unclimbable, but with a firm stamp, my crampons bite down securely. The risk seems acceptable to me. I show Brandon how to carefully pick his steps downhill by placing his feet flat and facing down to ensure all crampons bite down, then I start making my way.


We've been going for six hours. I know we're still in for a long descent.

*          *          *

“Keep going man! Tell me about it later!

Bill's got a gallows humor type of smile on his face, frozen there by the urgency to go down.

“Okay, okay.”

I keep on picking my way down the Old Man's Chute. Later on I'll inform him that a toaster-sized block of ice tomahawked down the chute, headed straight for his flank as he huddled against the slope to avoid the falling debris. I'll also tell him something I had to pinch myself to believe: that it changed direction and flew off to the side so close to laying into him that, standing below him, I saw it disappear behind his crouching body before flying off harmlessly to the side.

We've been lucky not to get hit so far. The three climbers moving up above us continually call out “rock!” or “ice!” and each time we flatten ourselves into the snow, holding our breaths as projectiles whiz by us and into the crater.

Bill and I decided to team up and descend from the summit via the Old Man's Chute because I'd been told that the Pearly Gates were more likely to rain down in the morning -what a crock! The Gates have been quiet across the slope while the Chute's been raining on us nonstop. It's a miracle neither of us has been hit yet, aside from a small rock doinking harmlessly off my helmet. Touchy stuff -but now we're almost out of the danger zone.

We make it to the start of the crater and I pause to peel off a layer, but then think better of it. Better get fully clear from the slope before I pause. I pick up my ice axe and move another fifty feet away. Finally, I take off my downjacket and suck down some water -I'm insanely thirsty.

“Rock!”

I barely look up in time to see a Labrador-sized boulder explode right where I'd initially paused not thirty seconds ago.

*          *          *

“I have a new theory,” I tell Paul. “And here it is. My theory is that we're never gonna make it off the fucking Disappointment Cleaver. We're gonna start over here, build new lives, get jobs, and just live and die in this fucking miserable cleaver.”

“Dude, get up. We gotta get moving.” Paul tugs on the rope.

“Give me five minutes, man. I'm dying.”

We've been on the move for twelve hours above 12,000 feet. For the third time since we started down-climbing the gigantic, crumbling piece of coffee cake that is the Cleaver, I have to take a break. Paul, who wants to get back to Seattle in time for a family gathering, is impatient, but I can't be budged. I'm bushed. My feet are covered in blisters, and I'm gagging from altitude-induced nausea. Again, I can't seem to care that I'm acting like a two-year old. Days later, I'll feel ashamed for being such a baby, and admire Paul for his steely resolve. But for now, I just need to stop moving. For just a few minutes, to not be walking, climbing, or evolving in any way across the landscape.

Christ, it's so good to be still, sitting there against the rotten cliff, the entire Ingraham glacier spread out before me like an endless ripped sheet. Eventually, I climb back to my feet and follow Paul down the poorly-scrawled trail, cursing as I trip on teetering scree.

We've been in the clutches of the Cleaver for what seems like hours, and the glacier still seems just as far. How long to Ingraham Flats? How long to the glacier? To Camp Muir? To Cathedral Gap? I don't know anymore. We've been walking, walking, walking forever.

Even in my exhausted and mildly hypoxic state, I'm not pompous enough to dare compare myself to the great Kurt Diemberger, or think that my descent of Rainier is more than a fly's turd compared to his desperate retreat from K2. But still, I can now relate to one of his lines about descending the immensities of big mountains.

Time passes, infinite time. I travel measureless distances.

*          *          *

“ How much farther?” I ask a hiker with a GPS strapped to his pack.

“A mile,” he says, consulting the little device. “Just over a mile, actually.”

I groan and catch up to Brandon.

“That guy said another mile,” I tell him. “What the fuck, man? The last guy said a mile. He had a GPS too.”

Brandon groans too.

This is our twelfth hour on the go since we left the Lunch Counter. Since then we've summited, completed a tricky, four-hour descent, packed up our camp into our rucksacks, and hiked down almost four-thousand feet of elevation on treacherous snow slopes and talus-infested trails. And still, the trailhead eludes us.

“Dude. My feet are hamburger,” I tell Brandon for the hundredth time.

“I know, dude, me too.”

Brandon's ex-marine so he's used to long, miserable marches -that's probably why he doesn't complain as much as I do. His feet are probably in the same state as mine.

At least it feels wonderful to be wearing shorts and a light T-shirt, but my feet are still encased in horribly stiff double-boots, and I'm still bent over under a forty-five pound load made up of our tent, my sleeping bag, stove, and around fifty other line items required to climb a big mountain like Adams.

The trail looks the same everywhere we go: a dusty affair punctuated by rounded boulders, threading its way under a thickening ceiling of firs. Surely, the trailhead will be around that bend...nope. Surely then, this one...nope. Hasn't it been a mile? Or two miles, even? Did we take a wrong turn? No, we couldn't have. Well then, it must be around this bend, just dig deep and walk another fifty yard. Okay, here we go...nope.

Surely then, around this next one...

*          *          *

We're finally down.

Off goes my pack. Amazing. I sit down and wrench my feet out of my double boots -Christ, that's good. I peel off my soaked expedition socks. It's like pulling back a layer of dead skin. I poke at heinous blisters...nothing a few days of inactivity won't fix. I put on my sneakers. Compared to wearing double-boots for so long, they feel like a couple of postal envelopes. I'm so light, so ludicrously light! No pack, no boots, helmet, or ice axe, nothing! Just me! Grimy, soaked, grumbling, salty, mud-caked, relieved, buoyant, dog-tired me!

I sit back in the car...it's glorious! Incomparable! Pure delight! My god, and the joy of stillness, the delightful feeling of my car gliding unctuously down the road, of entire miles traveled without pain, without effort, without tears or sweat or blood.

And in the rear-view mirror, the wonderful sight of a monstrous giant of a mountain receding with every second. To know that I've been there, to the very top, there, there, there, and now back down here, and for no damn reason at all other than to go up, and then back down to here. And I drive, and the mountain fades, and the joy grows.


And it's so goddamn fucking good.