CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Trust

I lost my outer boot shell on the climb and had to attach my crampon directly to my taped up inner boot. Unable to use my skis, we had to escape across the Columbia Icefield after completing the climb. MARKO PREZELJ

North Face of North Twin Tower, Canadian Rockies: April 4, 2004

“OFF BELAY MARKO!” I shout, my voice carrying through the calm winter air.

As I rappel, Marko is digging a bivouac out of the snow drifted against the vertical black wall. Reaching the ledge, I clip into a long tether and coil the remaining rope.

“This will be good, no?” Marko asks, as he pries off a large block of wind-hardened snow.

“Yeah, great spot.” I kick the block off the edge with the broad side of my boot. “And great view of Mount Alberta, too.” The snow block turns on edge and cartwheels down the steep slope, going 500 feet to the glacier below us.

“Yes. Really nice.” He switches to Slovene. “This is a proper beast.” He points the shovel blade at the soaring black wall above us.

Beast implies a wild dog; I see a seven-headed hydra. “Ya, proper beast,” I say.

Today we have traveled 16 miles through the post-equinox Canadian wilderness. We crossed the frozen braids of the Athabasca River, then skied past lynx tracks, through a spruce forest, and eventually crested and dropped into Woolley Creek. We traveled through deep snow in the creek bed, our passage eased by an old ski track left a month ago by French climbers.

After a two-hour climb to Woolley Shoulder, the five-miles distant north face of North Twin dominated the surrounding view. The brooding black wall accentuates its steepness and suits my own dark mood.

A month ago I left behind my home, my wife of nine years, and our beloved avalanche-search dog. I bought an ‘84 Ford van, packed my most important belongings, and said good-bye. Forever.

At 25, when I wed Anne on a rainy November day, I believed true love to be self-sustaining. I don’t understand why my thesis failed, but staring at 4,000 feet of black limestone reminds me that these mountains may be my solace and my curse. Purpose has its price, but it wasn’t just the time apart; I’ve always needed that. In the last six months, I realized that with Anne I am no longer capable of the intimacy I seek. Our failure to communicate our needs to one another buried us under years of resentment and judgment. I know, from climbing, that a deep connection between people is possible and that is what I want in a relationship.

In the morning I ascend the rope as the sky’s pink tint gives way to clear blue. Tying back into the ropes, I lead through a roof to a fine, thin drytooling crack. I belay on a sloping ledge and snap photos of a jubilant Marko between moments of pack hauling and belaying.

Marko leads a short tricky pitch to a small snow-covered icefield. Speeding up the icefield we enter a deep six-foot wide chimney. Climbing three pitches in this gash, the only sound is our occasional shouts bouncing off the chimney walls and echoing from the overhanging wall above.

I had just turned four in August, 1974 when George Lowe and Chris Jones completed the first route on this forbidding wall. Climbing historians now recognize that this may have been the most difficult alpine route in the world at the time. When I was 15, David Cheesmond and Barry Blanchard opened an even more difficult route on the great pillar surging up the center right of the wall. In the 30 years since the first ascent, and the 19 since the second, no one else has climbed the face.

To this point we haven’t been on either of these two routes, but when we reach the headwall we find monolithic stone rearing up into square-cut overhanging roofs. We had hoped to forge an independent line through this central part of the wall. It is painfully clear now that we are too lightly equipped for the time consuming and slow aid climbing that would be required. We zag left. Traversing across the large low-angle snow band that skirts the base of the head-wall, we arrive at the crack systems of the Lowe-Jones route. I continue left 100 feet, intrigued by a line of ice dangling with promise.

Marko is having none of it. “What are you doing? Come back!” he shouts. Minutes later I am belaying as Marko, a 5.13 rock climber, expertly leads above the ledge and reaches a belay as night falls.

As Marko prepares to descend back to the snow band, I start to dig our second night’s bivouac. We’ve cut out every luxury to ensure that there is only one loaded pack to carry. The leader climbs with a small pack containing a belay parka, a few snacks, and some water. The second climbs with the bivy gear: one sleeping bag to share, two thin closed-cell foam mattresses, a 5-foot by 8-foot tarp for shelter, GU gel and energy bars, the stove and fuel, and a few evening meals of dried potatoes preseasoned with instant soup. One large Cadbury’s chocolate bar and a bit of instant coffee made it into the food bag as a last minute concession to luxury.

After drinking his morning brew, Marko ascends the fixed climbing rope in the slow jerky motions of a cold morning. I run the stove to melt more snow for myself. When he reaches the anchor I shut down the burner and pick up the pot. Bits of ice bump into my nose as I drink down the metallic-tasting water.

“On belay Steve,” yells Marko. I shove the empty pot into the backpack, grab the already-cold stove, spin off the fuel canister, and quickly dump it in the pack.

The rope snaps tight against my harness; Marko urging me to get going.

“Climbing!” I shoulder the pack and place my front points carefully onto an exposed edge of rock and start climbing.

Hours later my hips are numb from hanging in my harness at the belay stance. Over two hours ago Marko led off, up and to the right, and disappeared around a corner. Occasionally I hear metallic banging as he places a piton. Every few minutes the rope pays out a few inches. I shiver in a sudden chill and do hanging squats against the stone to warm myself. Somewhere above, Marko progresses another few inches.

The still air is suddenly torn by Marko’s voice, “Off belaaaayyyy.”

Relieved, I put on the pack, remove the two pieces of gear from the anchor, and wait. When the rope comes tight. He yells again, “On belay!”

I shout back with a long “Okay,” and take out the last piece.

Still wearing my big parka, I start to climb. I move up around the corner and see the ropes going sharply right across a small horizontal ledge system. The rock bulges above the ledge, a polished shield. With little to hold onto, I balance on my feet and carefully shuffle across, keeping the weight of the pack as close as I can to the rock.

Finally, I arrive at the point where the ropes stretch up the past-vertical stone. Here a tiny seam splits a small six-inch overhang and widens slightly. Above that roof, just within reach, the seam opened enough to accept our smallest piton. I hook the pick of my tool into the hole of the piton, match my other ice tool on top of that and pull myself up.

“Nicely done, Marko,” I say, gasping.

“It was the only option. No?”

He’s right, there was no option but to climb that tiny seam-turned-crack. The fissure continues above Marko’s belay to a triangular roof with deep, good-looking cracks, which lead out the roof’s left side to another vertical headwall. That should bring us to what I hope will be a ledge. It’s past noon already and darkness will surely catch us there, if not before.

“This is for you,” Marko says, handing me the neatly organized gear. I hurriedly finish reracking. My crampons scrape for purchase as I climb toward the triangular roof. There is a block, three or four feet tall and several feet wide, perched under the roof, seemingly cemented to the wall by the traces of snow winter storms have blown into the outlining cracks.

I place a good piece of protection a foot beneath it. I can plainly see that if the rock comes out it will fall directly onto the ropes and probably cut them before landing on Marko at his belay stance 40 feet directly below. Tethered to the vertical wall, he would only be able to move a foot to either side to evade the missile. Carefully, I stem, placing one cramponed boot on either side of the block. At the crest of the roof I move left, past the deadly block.

“Five meters!” Marko yells. I climb a few more feet and stop to build an anchor. I can see a fixed piton 10 feet above me that confirms that we are still on the path of the Lowe-Jones route.

I belay as Marko climbs gingerly past the block under the roof. When he’s above it he gives it a tentative kick. Chunk. The block makes a hollow sound. Marko rears his foot back to strike again with slightly more force. The block silently tips through the air and skids down the slab, right where the belay had been. Then it flies; spinning, whirring, and with a loud, echoing thwack, it impacts the slope near where we bivied last night.

“Ooooh,” Marko says, as he considers what might have been.

It’s nearly dark. Lines of white snow reveal the flat edges in the black rock: the crucial footholds. I keep climbing, hoping for salvation in the form of a ledge large enough to sleep on.

“No go!” I yell down to Marko and start back to the crack six feet below me. I’ve been unable to find a better bivy site than the tiny ledge where Marko now stands 150 feet below. I place five pieces of gear, fix one rope, and descend to Marko’s marginal stance.

As I start down the rope, I hear the dull hacking of Marko chopping frozen rubble with his ice axe. In the yellow glow of his headlamp, I see that the ledge he works to flatten is two or three feet across and triangular. One person might sit comfortably, leaning against the rock with his feet stuck in a suspended backpack for support.

“Not so good,” I say, eyeing the ledge that is, at best, three butt-cheeks wide.

“Eh. It is okay,” Marko replies. “We will survive.”

Marko’s attitude is unflappable. He’s right I think, surveying the ledge. For two it will be difficult. Though we will survive, neither of us will sleep.

We cook half the remaining dried potatoes flavored with the big half of the last cube of butter. Marko finishes the cashews at my urging. I store the stove and pot in a hanging stuff sack as Marko clips the sleeping pads to the anchor. Anything dropped from here will be gone, swallowed by blackness.

Marko cooking our meal on the “three-butt-cheek ledge” that we shared on our third bivy. To find snow and ice to melt for water I ascended 50 feet to another small ledge and loaded snow into my empty backpack, hence all the equipment clipped in behind Marko. STEVE HOUSE

I retrieve the one bit of extra clothing that we have allowed ourselves: dry socks. With dry socks we can sleep with warm toes, and by stuffing my damp pair next to my inner most layers of clothing they will be dry in the morning.

Sitting on the foam mattress pad, I unlace my outer boot. I’m wearing double boots composed of an insulating foam inner boot and a protective and supportive outer. I wonder for a moment if I should clip it in. I have rigged a thin blue piece of cord on the back of the boot for this purpose, but I notice that it has a small nick in it, cut part way through while climbing. I place it between me and the wall and press against it. Marko stands and carefully begins to put the stove together.

With the inner boot off I wiggle my toes into dry socks and feel the cooling night air through the Capilene fabric. I loosen the laces on the inner boot and slide it onto my foot. Reaching behind me I retrieve the outer boot. With nothing better to take hold of I slip my index finger into the small damaged loop I threaded into the back of the boot. Putting the outer boot over the toe of the inner boot, I pull the shell onto my foot with the loop of cord.

The loop of cord goes suddenly slack on my finger. The boot stutters and floats quietly in my headlamp for a moment before it plunges into the dark, and is gone.

Silence. All I see is the weak cast of light illuminating the space in front of me where moments ago my boot was. It’s gone. There is no way to retrieve it. Even if we did have enough gear to leave rappel anchors all the way down the wall we would never find it.

The ramifications cascade: We can’t go down, so we must go up. I have no boot, so I cannot wear a crampon. Without a crampon I can’t climb. Without a boot I can’t ski. Without skis it will be a very, very difficult walk out. We are over 20 miles in a straight line from the closest road. Most of those miles are covered in crevassed icecaps and glaciers, or steep mountain walls. By the calendar it’s early spring, but our environment remains in full winter; the daily high temperature doesn’t exceed 20 degrees. At night it’s easily zero. We have three ounces of dried potatoes, half a stick of butter, six energy gels, four energy bars, and some freeze-dried coffee. We have 12 ounces of fuel, enough to produce two gallons of cold water. The weather has been clear for two days, but that will surely end soon. We carry no radio, no communications device of any kind. We won’t be reported overdue for three more days. All of this is calculated in an instant.

“Argh!” I let go an animal scream of anger. It is completely unsatisfying. “Fuck!” No better.

I look at Marko. He is quietly staring at me, jaw slack with disbelief. “What happened?” he asks flatly.

I hold up the broken bit of cord still wrapped around my finger for him to see and throw it after the lost boot. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! I am so stupid!” I still don’t feel any better. I take a few deep breaths and carefully change socks on my left foot. I keep my boot clipped into the well-inspected laces.

As I finish, Marko hands me the stove, and says, “I will leave my socks on.”

Snow spills onto my face and I jerk awake. I wipe it off with a gloved hand, suddenly remembering where I am. I’m slipping off the ledge, so I snug my tie-in a little tighter. I lean forward to change the pressure point on my numb right leg and let Marko shift toward the wall in his continuous fight to stay on the ledge. I look at my watch: 12:22 am. Marko has slept fitfully the last hour, his head resting on my shoulder. This is bad, I think. Though the night sky is clear, the wind blowing near the summit indicates the good weather is ending.

Marko grunts awake and sits erect. I flip on my light, take my half-booted feet out of the backpack, and stand up. Futilely I try to close the gap between the tarp and the wall that is allowing the snow to dump onto us.

Sitting down I pull the tarp back over our heads and groggily reflect on our situation. I am suddenly aware of how much Marko and I need each other to survive. We have to finish climbing this wall and cross the Columbia Icefield back to a road. Our futures depend on one another.

An hour after dawn I am hanging at a belay, thirsty, as Marko finishes a long traverse. We were unable to start the stove in the now-constant snowfall so we have no water today. From a stance 180 feet to my left and 10 feet below me, Marko pauses a few minutes to build an anchor before calling out, “Off belay.”

Nervously I break down my anchor, knowing that the traverse will be difficult to follow. Before we left this morning I went through our small trash bag and salvaged three plastic bags, the kind you put apples in at the grocery store. I placed all three of those, plus one gallon-sized, heavy-duty Ziploc bag over my socked foot before donning the inner boot. After that I wrapped the inner boot with athletic tape, the sole component of our first aid/repair kit. I hope that the plastic will keep my socks dry and that the tape will reinforce the fragile fabric of the inner boot.

Carrying the pack full of bivy gear, I gingerly start the traverse. The inner boot works surprisingly well on the inch-deep square edges. I wasn’t able to fasten my crampon to the inner boot, but I can feel the rock’s texture underfoot, almost like a rock shoe.

As I continue, the holds become smaller. Soon, I’m balanced on tiny edges. My left front point is securely edged on a small feature. But my right bootless foot pads desperately at the nearly smooth slab. Off to the side I reach an edge that I hook with my heel to keep in balance. With no other option I pull on my ice tools, which are set delicately on small edges. Suddenly I’m off, my stomach flips as I drop down and across the face. The small steel nut set in a crack above me starts to arrest my swinging fall, and then pings out and I accelerate across the wall.

The morning after our bivy under the summit cornice. Our tarp doesn’t quite meet the ice wall on the right. We had been too tired to redig a narrower trench. The gap allowed snow to blow onto us throughout the unpleasant night. MARKO PREZELJ

The swing spins and batters me. I slam my helmet into the stone and bruise my shoulder. When I stop, I take a quick inventory: I held onto my ice axes, and seem unhurt.

“Good thing that was me,” I say to myself, borrowing an old tough-guy mantra. “Someone else might have been hurt.”

“You okay?” shouts Marko.

I look up to answer him and see a cut on one of the two climbing ropes ten feet above me. Quickly I scramble to get back on the rock and remove my weight from the damaged rope. I can see the white core of the rope through the outer sheath. The rope is cut half-through; I look down at the glacier 3,000 vertical feet below.

I face upward and shout, “I’m okay.” No time for explanations. Marko will know everything when I get to the stance. I still have the good second rope belaying me.

“Shit,” he says as I climb the last few feet of the pitch. “The rope is cut.”

“ I know,” I answer.

“Fuck. How did you do that?” I stay silent, letting him figure it out as I reach to clip myself in. I assume that when I fell, the rope was sliced by a sharp edge of rock.

“We will have to lead only on these ends.” He indicates the ends to which he’s tied. Since one of my ends is nearly cut, it is no longer strong enough to protect against a leader fall.

“Yes,” I say. “Where now? Pendulum to that ice?”

“Yes, that should be the exit.”

“I hope so.”

That night we dig a trench against the back of the summit cornice. It’s about four-and-half feet wide and seven feet long. Marko and I stretch the tarp tight across the trench. We dug it too wide and one side is open to the wind. A gust christens our grave-like trench with a frosting of snow. I kneel on one foam mattress and roll out the second mattress for Marko. We’ve successfully become the third party to climb the wall and done a variation to the ‘74 route, but there is no room for self-congratulation in this grim bivouac. Marko’s eyes shimmer in the reflected light of the flame as he huddles to cook the last of our food.

Stolen moments of exhausted death-like sleep stretch into minutes before my slowly freezing flesh pulls me back to consciousness. My feet go numb and I do sit-ups. Marko keeps his back turned as each repetition pumps cold air into the sleeping bag we share, draped over us like a blanket. I doze again, visions of ropes cutting replay in my dreams.

At first light I sit up. I shake the snow off the stuff sack protecting the stove and start preparations to make a pot of hot, sweet coffee. As the stove purrs I have the map out. Being as careful as I can in my hungry, dehydrated, half-frozen state, I count millimeters. I’m calculating the UTM grid coordinates for points I have plotted for our escape across the Columbia Icefield. Without a boot, there is no use in returning to our skis stashed at the bottom of the face. Our only option is to traverse the Columbia Icefield to the Banff-Jasper Highway.

Tiny bubbles form at the bottom of the pot and the stove sputters and dies. We have one last eight-ounce gas canister for the possibility of another bivouac. I mix the last dehydrated coffee and sugar and pass the pot to Marko. He props himself on his elbow, nodding as he takes the pot. He slurps the hot liquid with satisfaction.

Pulling the GPS unit out of my inside pocket where I’m keeping it warm, I enter 10-digit strings of numbers. Two of these number strings delineate one waypoint. When I have eight waypoints programmed the GPS shows the straight-line distance as 28 kilometers, nearly 18 miles, away.

In a near whiteout, I break trail with my face glued to the yellow and black GPS trying to keep an eye out for swales indicating hidden crevasses. I want to repay Marko for leading all 14 pitches above the bivy where I lost my boot. Several of them had been quite hard, with serious fall potential. Wordlessly we each recognize that I should lead due to my familiarity with GPS navigation. The GPS counts every meter.

I bend and scoop some snow into my mouth, sucking out a small amount of water. I walk holding my hands in front of me for reference. I wear a crampon on the left foot and my right foot flexes comfortably in its inner boot. I tried to lash my crampon onto it with accessory cord, but after an hour, and a half-dozen stops to reattach it, I’ve given up. My toes are dry though; the plastic bags have worked. My back aches because without a boot one leg is two inches shorter than the other: a small price to pay for being alive. I try to concentrate, not taking my eyes off the yellow and black GPS.

Many long anxious miles later, with heavy legs, we descend from the shoulder of Snow Dome in the late afternoon. We have to find the nearby pass where the Athabasca Glacier slips down between Snow Dome and Mount Andromeda, but the GPS heading is leading us into a zone of ever-larger crevasses. I have no choice but to take us back to the right, away from the Athabasca Glacier.

I veer off the heading and we rapidly lose elevation. I check my altimeter: 9,500 feet. To miss the 9,100-foot pass will take us down the Saskatchewan Glacier, which could add 10 miles onto an already long day.

Holding the GPS in my left hand I lead through the whiteout. The flat light made walking very difficult and my back began to ache due to the missing outer boot making one leg several inches shorter than the other. MARKO PREZELJ

As the second day ends, Marko leads the first pitch of the upper headwall of North Twin. The next night would prove to be a critical moment in our adventure together. STEVE HOUSE

As I walk, the whiteout conditions lessen and the surface of the snow becomes more distinct. Tiny shadows begin to reveal tiny wind-whipped crests of snow. Dropping my hand carrying the GPS I see a horizon for the first time today. A dozen more strides and I see the pass just a few hundred yards off to my left. I let out a whoop and glance back at Marko. He lifts his head and stops.

“That’s it!” I yell back. I think I see him smile under the red hood of his parka.

Stumbling out of the lower icefall of the Athabasca Glacier, we spot a small group of people skiing up the glacier toward us. Marko, who is ahead, veers toward them to take advantage of the track they’re making. As we come closer they stop and huddle together on the flat glacier.

When he is 20 feet away, one of them calls out, “Where are you coming from?” The tone sounds somewhat incredulous. A raw wind is raking up the valley carrying pellet snowflakes that blast against our clothes and our faces.

“North Twin,” Marko says, and keeps walking.

“Where?”

“North Twin.” Now Marko sounds annoyed with this interruption.

“Where are your skis?”

Coming up even with the group he replies, “We left them there.” He turns slightly and pushes the point of his ice axe back towards the black clouds we’ve just descended from.

“We climbed the North Face.” Marko still hasn’t stopped walking and is past them, stepping into their ski track. They crane their heads around to watch him go as I approach. Feeling the need to fill in some of the details, I slow my pace.

“We climbed the north face of North Twin and had to descend across the icefield. We’ve been out five days,” I say.

The group turns towards me. I am struck by how clean they look; they seem garishly overdressed. Too much crisp, primary-colored Gore-Tex and fashionable goggles that surely fog up. “We haven’t eaten all day and want to get to the road before dark.”

They say nothing in reply, and huddle in on themselves, so I resume full walking speed. Then one of them says loudly, “North face of North Twin?” He pauses, and then swivels towards me. “Who are you guys?”

“Nobody,” I say. “Just two guys.”