EPILOGUE

Vince Anderson prepares a midnight hot water bottle during the first bivouac of our ascent of a new route on the north face of Mount Alberta. We had just enough room to lie down in the partial shelter of the ice roof. STEVE HOUSE

North Face of Mount Alberta, Canadian Rockies: March 26, 2008

I WATCH SILENTLY AS HUGE WHITE FLAKES float by on an updraft. Vince yells, and I glance down. He shouts something about retreating, rapping off this wall, and returning to the hut.

I turn to the black rock and keep climbing. By now, you know the story. No one has climbed here before. We don’t know if we can get up it or not. The climbing gets hard. It becomes dangerous. The weather threatens. Survival is questioned. This is all true.

When I adopted my mission, atop a boulder in far northern Pakistan 19 years ago – to be the best climber I could become – I couldn’t have foreseen the implications that decision would have. I abandoned a nascent science career and became a mountain guide. I have lived in vans and been so broke and hungry that I checked into foreign hotels, billed meals to my room, and walked into the night at 4 am, carrying a backpack containing all my belongings, the unglued sole of my boot slapping softly in the cold night. I have fathered no children. I’ve burned through my emotions and left inadequate reserves for a marriage. I have trained for thousands of hours: hiked, run, sprinted, lugged 40 pounds of water uphill, bounded, pedaled, skied, and lifted. I have climbed, and climbed, and climbed. Four, five, sometimes seven days a week. I have pushed to my limits and beyond.

I’ve taken twisted pleasure in dedicating my life to a sport where only a few survive. In my less virtuous moments, I’ve reveled in the gulf between my commitment to my sport and my worldly successes. At my nadir I have criticized the accomplishments of others in order to lift myself up. These transgressions too, are part of who I am today.

I build an anchor and yell down at Vince. “Next pitch looks good!”

He leans off his belay stance and pushes the brim of his hood back to look at me. Even from this distance I can see his misery. More snowflakes float past. A gust comes up and the snow plasters onto the signature black stone of the Canadian Rockies. It’s too late now anyway; we can’t get back to the hut tonight. We are spending it on this mountain no matter what.

“Why?” is the obvious question. We all know Mallory’s famous quip. “Because it’s there.” And there is Scott Backes’ more elitist version. “Because I can, and others cannot.” Neither answer explains this quixotic tilting against the windmill of gravity: a struggle, which at the outset one knows can never be won, though much can be experienced. Every climb ends, as does every life. And each ends where it began: on the ground, and eventually, in the ground. We always return again and again to earth, the beginning. The sum always equals zero.

I have traveled far. Through guiding I have shared this pursuit I love so much. I’ve gorged on commitment. I made friends with my heroes and discovered them mortal, just like me. I have wagered my life and nearly lost. I have submitted my ego to the greater good, pooled my will with other men, and entrusted them with everything. I watched another man die violently. I have lost friends and partners and witnessed the wounded families left behind. I’ve known romantic love and what the Greeks call philia, the love of deep friendship. I’ve stood atop one of the greatest climbs ever imagined.

A great climb has all the components of a good story: a worthy goal, commitment, crises, effort and resolution. Some stories end with a summit, some with the approach, some with a storm, some with death. The conclusion is unforeseeable, the lessons hard-won and costly. The unanswerable question – why climb – becomes all the more intriguing and begs us another question: What is success?

Vince does not call back. With slow, stiff movements he dismantles the anchor and starts climbing toward me in the burgeoning storm.

“You want this lead?” I ask as Vince climbs to the anchor.

“If you’re fired up, you should keep going,” he replies firmly.

A few minutes later I step off the belay ledge and start into the crux. I don’t see the snow. I don’t feel the wind. I map the tiny footholds in my mind. I still see them now, a year later, as I write this.

My search begins at the moment of danger. This moment is pregnant with both tragedy and transcendence. Though the tragic is rarely realized, the seeds are ever present. Gravity is relentless, ruin a misstep away. I have learned to accept the fear, to let it pass and not paralyze me. Once it washes through me I possess something powerful: the confidence to act.

Action is the message. Success is found in the process.

Vince hands me a water bottle to keep inside my sleeping bag and turns off the stove. It’s 1 am. Eleven ounces of goose down stand between my body and the bitter night air. I sleep for a few hours but then the down wets through from the light snow and I shiver. With a gloved hand I reach out and start to make some hot tea.

Vince leads a pitch on the second day. To the left is an example of a snow mushroom, a dense block of snow built up over months of snowfall cascading down a steep rock wall and forming around a ledge or roof. STEVE HOUSE

Vince belays me from down slope as I ascend the northeast ridge of Mount Alberta toward the summit. From the top we were unable to see any sign of humanity except for the small hut from which we’d started two days earlier. STEVE HOUSE

At 6 am Vince starts climbing out from beneath the roof that has partially sheltered us. He swings his axe sending silver slivers down the wall. He flexes his muscles and makes the move, risking a 20-foot fall onto a ledge deep in the Canadian wilderness. Up higher he tries to cross to an icefield, but the traverse doesn’t go. The rock is too smooth. He has no choice but to climb a steep and foreboding right-leaning crack, so thin it barely accepts the picks of his tools.

I follow the pitch, climbing crisply featured rock through three small roofs. Even with the pack, I am compelled to try to free climb. I’m having fun. At the third roof I fall and rest, hanging from the rope for a moment before continuing to the belay.

Vince continues to lead, unlocking the secrets of our route and after three more pitches the face relents. It has the makings of a classic line of ascent. There is only one logical route and it is barely climbable. It is satisfying to imagine that someone may climb here many years after we are dirt. I tingle with the fleeting notion of immortality.

I climb for more than momentary transcendence. I enjoy the lucid, calm thoughts that come after the climb, the cobwebs sandblasted from my mind. But this alone cannot explain why the feeling after a successful experience lingers for days, months, years, a lifetime.

I also crave evidence of existence. Yukio Mishima wrote that although the core of the apple exists, you cannot see it from the outside. The only way to prove the core’s existence is to cut the apple open. When the apple, or the body, bleeds, and dies the existence of the core is confirmed. I have cut open this metaphorical apple on a thousand climbs. I have seen beauty, have wept with joy; I have been astonished, and been horrified to the core.

Climbing is not an attempt to transcend gravity or death for it is these intractable forces that actually create the endeavors. Without gravity, climbing would not exist; without death, what matters life?

I take the lead as clouds rise from the valley. The rock climbing is over. We sprint for the top, simulclimbing ice until eventually we emerge from the north face onto the northeast ridge. I belay Vince in hovering cloud. We’re in heaven: a land of mountains and ridges, sculpted by wind and snow, a paradise devoid of any souls but our own.

We lift ourselves on the heights, sometimes leaving bereft families in the wake. For what? They did not, cannot, live this indescribable experience.

Witnessing death is horrific. Does my panic stem from the loss of a friend or from the foreshadowing of my own demise? Or is my terror derived of Mishi-ma’s apple; his proof of existence? Facing mortality my actions carry weight, my words heft, my life meaning.

I climb a narrow corniced ridge towards the summit. Pulling onto the top, I worry the cornice will break and send me plummeting towards the wild valley on the other side. I stand up; the summit is flat and safe. I give a yell for this small victory and then kneel to belay Vince.

Five minutes. That’s how long we spend. Two photographs, a bite of food, a swallow of water, and we start down. The descent is famously difficult. The thought of the frozen down sleeping bag in the bottom of my pack motivates me to hurry.

Four hours later the beam of my headlamp cuts through the darkness, but I see only fog – and Vince shoveling a narrow place for us to sleep. Beneath a smooth black rock wall, I organize our gear. By procrastinating, I hope it will clear enough so we can continue our descent. I would rather rappel and walk through the night than shiver through another bivouac.

Jeanne and I have been together for three years and we’ve had many ups and downs. I am willing, even driven, to take all the time and energy necessary to climb, but am unable, or unwilling, to dedicate the same to a partner or wife. It’s convenient to cast aside love before a trip; I climb lighter without the tether of commitment. Would we stop loving if we knew we only had a day, a week, a year left? Jeanne says no, she would love me even more, disarming my attempted sabotage.

Vince clears a last few shovels full of snow and stands. “Well, you can sleep there, and I’ll take this spot.” My appointed space is narrow, but protected from snowfall by a small roof. Vince is giving me the best place.

When I point this out he looks at me. “I’ve done more for people who meant less.”

I laugh and bend to remove my crampons. I lay a short piece of foam on my snow bed. I pull the frozen sleeping bag apart carefully.

The level of trust I have experienced has born something beyond friendship. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for these men, my partners, or that they wouldn’t do for me. Will I someday find this same trust, make this same commitment, with a wife?

At dawn I finally start to doze. My body heat has dried the sleeping bag and I am warmer than at midnight. The sun comes up and shines bright, but it’s a cold, winter sun that brings little warmth. Vince sets an anchor for the day’s first rappel. The glacier is close, about 600 feet below. We’ll ski back to the road this afternoon and sleep in a warm, dry room tonight. The pink light illuminates a small band of white quartz buried among Alberta’s dark rock. Winter rays cross the valley and wake the ice and stone of the nearby North Twin. Vince rappels quickly away.

I never ask Vince if there will be another climb. In 2008, Vince, Marko, and I attempted the west face of Makalu, the world’s fifth highest peak and a grand prize of alpinism. Winds battered our tents, even in base camp. I returned from that two and a half-month trip not ever having tied into a rope.

With the bright, but cool, sun lighting up the east face of Mount Alberta, Vince rigs a rappel anchor on the morning of the third day. That day we would make six rappels, down climb the rest of the face, walk to the hut and ski approximately 14 miles back to the truck. The north face of North Twin is visible behind Vince. STEVE HOUSE

Beginning the most difficult pitch of what will become the Anderson-House route on the north face of Mount Alberta, I reach out around a rock corner. VINCE ANDERSON

These stories are not fairy tales. They are the thoughts and actions of a fallible person and my very human partners. Do not mistakenly assume that these portraits exalt courage, bravery, skill, or intelligence. Though these qualities bear some part, so do fear, inadequacy, and compromise. Within alpinism’s narrow framework we seek transcendence and relentlessly pursue what remains hidden from us on flat ground: our true selves.

We should not be blamed for thinking our undertakings beautiful and grand, for they are. Meaning is born from struggle, and each of us has our own unique battle. My truths are not universal, which is one reason they are so difficult to express. My ice axe may be your paintbrush. One man’s Slovak Direct is another’s West Buttress.

I move slowly, arching my back to take in the light and the scenery. I stretch my arms to bathe in it. Absorb it. It is difficult to leave this solitude and beauty. I cannot stay here indefinitely. Mechanically I slide down the ropes after Vince, reluctant to abandon this state of grace we have achieved, here, together, beyond the mountain.