8

Despite a few knocks, Neil Quinn and Nelson Tate Junior descended the Third Step in reasonable shape. The smallest of the three, it was only about thirty feet high, more of a scramble down over jagged rocks than an actual drop.

The rock-strewn plateau beyond was wider, easier going at the expense of being much more exposed to the wind. Quinn pushed them both on, over the uneven gravel and stones, his eyes fixed on the swaying yellow form stumbling ahead of him on its umbilical cord of purple rope. The kid’s sharp crampons, in their wayward struggles to find grip on the rocks of the Third Step, had caught and ripped the gaiters on his boots, the metal teeth slicing into the legs of the down suit beneath. With each heavy step, Quinn watched as feathers curled from the tears like toothpaste before fluffing out to be torn away by the wind. Above, he could see the boy’s hands hanging heavily to his sides, fingers frozen and useless. He was probably going to lose most of them.

Not good. Not good at all.

Putting aside thoughts of the inevitable mess that was going to cause, Quinn concentrated instead on the approaching Second Step. This time he had no choice but to think about how they were going to down-climb it.

On the way up, Dawa and Lhakpa had fixed it with a new length of yellow nylon rope. Normally on descent, it would just be a case of clipping onto that line and slowly rappelling down, using the rungs of the old ladder that lined part of the route as steps. It required good hand control to manipulate the metal descender on the rope, leg strength to make good each step, and an ability to concentrate on the job at hand despite hanging over a ten-thousand-foot drop. It didn’t take the blast of fierce wind that slammed the kid to his knees once more to prove to Quinn that Nelson Tate Junior no longer had any of these abilities.

Struggling to pull the boy onto his feet, Quinn looked back up the hill for help, searching for any sign of Dawa and Pemba. There was none. Dawa’s radio was still silent. Perhaps Pemba was struggling once again. Perhaps the batteries of the radio were dead. Whatever the problem, it was too cold to wait, especially with the kid already suffering frostbite.

What particularly worried Quinn was that he had no confidence the boy could work a descender down that length of fixed line. Any slip would be fatal. His only option was to hold the boy on the end of the purple rope and lower him from an anchor until he reached the small ledge that jutted out below the rock wall. Once there, the kid could wait while Quinn followed him down. It was not elegant, but at the very least it would give him some control over where the boy was going. He knew he was pushing his luck, but he had little alternative; it was time to improvise.

Carefully Quinn helped the boy down over the dangerous, broken rock slabs that led to the top of the Second Step before stopping him at the edge. There, clipping the kid tightly to the yellow rope and making him sit, Quinn pushed himself out to look down the upper part of the cliff to check the line down. The world below fell away, a never-ending plunge down the scaly black-and-white slope to the glacier far, far below. It took what remained of his breath with it.

Turning back into the hill, Quinn focused on fixing a secure anchor from which to suspend the boy. To one side he saw an old metal piton firmly driven into the rock. The rough-hewn nail was as black as the ages-old rock that held it, as if it too had been there forever. He hooked a carabiner into the eye of the piton. However hard he pulled, it refused to move. It was solid.

While Quinn assembled the rope’s anchor, the kid lay slumped on the ground beside him. The Englishman began to bully him with the details of how he was going to get down, shouting at the boy about how this was it, the only real obstacle now between him and his home, his parents, his dog, and this time he said it—the rest of his life.

When everything was ready and Quinn signaled that he could go, the kid weakly got to his knees and then his feet.

Swaying, he slowly turned around to look back at Quinn, leaning out on the rope until it tensioned.

“Concentrate, okay?”

With a nod, Nelson Tate Junior began to step blindly back, slowly vanishing from sight over the edge.

Gusts of wind ripped at Quinn, drilling the cold into his core as he waited above the sheer rock, gently paying out the rope.

Time passed.

When Quinn felt a light tugging on the rope, he knew that the boy was maneuvering himself onto the top of the ladder.

Slowly, he let more of the purple rope slip through the locking device secured into the old piton so the boy could keep descending.

It’s working.

Quinn willed the kid on, telling him to go, repeating the word between every labored breath.

“Go. Go. GO!”

About halfway down, Nelson Tate Junior caught his right crampon on some old rope that was wound around the ladder.

He tried to kick his foot free.

Once.

Twice.

On the third kick, the sudden momentum of the crampon’s release caused the kid to lose his balance.

Toppling to the side, he swung out and to the right of the ladder, crashing hard into the side of the mountain and dislodging a fall of snow and loose rock.

Quinn saw none of it but felt it all.

The purple rope slammed downward, ripping through his mittens until jamming in the viselike grip of the belay anchor.

All he could do was lean back against the side of the mountain and hold the stretching rope with all his remaining strength, heart pulsing in his throat as if tugged up into it by the purple cord.

Quinn tried to see what was happening, but he couldn’t move forward enough to see down to the suspended boy. He shouted out to him, screaming at him to answer, to tell him what was happening, but there were no sounds in reply, only the rasp of his own frantic breathing shooting backward and forward like a hacksaw through metal.

An eternity passed in minutes.

Quinn began deliberately sucking in more air, preparing himself to move so he could help the kid.

But, to his surprise, just as he readied himself to get up, the tension on the rope relaxed a little.

It felt as if the boy was pulling himself back onto the ladder.

The rope tensioned once more.

The boy was actually continuing to descend.

Quinn couldn’t believe it.

He paid out more rope until it stopped again.

This time Quinn felt a faint yet distinct series of pulls that told him that the kid must have made it to the small snow slope that lay at the bottom of the rock face.

Double-checking that he was clipped into the yellow fixed rope that ran down over the step, Quinn unhooked the purple rope from the security of the old metal piton and moved to the edge of the step.

Directly below him the boy was indeed standing on the ledge, leaning in against the sheer rock, waiting.

Quinn started to make his own way down, gathering in the purple rope as he went.

When he too reached the ladder, snow and rocks, loose from where the kid had swung against them, started to fall to the side of him.

Each time, Quinn instinctively huddled against the metal frame, pushing his face into its worn rungs, close enough to see the scratches and scrapes from the hundreds of pairs of sharp crampons that had worked their way up and down it over the years. When the falls stopped he slowly continued, focusing everything he had on getting to the bottom of that rock face.

Finally sensing he was near, Quinn began to prepare for the uneven step down off the ladder.

A sharp skidding noise from above caused him to momentarily look up.

Then there was nothing.

When Neil Quinn came to consciousness, he was lying facedown on the sloping snow ledge.

His goggles and oxygen mask were pushed from his face, his mouth and nostrils plugged with freezing snow.

Raising his head, an unlikely warmth leaked down his forehead.

Blood?

It began to run into his right eye.

His brain began to pound.

How long have I been out? Seconds? Minutes?

Weakly lifting his spinning head, he wiped his face and pushed his oxygen mask back up over his mouth.

For a while, it was all he could do to breathe.

Eventually he was able to roll over onto his side to see down the mountain, scanning the debris from the small avalanche that must have caused his fall. It tracked away from him down the sloping strip of snow and over the edge.

His blurred, bloody vision made out the length of purple rope still tied to his waist harness.

He knew he was searching for something.

What?

He traced each twist and turn of the wavy purple line until it stopped at the sharp slice of rock that had cut it.

Contemplating the end of the rope, senseless, not connecting, Quinn was just surprised at how perfectly that rock must have severed it as it sliced into the snow.

Suddenly he felt as if he had been slammed by another rock, but it was only his aching head recalling what should have been at the end of that purple rope.