They climbed for two more hours after leaving the river. They talked, but not much. It was more important to save their breath for walking. Beck kept an eye on his friend. He remembered how every muscle in his legs had been screaming the first time he climbed a mountain; that was probably how Tikaani was feeling now.
Beck showed him the way: put one foot in front of the other, maintain a steady rhythm and just keep going. Every hour you stopped for five minutes – which was enough to rest your limbs without allowing them to stiffen up. You needed mental discipline to get going again immediately the rest period was over.
‘Just push through the pain barrier,’ he urged his friend. ‘You’ll always find you can take one more step. And then you find you can take another. And then your body gets used to it.’
And so the ground passed slowly in front of their eyes as they trudged up the side of the mountain. The cold wind, which just on its own could cause frostbite, was behind them and their rucksacks helped absorb its attack. But Beck remembered a figure he had been taught once – for every hundred metres you go up, the temperature drops by two degrees Celsius. By that reckoning they would be at freezing point before they reached the top of the mountains – which was why the peaks were clad in snow and ice.
It also meant that once they were heading downhill again, the temperature would go up two degrees for every hundred metres of descent. That was something to look forward to.
Beck wondered about making a noise to scare off any bears, but as the trees thinned out it seemed less important. He couldn’t believe any bears would be hanging around up here when there would be so much more for them down on the plain. Animals have a big advantage over humans, he thought ruefully; they know where they’re better off and they stay there.
Finally he decided it was time to call a halt for the day.
‘This’ll do,’ he said. The non-stop uphill terrain had actually dipped a little and the ground was flat. They were among the very last of the trees. Above them was just rock, with a very thin covering of soil. And soon after that, just snow and ice.
To mark the spot he ceremonially undid his rucksack clips and let it fall to the ground behind him. Tikaani did likewise.
‘Thank you,’ his friend said earnestly, then took a few steps to ease his aching legs. ‘I really couldn’t have taken—Wow!’
Tikaani had looked back the way they had come. Beck came to stand beside him and together they looked proudly out over Alaska.
Beck estimated they had climbed a good thousand metres since they had crossed the river. Below them, trees and tundra merged together into a patchwork quilt flung all the way to the horizon, where it merged into a grey sky. Maybe they had been higher than this in the plane, but when you were up there you felt cut off from the scene. Now, standing on the ground, the two boys actually felt part of this astonishing landscape.
‘We did all that today?’ Tikaani asked, amazed. ‘We did that?’
‘Yup,’ Beck agreed. ‘We did that.’
He looked out at the incredible vista with less enthusiasm. Normally he would have loved to enjoy the view. But somewhere down there was Uncle Al in his makeshift shelter, and he wasn’t getting any better. So while Tikaani looked at the tundra far below, and marvelled at the awesome beauty, Beck thought of it as one third of their journey. With two thirds still to come.
He patted Tikaani on the shoulder. ‘Come on – we need to make a shelter while it’s still light.’
He looked around, considering. Ideally he would have liked to make an A-frame shelter, like the one he had built in Colombia for himself, Marco and Christina. It would be sturdy and give the best protection against the elements. But it would need good strong branches cut off a tree, and he only had the Bowie knife, not a saw.
‘We’ll make a lean-to,’ he decided, ‘and we’ll make it here.’
He stood between a pine tree and a boulder that came up to his shoulders. At about the same height on the tree there was a fork in the branches. ‘We need to find a branch that’s good and straight.’ He tapped the fork, then the rock. ‘We put it across here, and lean other branches and stuff against it. It’ll block out the wind and we can sleep in its shelter.’
‘There’s still one side open,’ Tikaani pointed out.
‘Yup. The fire goes that side. Trust me – we’ll be snug as a bug in a rug.’
‘Any bugs in my rug,’ Tikaani muttered, ‘get squished.’
They soon found the main branch for the shelter, still attached to a tree nearby. The wood was too thick to cut with the knife, but by hanging on it with their combined weight they made it sheer off until it was only attached by a few strands which the knife could handle. They laid it across from the fork in the tree to the rock, and started to look for other branches on the ground that they could prop against it.
‘What do we do tomorrow?’ Tikaani asked as they searched. He jerked a thumb upwards, pointing up the mountain. ‘No trees up there.’
‘We’re not going to spend a night in the snow,’ Beck promised. ‘Not if I can help it. This time tomorrow we’ll be up and over and down in the trees on the other side of the mountain. So we’ll probably do the same again. OK, we need foliage – plenty of it. If it’s going to be windproof, we want it at least ten centimetres thick . . .’
‘OK,’ Tikaani said. ‘I think I saw some loose branches over here . . .’
He ducked behind some trees, out of sight for a moment. Beck decided he would start gathering wood for a fire. There were plenty of dry, dead twigs that could be used for kindling, and he crouched down to scoop up a handful.
‘Beck! Beck!’
Beck jumped to his feet as Tikaani burst back through the trees. The two boys almost collided.
‘Beck!’ Tikaani grabbed hold of him, effectively pinning his arms to his side. ‘It’s a bear! I think it’s a bear. It was brown and . . . it’s a bear!’