Beck tipped out the contents of Tikaani’s sodden rucksack to see if anything was still dry. It was a forlorn hope. The wet rope probably didn’t matter; the wet clothes very well could.
And then there were the clothes Tikaani had been wearing, which were soaked through. The water brushed off the coat easily, so at least he still had that, but he could do with a fleece as well, and they didn’t have a spare that was dry.
Beck wrung out the fleece until as much of the water was gone as possible. Then he spread it out on a rock along with the other items and went back to the fire.
‘I don’t know if they’re going to dry there, or just freeze,’ Tikaani said.
Beck grinned. ‘That’s the aim!’
He gave it an hour, until he was certain Tikaani was as warmed up as he was going to get. Then he stood up and peeled the fleece off the rock. It was a sheet of ice, frozen solid.
Beck folded it so that the ice snapped and cracked in his hands, and whacked it hard against the rock. He closed his eyes as bits of ice flew everywhere. He did this a couple more times, then shook the fleece out again for Tikaani to see.
‘It’s almost completely dry!’ Tikaani exclaimed. He ran his fingers over it to check. ‘That’s amazing.’
Beck bit back a grin. For a moment his friend reminded him of a housewife in a TV ad plugging a new cleaning product.
‘New Improved DryClothes, TM,’ he said, putting on the smooth and insincere tones of a TV announcer.
‘Now With Added Dryness!’ Tikaani added. ‘So . . . it froze, right?’
‘Yup,’ Beck agreed, ‘and once all the water is frozen, you can just bash it out.’
He gathered up the other clothes he had put out. They were icy but they hadn’t completely dried yet. ‘OK. Once we’ve got a shelter for the night we’ll leave these out and they’ll be completely freeze-dried by the morning. How are you feeling?’
Tikaani grinned, stood up, and stretched. ‘Never better!’
‘Then get your boots on and we’ll head up. Oh, and give me your water bottle. At least we can fill that up here . . .’
The ground slowly rose as they walked. Even back at the lake, high up the side of a mountain, there had been ups and downs and flat areas. Now there was no question. They were going up, and only up. Every step they took was fighting gravity, lifting them a bit higher. Their legs and thighs knew it and felt it. They still obeyed commands from the brain, but it was on the condition that they got all the body’s reserve strength. There was nothing left for chat between the boys. They breathed deep of the thin air and they walked.
There were no more bare rocks, certainly no more plants to burn, nothing alive or dead to eat. Just a slope of smooth, unbroken snow. Beck led them up in long zigzags, grateful for the snowshoes on their feet. Without them the boys would have plunged into thigh-deep snow with every step and the climb would have been impossible.
But even that came to an end. Above them was a valley, with the ground rising up on either side. Between the slopes, where they would have to walk, the ground was jumbled and jagged in a hundred different shades of white and grey. In fact, Beck knew, it wasn’t ground at all. It was a frozen river of ice pouring down the mountainside very, very slowly.
‘It’s going to get difficult now,’ he said. ‘This is a glacier.’
It had been marked on the map so he had been expecting it. At any rate, it meant they were still on course, still heading towards the pass through the mountains. But it was still a pain. The only way to reach the pass was straight up this valley – straight up the frozen river. After that they could carry on and be on dry land – or at least snowy land – again.
Tikaani craned his neck to follow the glacier’s course.
‘Do we go on it?’ he asked.
‘I’d rather not, but . . .’
Beck pulled the GPS out of his pocket, retrieved the batteries and reassembled the gadget. He squinted at the screen. According to the map, the mountain suddenly rose up almost vertically in a cliff – a curtain of rock a hundred metres high. Beck looked uphill and could see that for himself. The curtain rippled with frozen folds and creases. On the map, the pass came out in one of them. It was a clear area on the screen between two tightly clustered lines of contours.
‘. . . but we’ve got to,’ Beck sighed. He tilted his head back to look at the sheer peaks that were still over a thousand metres above them. Mighty geological forces had thrust these mountains out of the ground over millions of years. The same forces were very slowly pulling the mountains apart under their own weight. There were cracks in the sheer wall of rock – and that was what would help them. One of those cracks was the pass they were heading for.
‘I don’t see it,’ said Tikaani, following his line of sight and mirroring Beck’s thoughts.
‘It’ll be there.’ Beck pointed with his hand, slicing through the air straight ahead of them. ‘Thataway. Look.’ He held up the screen. ‘See how close the contours are?’
Tikaani glanced at the glowing image. ‘Uh-huh?’
‘The closer they are together, the steeper it is in real life.’
‘So . . .’
‘So our pass will be a very narrow path between two very steep bits of rock. Don’t sweat – we’ll find it but we may have to be close to see it.’
The power display on the screen was almost flat, so Beck quickly switched it off again. He could navigate by eye for the time being.
‘And from now on’ – he shucked off his rucksack and opened it – ‘we tie ourselves together.’