The helicopter lowered itself into the valley, and Jack and the others jumped out.
CRUNCH!
Their crampons dug into the icy snow. The sunlight bounced off the glacier, making it hard for them to see. The children put on their GPF Snow Shades to protect their eyes from snow blindness.
The helicopter pilot took off, leaving Jack, Storm, Digger and Scarlet behind.
Jack scanned his surroundings. Now he understood why mountaineers called the Western Cwm the ‘Valley of Silence’. It was deathly quiet. There was no breeze, no birds, and no life. In the absence of wind, it was also blazing hot.
Jack looked at the temperature on his Watch Phone. It was 95°F. He shifted the temperature control setting on his Polar Parka from ‘warm’ to ‘cool’. It certainly wasn’t what he was expecting on Everest.
Flicking a switch on the side of his Snow Shades, Jack tried to locate the plane. Like the Google Goggles, the GPF Snow Shades had a zooming feature. Except for a crevasse followed by an ice boulder, there was nothing in sight.
‘I wonder where it is,’ said Jack. ‘Planes don’t just disappear.’
‘They do if someone wants them to,’ said Scarlet.
‘Do you think it was planned?’ asked Storm.
‘Maybe,’ said Scarlet. ‘After all, they were carrying precious cargo. If the Russians are after it, maybe they’re the ones who brought it down.’
Jack hadn’t thought of that before. He’d assumed that the plane had accidentally crashed. If someone wanted to get their hands on the skull, this was the perfect way to do it. Make the plane disappear, and take off with the cargo when nobody was watching.
‘Do you think it’s real?’ asked Digger.
‘The Yeti?’ said Storm, shrugging his shoulders. ‘People have taken photos of weird footprints. Others swear to having seen an ape-like creature as high as 19,000 feet.’
Jack stared into the distance. They were about that altitude now. He wondered whether there was a Yeti lurking somewhere on the mountain, watching them.
Not wasting any time, Scarlet grabbed a small H-shaped frame from her Book Bag and began to lengthen the ends. After a minute she’d created a sturdy aluminium ladder. ‘The plane’s probably on the other side of this crevasse,’ she said, pointing to the huge crack in the ice ahead.
Scarlet walked up to the edge of the hole and lowered the ladder over the crevasse. Now it was touching the other side of the chasm. Fastening the ends of the ladder to the ground with ice stakes, Scarlet tied a rope to the first rung.
‘Let’s go for it,’ she said.
Scarlet went first. With steady legs, she stepped on each rung, careful not to fall or drop the rope. When she got to the other side, she tied the rope to the top of the ladder, and used two more ice stakes to fasten it to the ice. Thanks to Scarlet, the others had a makeshift handrail they could hold onto when they crossed the bridge.
Next it was Jack’s turn. He put his foot on the ladder.
CLINK.
The crampons made a loud noise against the rung. He took another step.
CLINK.
Jack was really sweating now, not only because it was hot, but also because of what was below: a huge vertical drop between two gigantic slabs of ice. As he looked down, he noticed that the color of the ice changed from white at the top to dark blue at the bottom. As wacky as it sounded, Jack thought this crevasse was one of the most beautiful he’d ever seen.
Jack had been over several crevasses before. In fact, when he visited Mount McKinley in America, he’d learned how to rescue people who’d fallen down one. Recently, a climber in Europe had died when he fell down a crevasse and his partner was unable to save him.
Carefully, Jack continued to walk along the ladder until he reached the other side.
Storm was next. He made it across without a problem. The only one left was Digger. As soon as he put his foot out, however, Jack knew that something was wrong. Digger’s leg was shaking with nerves.
‘It’ll be all right, Digger!’ shouted Jack.
But when the boy tried to step on the second rung, he slipped. His safety rope was pulled off his harness.
‘AHHHH!’
His body sailed down the crevasse. Jack and the others raced to the edge. They shouted down to him, but Digger didn’t answer. They shook their heads. What Mr Bell had said was true: Digger wouldn’t be going home for dinner tonight.
Just then, Jack spotted something. He flicked his Snow Shades to zoom in again, and spied a small ice shelf about fifty feet down. Unbelievably, there was something lying motionless on it. It was Digger!
‘I’ll get him,’ said Jack. ‘Just be ready to pull us up,’ he told the others.
Quickly, he pulled his Klimbing Kit out of his bag. This was a circular case with a series of long nylon ropes. He tied a spike to the end of one and, at the push of a button, shot it down the crevasse. The spike torpedoed into the ice above Digger and fixed itself there.
After tying another spike to the other end of the rope, Jack shot that one into the ice boulder behind him. Tugging on the cord to make sure it was secure, he turned to Storm and Scarlet.
‘Wish me luck,’ he said.
He then threw a shorter rope over the cord and zip-lined into the crevasse.