The small narrow ribbon of frozen snow he was on gave good purchase to his crampons and ice tools.
He glanced down several hundred feet to the top of a cloud layer swirling below him. Somewhere beneath that cloud layer was a nearly vertical rock and snow covered slope that continued for several hundred more feet down to a snow gully.
He looked up the length of rope stretching above him and saw a loaf of bread sized rock formation about six feet over his head.
His partner had placed an ice screw out left about four feet from the loaf of bread formation.
“Good placement”, the climber thought to himself. Small rocky edges were intermittently strewn on either side of the frozen snow gully below the ice screw that afforded good placement for the front spikes of his crampons.
Now he just had to chop the points of the ice hammers in one at a time over his head into the frozen snow then repeat the process with his crampons, stand up, chop, repeat.
Moving through this sequence twice got him to the security of the loaf of bread formation. He hooked the curved iron of his ice tool over the formation and breathed a sigh.
Now to removing the ice screw and continuing the climb.
But first he visually surveyed up the rope running sixty feet or so above him where it disappeared over an edge created by an abrupt change in the angle of the side of the mountain above him.
Beyond that edge his partner, Charles Beckman, who had preceded him up the climb, was invisible to his line of site.
“Charlie”, as he liked to be called, had built a belay anchor at the highest point of the multi-pitch alpine climb and was taking up rope as the other climber progressed.
Just as the climber reached for the ice screw there was a sharp crack from above, beyond the edge.
A low rumbling like a distant train followed.
The rumbling increased quickly in intensity to a roar and powdered snow with chunks of ice the size of economy cars shot over the edge above.
The climber froze with terror and found himself helpless and at a loss as to what to do.
A river of ice boulders and powdered snow shot out from the edge above him with such force that it missed him completely creating a skyscraper sized cascade that was swallowed into the clouds below.
But what about his partner who was above on the other side of the edge? What was happening with the person who held his life in his hands - literally, by way of the climbing rope and anchor that would protect him if he should fall.
He didn’t want to visualize what it be like to fall through the cloud layer and begin the long fatal bounces to the snow gully. There would be no imaginable chance of surviving.
All he could do was stay put as the roaring from above brought untold tons of debris hissing through the air past him.
The avalanche lasted several seconds, nearly a minute, before it ended.
The cascade of snow and debris eased into a misty plume that eventually settled into the cloud layer.
Final rivulets of powdered snow and smaller chunks of ice sliding over the edge terminated the event.
“Charlie!”, he yelled. “Charlie! Charlie are you okay?”
No answer.
“C'mon Charlie...”, he muttered to himself, “...please let me know you made it, man.” He called for his partner two more times.
Still no answer.
The rope had not come down, but what did it mean?
Was his partner still alive? Was he even on the ledge? Because the belay anchor had been set up out of sight from the climb below, the climber could ascertain nothing with the exception that the rope he was tied into still extended above him over the ledge.
But what was keeping it there?
Was there even still in anchor in place above? "No way to tell”, he realized.
“Now what?”, he wondered.
Could he yank on the rope and pull it free and set up multiple rappels down the cliff? That would leave his partner in unknown circumstances above. Would he even have enough rope to make the descent?
If Charlie was alive and mobile he could scramble up the slope beyond the edge and retreat down a gentler gully that wouldn’t need protection.
There were too many unknowns. He didn’t want to face not having helped Charlie. He didn’t want to die trying to rappel on a partial rope length, also not having helped Charlie.
And the meter was running against his strength.
He couldn't stay perched on the tiny edges of rock and steel points for more than a few minutes or he would run out of strength.
He was going to have to do something and do it soon. He decided he had to climb.
If there was no anchor or a damaged anchor above and his partner was either unconscious or dead, he would be climbing unprotected over the cloud covered void.
He could not afford to fall. He could not afford to make a mistake.
He had to think and make solid decisions based on sketchy information. But he had to do something. If he tried to stay on the side of the frozen cliff the end would come for sure.
He had no idea whether or not whatever was keeping the rope extended above him would hold or not. The only option he could come up with was to attach himself to a self belay device that would allow the rope to run only one way, and, in the event he fell, would catch him and stop him on the rope right where he was at. Then he had to climb.
But would whatever the end of the rope was attached to above hold him if her were to fall? He didn’t want to have to find out.
So he had to climb, and only climb. Don’t fall.
He detached a small pulley with an opposing cleated lobe from his sling of equipment and clipped it into the belay loop of his climbing harness. Then he removed it from the carabiner securing it to the harness, opened it and ran the rope through the pulley and camming mechanism, then reattached it to the carabiner.
He retrieved the ice screw, looked up from the temporary comfort of where he was at and assessed the next sixty feet to the edge.
“It's doable”, he thought to himself. “It's f***ed up, but it’s doable.”
If he made it to the edge that would be good, but the edge itself was actually a small roof extending out nearly three feet past the dead vertical angle of the climb.
He would have to pull through that roof on the first attempt. There might very well be no second attempt.
“Charlie led the route over that roof without falling”, he thought to himself, “now I have to do it too."
He climbed slowly, meticulously, testing each placement of the ice hammers, trusting each placement of the front points of his ice climbing crampons.
His mental focus became so intense it soon turned to tunnel vision. “That's fine, that’s normal”, he thought to himself. He needed that level of focus. Now just keep climbing.
Thoughts tried to creep into his single minded state: would he see his wife again, his children, his parents, his friends?
He pushed the thoughts out. “You can’t allow this right now, dammit!”, he voiced in his head. “Now just climb...” the words were becoming his mantra. The thought of this gave him a small amount of mental calm, and he made it a point to allow no other words or thoughts to even enter his head.
Picking his way steadily one steely point at a time he soon found himself nearing the roof. His calves and forearms burned with a steady fire from the exertion. His breathing was long steady exhales with an occasional sharp puffing inhale when he need that little extra bit of core strength that would pull him through a more demanding sequence of moves.
He would need a good rest before he went through the likely gymnastic effort that would be required to pull over the lip of the roof, but he saw nothing that indicated there would be one.
He climbed onward.
As he neared the underside of the roof he noticed a jagged horizontal crack that was not quite an inch wide. He could try to get the points of his ice tools into that, if the crack was deep enough, and he get a few seconds to regroup before trying the roof moves.
Now the crack was only two feet over his head. He probed it with the ice tool in his left hand and managed to get the tip in nearly three quarters of an inch in one spot.
“Bomber!” he thought to himself.
The front points of his crampons were in good frozen snow nearly half an inch which made him confident enough to probe the crack with his other ice tool.
He found a second good placement for the right hand ice tool. “Solid!” he shouted in his mind.
Now he arched his back turning his head from shoulder to shoulder as he visually scanned the edge of the roof.
He lifted his right handed tool out of the crack and swung it up, out behind him, and above hacking blindly for a purchase into a surface he could not see.
The ice tool stuck. He tugged on it.
Chunks of ice and snow powder rained down as the tool broke free.
"No go. Try somewhere else”, he thought to himself.
He swung again. Same thing.
Again. Same thing.
Again. This time the ice tool made the familiar pleasant thud into frozen snow that told him he might have a secure placement. He pulled. It held. He pulled harder. It held.
“That's the place!”, he thought to himself.
He looked at the frozen cliff face of mixed ice and rock in front of him and let his instincts determine the sequence of moves he would have to commit to that would hopefully pull him over the roof to what was likely a safe place.
If he failed he would be in free space on a rope that may or may not keep him from hurtling through the clouds below.
He took one final look at those clouds.
He looked back at the cliff in front of him and the movement sequence revealed itself.
Now it was time to go.
He pulled his left foot free and stuck the points of his crampons into the crack next to the ice tool he held in his left hand as he hung from the tool in his right hand.
The balance was all wrong for a placement with his right foot so he just let it hang in free space. Not optimal, but mechanically the best position.
He removed the left ice tool and pressed up and out with his left leg as he pulled with his right arm.
He would have to pull his head as high as possible, with his right ice tool and the points of the crampon on his left foot being the only points of attachment to the cliff, in order to find the next placement for the ice tool in his left hand.
His line of sight extended above the edge of the roof. Every muscle in his body burned from the effort as he was stretched nearly horizontal under the roof.
He forced himself to not think of the possibility that the ice tool in his right hand might rip free.
He looked above.
"That might be it”, he thought. It was a small arete of exposed rock up a couple of feet and to the left. The formation was dissected diagonally with a jagged crack.
He probed it with the ice tool in his left hand.
“Got it!”, he nearly said aloud as the tip of the ice tool sunk in a solid inch.
He leaned away from the crack to his right creating enough oppositional force to lock him into place so he could probe even higher with the ice tool in his right hand.
He probed as high as he could reach. The higher the better. He could see the edge sloping away to a long positive slope to the ridge above. A long positive slope he could stand up and walk on.
Finally the ice tool sunk in to a secure placement. He bumped the ice tool in his left hand as high as he could get it in the diagonal crack.
He let go with the points of the crampons on his left foot and allowed himself to swing free with both feet, using the momentum to pull his right foot up and slap the points of the crampons onto the cliff face above the edge. He pulled up and kicked his right foot in and got the purchase he needed.
He leaned forward and swung with his right arm and sunk his ice tool into the nice styrofoam feel of secure frozen snow. He repeated this with his left arm, kicking his left foot into frozen snow.
He knew he had made it.
Now he looked at the rope in front of him. It stretched out to his right about 10 feet where it was covered with snow.
Where was Charlie?
He continued to climb the gentle slope, the anchor end of the rope now stretching below him and to his right.
Now he could stand up. He detached himself from the rope and pulled at it.
It pulled free with ease from the snow that had buried it, the end frazzled where something had severed it.
There was no sign of his climbing partner.
That left only one place for Charlie.
The avalanche had swept him over the edge into the cloud covered void below.
The climber became dizzy and nauseated realizing at once that his partner was dead and that he had just free climbed up sixty or more feet of mixed rock and ice nearly a thousand feet above a snow gully with no protection whatsoever.
He leaned forward sinking an ice tool into the frozen slope to prevent him from sliding off the edge if he collapsed.
He vomited several times but nothing came out.
“Come on! I gotta get it together. I’m alive” he assured himself.
He knew he would hike to the ridge above and find one of the gentler sloping gullies that would get him down to safety. He knew he would live.
Then he looked out across snow covered peaks, blue skies, and cloud covered slopes below. All around him on the outside was beauty. Beauty beyond words.
But inside he was empty, emotionally destroyed, and mentally exhausted.
How could such profound beauty be so cold, so empty, and so deadly.
How could this beauty rob him of his friend and cause him to be so alone?
And then this beauty, in all of its profoundness and intensity... this beauty in all of its good, and all of its evil settled forever into the vacuum that had become his mind.
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