Cameron McPherson Smith

July 1992

Curled up inside my sleeping bag, I try hard to ignore the wind...it is an insane and unpredictable blasting, one minute whipping the tent into a frenzy of flapping and popping like gunfire, the next, falling silent, only to resume...either slowly, building up to a deafening crescendo, or abruptly -- like a wave crashing down upon our little nylon envelope perched here at the 10,000-foot level on Mount Rainier.

Of course, I can't ignore it at all, no matter how deep I try to burrow in my sleeping bag... Accompanied by sporadic whishes of snow which pass over the tent, the wind seems intent on keeping me awake. My eyes are watering and painful...I didn't wear goggles on the hike up here yesterday and I am now paying the price. Snowblind. It feels like hot grains of sand have been shoved under my eyelids. I try to keep my eyes from moving and curl back into my foetal position...

The normal alpine-start time passes, 2am, 3am, 4am. It's too windy. We'll sit it out today. Chiu and I don't have to talk to know what we're thinking. Finally, 7am comes and with it the wind throttles back a bit, down to a gusting, intermittent gasp occasionally breaking into the continual moan. Somehow -- for some reason -- we're getting ready to go. I cannot believe we're going out into that howling wind. Chiu and I dress quickly. Capilenes (already wearing them), pile jacket (already wearing it), pile cap (already wearing it), polypro socks, wool socks, polypro gloves, goretex gloves, goretex bibs and jacket. 'De agony of the boots' - we jam frozen liners into the hard plastic shells, lace up. Helmet, then hood up. Goggles. No time to cook breakfast - this is a late start as it is, so we devour a hunk of cheese each. When I unzip the tent the wind, the cold and the snow blast in ; the snow is dry, granular, so it's cold alright. We wriggle out into the whiteness. Snap on crampons, drag on the pack. Early, cold morning stiffness allows us only robotic movement. Zip up the tent. I'm freezing. Let's go!

We speed across the first ice-slope, traversing towards Cadaver Gap, not bothering with ropes. Ten minutes later we find ourselves gingerly picking our way up easy ice and neve ; crumbling lava crumbling ice...still unroped. Front-pointing through neve and into crumbling rock, trying hard to keep our minds off the 300' drop to the crevassed glacier below... Slip now and nothing in God's creation will keep you out of the black slots below. If it does nothing for our nerves, the soloing at least keeps us moving quickly, and warm. At the top of the col we turn left and begin to walk along the ridge. On the left, 500' to the deck, a nasty tumble across the lava and ice we've just hauled up. To the right, a gentler, though still deadly slope, offering little hope of self arrest. This leads down several hundred feet to black arcs in the snow - crevasses, of course.

Soon we encounter a party of three. They are struggling, slow with a heavy 11mm rope and lots of hardware. They clank and jangle, laden with everything imaginable. We are the antithesis to their method - my harness carries a sticht plate, three bieners, a deadman, a screw, two prussiks, some slings. My pack; half a litre of water, a camera and a chocolate bar.

They don't take kindly to our passing. Chiu doesn't help matters by traversing past them, kicking his crampon points into the ice dangerously close to the rope which binds them. I cringe as I watch him, but it's too cold to argue. We leave them behind, fumbling with their gear.

Half an hour later we stand at the base of the Ingraham ice-fall. Mist rolls in and drags visibility down to about 20 feet. We head straight up the icefall, hoping for a bit of technical climbing rather than following the trail which avoids the icefall direct. Still trading the saftey of the rope for the saftey of speed (?), we haul ass, upwards, insanely hopping over bottomless, narrow gaps in the snow. One false step and it's all over. Yet I'm not nervous, really. Nervy, yes, tense, yes, but not what I'd call nervous, as in afraid or...well, perhaps I can't really describe it. I've been above 10,000 feet on alpine terrain every weekend for the last five weeks, and Chiu and I are confident and fit.

As we continue to ascend, the mist thickens, the air becomes wet and snow and sleet began to fall. My pack soaks up water and I finally feel its weight.

My mind rolls over the priorities here...I want speed...stay out of trouble in the first place...get up there and get the hell down as soon as possible...speed to stay out of trouble.

On 60-degree neve, trying to keep sight of one another through the veil of whiteness. Visibility plunges - three feet. All around - whiteness - up, down, left, right, and all points between ; white, white, white. Blinding, infuriating. If I could just SEE something ! I take steps into the whiteness, wondering whether I'm stepping into a crevasse or just onto normal snow, one more foot on the way up. Once I consider roping up, but my desire for speed gets the best of me. Chiu is slow when roped, and... hmm, where is he ? I peer through the blowing fog - ah, there, a shadow...

WHITE, wind, wetness, ice. Cramponing upwards, poking blindly with the axe. This is madness. If I were standing on a crevasse bridge I wouldn't even know it...We MUST rope up ! What am I doing ? This is the way to get killed ! The danger, though, has me entranced...

Suddenly, a darkness in front of me, and slightly above me...the angle has eased and we are back on the main route to the summit. I glance up, see the darkness approaching, features forming in the whirling blur - a person. Red jacket, blue trousers, crusted with white rime ice. His orange rope trails into the mist behind. Other shapes begin to materialise behind him.

"How's it goin' ?" I ask, sticking my axe in the snow and raising my goggles. The snow blinds me and I blink and wipe at my eyes with wet, icy gloves.

"Not so hot," he replies, tentatively. He notices something is wrong... Then, as Chiu arrives beside me :

"JEEZUS ! Don't you guys have a rope ?!?"

"Sure, " I reply, jabbing my thumb towards Chiu. "It's in the pack."

We're talking too fast for Chiu to understand. He grins and says hello to the rope-leader while drawing back his hood ;

"Harrow !"

"The rope wont do you much good in the pack !"

I ignore the comment. I look about, into the whiteness. I ask ;

"Any idea of our altitude ? My altimeter's not reading properly."

"WHAT ?!? What the hell are you DOING ? You can't come up here without a good altimeter or a rope !"

I ignore his reaction. I don't know why...I just feel we are still in control.

"I figure we're around 13,000. Sound right ?"

Goggles down. He starts stomping... Heading down. He's had enough of these lunatics.

"You'd better rope up !" he yells, fading, angry.

I yell at the blur, "How's the weather up there ?"

"Storm! Come down!"

'Never quit', I think, as I start up, not giving it a second thought. It is crazy...

The procession of roped climbers pass by; each with the same reaction. The initial weary smile, eyes register something's wrong, see that we're unroped. Their heads cock back, eyes bug. Chiu, universally, grins wide. I slide down the ski goggles, become faceless, and set off into the white whirl.

Later I take another one of my endless blind steps and find the angle of the slope increasing. We're on 70 degrees of hard neve, we've wandered back onto the steeper icefall. Beautiful. Time slows, passes........God only knows how long I've been on this steep terrain. I have no idea how far I'd fall if I slipped off the slope now. The distance would'nt matter, though. To fall here would be death. No way could I self-arrest. I'd most likely hit Chiu and take him down with me.

The wind has picked up, the mist has thinned a bit, but visibility is still down around 10 feet. I start cramponing upwards, straining for speed. Speed. Soon, I can just FEEL that I'm up high, exposed, on a slope that I should'nt be on, even though I can't see anything but my axe and boots. I cant' see up or down, left or right. I'm using the axe to help me up through this freezing, invisible, three-dimensional maze. The snow and ice are alternately shifting and solid, rock-hard and crusty, everything between. Everything I'm doing is by feel, vision is quite useless here. The whiteness disorients me. One false move and we're both dead meat, and the moves are becoming impossible to predict.

Suddenlly I just stop climbing, thrust my axe into the snow and clip to it as a saftey. I feel it is time for the rope. Chiu arrives seconds later.

We're breathing hard.

"...Maybe...time...wope..." he puffs, head bowed, looking down at his boots. I cannot see his face.

I nod and my helmet tugs my head down towards my chest. I stare at Chiu through the grey plastic lenses of my goggles. Ice is building up on the rims. I brush away the crust with a gloved forefinger. I think about how we came to be here, on this mountain. I think of all the millions of people doing other things right now. I think about what I'm doing, as I numbly stare at the grey-red form that is Chiu, my partner. He's hauling the rope out of his pack. I lean against the steep, hard, cold snow and think about what I'm doing. I revel in what I'm doing...

What have I done ? I have placed myself in a prison. Why have I done this ? To see if I can escape. Why do I want to know this ? I don't know. Why does Chiu do this ? I'm not sure...but I know he also wants to survive...he also likes escaping from prisons. He also wants a challenge. He also hems and haws and tries, but cannot manage, to explain what it is that drives him to risk it all.

All the rationalisations come to me, read in glossy climbing mags while snugly tucked in my sleeping bag at my apartment : I do it to test myself. I do it to cheat death. I do it to reach a spiritual plateau....

But none of that really works for me. When it really comes down to it, I do it because I like to suffer. I like the danger, the freezing, the hot aches as my hands or toes thaw after a particularly cold climb. Does this make me a masochist ? I guess it does. How much physical stress can I stomach ? That's the question. And I do it because, when I'm not soloing, I make good friends. Real friends. There's no room for bullshit on the mountain. The partners are REAL. They are there to protect your life, and you theirs. It does not matter what you look like. It does not matter how many degrees you have. It does not matter where you come from. Only what you do matters. The immediacy and importance are good.

Chouinard was asked once if he didn't think it was a bit crazy or childish to go out and face these sorts of dangerous challenges...he replied, in short, that on the contrary, this was natural for humans;what was crazy was to chain oneself to a desk and spend our short existence in the pursiut of a 'normal life'. I couldn't agree more...

But it's time to go...the time for philosophizing has come and gone in about one minute of thought. We rope up with the little 8mm cord. Start up - surprisingly the slope eases off, but soon we're in awfully broken terrain. Like a no-man's land, bombed out, chopped, gutted; the snow and ice are in disarray, thrown carelessly, flung with disregard. The mist clears a bit - visibility is up to 20' or so, and once, once - MY GOD ! Above, the whiteness gives way to a blue so staggeringly BLUE ! I cannot believe it. I stand, transfixed by the colour, teetering on weak legs as I lean back and look up... It is intense. I let the wind freeze the snot on my sparse, hopeful moustache. I let the spindrift find its way down my neck. What the hell. Just let me stare at that sky, Chiu. I don't need to go up right this second. That sky ! Too much.

And then, the whiteness opens even further, and, for the first time, I see the summit. Not far now. Maybe 700 feet of moderate snow, but first we've got to get out of this insane crevassing. I realise that we're near the summit plateau, and that the broken terrain is from the glacier dropping off it's edge.

We keep on, and after 20 minutes of delicate picking, broad jumps, and tip-toeing across bridges, we're at the beginning of the end. The last 700 feet, now, are a grind. I'm running on a bowl of oatmeal from last night and a couple swigs of lemon-water on the way up, and that hunk of cheese this morning... I dig out a scrap of chocolate, chomp it down, then head up as Chiu arrives after we glance smiling at one another...we have a different pace but we are a team, friends, partners, nonetheless...

We hardly need the rope now, but it's not worth stopping to untie. 200 feet up the easy slope..... Now I'm starting to feel it. So close, but this is the grind! My legs are weak, as if I hadn't eaten for days. Like staggering up flights of stairs after a few days of heavy drinking on an empty stomach. I drop to my knees. I need calories. Despite my general state of fitness, I am short on fuel...The wind is terrible, blasting from the West. I peek out from under my arms at the summit. Go, go, go. I think of Shackleton. Great Shackleton. He is total inspiration. I struggle to my feet, head up. The rope goes taut at my waist, like a giant rubber band. The shock nearly topples me backwards, but I manage to stop myself with the axe. I wait a few seconds as Chiu gets moving. Up.

The last few feet are devoid of weariness or any physical feeling, really. At the top, I'm a spiritual thing; my body really does'nt matter. We have the summit. It is only Rainier, but for me, today, right now, it is Chomolungma, Gasherbrum IV, Ama Dablam, the Eiger.

We take a few photos in the gathering gloom. Clouds are rolling in again, blocking out the sun and creating an unearthly darkness here at the top of Mount Rainer.

When I was in junior high school I read the Lord of the Rings for the first time...an image which has remained with me from those days is that of Frodo and Sam atop Mount Doom, at the end of their journey, the whole of Mordor collapsing about them, facing certian death, but facing it with a good companion and with the knowledge that they had completed their task...

The image comes to mind, now, as Chiu and I watch as the underside of black clouds, just a few hundred feet above us, boil and undulate...below us, rising quickly and inexorably, is a blanket of thick cloud...When the two converge....

Very quickly it becomes dark, frightening and very strange. It is time to get down.

Total time on the summit : four minutes.

Keep moving, I think. Just get down, out of this strange darkness. GOD ! What is this ? I look up at the bizarre, blackening sky. My heart flutters, my stomach drops straight out, leaving me with the most hollow feeling imaginable. I am now in the grip of fear.

We follow our footprints - but then they disappear, incredibly - we've lost our tracks! Shit. I look back up. Chiu is on his way down, the summit is 300 feet above. I bear right, charging down as fast as I can, my boots alternately thudding hard on the crust or plunging knee-deep in small drifts. Looking down, I see that the fog is now swirling up from below, closing the gap between us and the descending clouds. Damn Not here, not on Rainier ! I dont want to bite the dust on the descent, like so many others...The fiction of Mt. Doom is whipped away and I am now driven simply by a survival mentality...

I slow down as the slope steepens, stretching downwards to a rounded drop-off, the bottom of which is invisible. The mist engulf us - whiteout again. I nearly choke with fear. It is dark, and yet white, and... Hell. Now what ? Straight down, maybe the Ingraham glacier icefall ? To the right, Gibraltar rock ? Chiu arrives. He's worried about me leading us in the wrong direction.

"Where you go ? We supposed go reft ! Bad weazer come ! We got to go down !"

"Yeah, yeah, I know. Come on, let's keep moving."

The wind picks up. Things are not looking good. I realise now that we're in it. Like so many before us, we're in trouble on the way down.

Nothing for it, though, but to keep moving. Somehow I'm convinced that straight down is the right way. Chiu decides that it is, actually, the best way. I stand, ice crumbling from my red bibs. I wipe at my goggles, then head down.

Five minutes later I'm on steep hard snow, facing in toward the slope, kicking steps as I descend a seemingly endless wall. Chiu is up above, on his way down, the rope snakes past me, descending into the whiteness. The wind and wet snow fly, freezing my axe-loop solid - like a shackle on my wrist. The rope is useless here but we are both too afraid to take it off, somehow.

I pause. Chiu arrives. Clipped to our ice axes sunk into the hard snow, we pause to discuss our options - maybe we should go back up a bit, and then head East before going down ? Sounds good. I was stupid. I got us into this. I got us into it by charging down too fast. I should have thought more before going. Oh well, let's get out now, and think about it later...

Just as we start up, the mist blows past, and suddenly the whole world is visible. The darkness suddenly lifts. It is like salvation. Everything simply blew past, without warning. Chiu and I are elated. We can hadly contain ourselves. Blimey ! We can see all the way down to the bottom of the Ingraham ! We can see forests all around the base of the mountain, and Little Tahoma is a beautiful, perfect pyramid. Too good to be true. We almost forget to see where we are...

We suddenly realise where we are, though we planned it...We are in the middle of the Ingraham Glacier Icefalll, which we have been descending for some time, without protection and in whiteout...Somehow, we blindly plunged down the icefall, and somehow, we kept from falling.

We both go a bit solemn at the thought - a single slip would have killed both of us.

"Let's get the hell out of here."

"Yes."

We start to get the hell out of there. The going is evil, treacherous. We leap crevasses, ten feet from the lip to the snow below, plunging in up to our hips. The blue-black inside the fissures is endless, final. I want nothing to do with them. My stomach, brought back by the clear weather, shrinks again as I think of the crevasses above us - how did we manage to get through them ?

We slow down, taking advantage of the clear sky. It takes us two hours to get out, but finally we finish off the last steep, lingering slope and stand at the bottom of the icefall, unbelieving.

The relief is total. We've made it. Now it's just a matter of descending an easy slope to the bowl-rim, descending the 300 foot bowl and then walking to the tent at Camp Muir, at about 10,000 feet. We can do that.

We take a few photos, punch-drunk with happiness. How did we manage this ? Charging down the icefall in a whiteout - that was stupid. I have learned an important lesson. Luckily I'm still alive to gain its benefit.

We eat chocolate, I gulp down the last of my water. Chiu is grinning but we agree, we must get out from under the icefall, which can avalanche at any time of the day or night...where we are pausing now is precisely where, several years ago, eleven climbers were wiped out in an avalanche from the Ingraham Icefall...it is time to go -- NOW.

After reaching the tent we crash, of course. I crawl like some defeated warrior into my thin little sleeping bag. Inside the tent there is a mourge-like chill which penetrates my bag, and yet I cannot stop grinning... Luckily I'm exhausted enough to ignore the cold patches, and I lapse into a deep, dreamless sleep.

We are tentbound for the next day; we got off the hill just in time. A storm moves in, making even the easy hike down, from our 10,000' camp to the parking lot, impossible.

When we finally reach the car, the day after standing on the summit, we tear into the treasures we find inside ; three oranges ! a litre of apple cider ! And BREAD ! We are ravenous, and chow down our fill like hogs. We are living in the world of 'primitive joy', where simple apple cider and oranges compose the most wonderful meal imaginable.

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Photo: Chiu points to frozen toes...but it's Ok, we're down from the summit and nothing else matters!

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