Colter's Mountain

“Now why didn’t I think of bringing a camera?” exclaimed Chrys. “Hey, take a picture of us. Then we should go up to the snowfields and get a couple of closer shots from different angles.”

They took turns taking pictures of each other against the mountain background, as the cheap camera didn’t have any delay button. They put their packs back on and started climbing up the meadow, and though not that steep, the high altitude made them stop to catch their breath more frequently.

“The air is thinner up here. We have to be around eight or nine thousand feet; that’s where the tree line usually ends. So with each breath, you get less oxygen, and it’s like running a race just to walk uphill,” Chrys explained. “There’s also a thing called Naismith’s rule.”

“Oh, I read about that in the Mountaineering Guide,” interrupted Colter. “You can walk about three miles in an hour, and you add an hour more for every two thousand feet you go up.”

“That’s it.” Chrys smiled. “You can add a few minutes if the terrain is difficult. So it looks to be about a half mile to the snowfields, and it looks like it rises about a thousand feet. If you add those two together …”

“It should take us about forty minutes.” Sam was always good at math. The other two looked at him, surprised again. “Well, give or take a few.” They laughed and kept climbing. They had reached an altitude where they couldn’t talk and climb at the same time.

Sam’s calculations proved right. They reached the snowfields in about forty minutes and filled their water bottles from rivulets rushing out of the melting snow. The air felt cool, but the sun very hot. In some areas, the snow just blended into the alpine flowers. In others, it ended in a steep bank. And in a couple places, a big pool of ice water had accumulated where the snow had melted into a little depression in the slope.

“C’mon,” said Chrys. “I’ll show you something fun.” They followed her, crunching up the hardened snow in their climbing boots. Several hundred yards up, she unshouldered her pack and pulled out her waterproof tarp. She folded it into a narrow rectangle, dropped it on the snow, and took the sheath off of her ice ax. “Be careful; these things are sharp,” she cautioned. With that, she sat on the tarp, grabbed the bottom with one hand, pushed off, and zoomed down the slope as if on a toboggan. In just a few seconds, she was nearing the end of the snowfield. She leaned to the side and began dragging her ice ax; it braked her descent, and she stopped a few feet from the end.

With a whoop, Sam and Colter followed her. It was more fun than sledding, because the slope was better and longer than any Sam and Colter had ever been on. The three decided to climb a little higher, leaving their packs behind.

“Let’s go the top of the snowfield and get pictures from there,” Chrys suggested. “We’ll be a little closer, get a different angle, and we can see what the glacier looks like too.” This took another twenty minutes. If they got any closer to the glacier, a wall of ice would block their view. As high as a two-story house and marked with deep yawning cracks here and there, it breathed out cold air like an open freezer door. Sam took more pictures at Chrys’s direction, of the glacier, the icefall, the couloir and the ridges leading to the peaks, and one or two of the countryside below. They could only just see the tip of the highest peak from this point, but a lot of the details of their anticipated climb had become easier to see. They pointed them out to one another.

Finally, Chrys suggested they turn back. “It’s noon. Turnaround time. Besides, I don’t like the look of the sky or the muggy feeling in the air.” It was true; they noticed a heavy, ominous feeling growing in the atmosphere. Following her lead, the boys sat on their makeshift toboggans and swiftly descended, braking with their ice axes every few seconds. What took twenty minutes going up took less than one coming down.

Colter decided to take one last ride. He thought about sitting on a broiling sidewalk, breathing bus exhaust, people stepping over him, dripping with sweat. How things had changed! He could not have imagined any of this.

Climbing a little higher than where they had originally left their packs and where it was a little steeper, he pushed off. In seconds, he was going faster than he’d ever gone outside of a car; it got very scary. He braked strongly with his ice axe, but the force of his speed pulled it right out of his hands! Spinning wildly out of control on the slick snow, he tried to think of what he could do to stop. Spread-eagled, he clawed at the crusty snow, trying to get a handhold. It didn’t do much except pull off the gloves he had put on when they started up the snowfield. The end of the snow came up with blinding speed. He swung his feet to the front to protect himself from impact with any rocks in the meadow. In a second, he flew over a low lip at the end of the snowfield and catapulted, kicking and flailing, into space.