Fall

By Kevin Vaughan, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published October 22, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

The morning sun cast sparkles and shadows across Emmons Glacier as Jim Davidson and Mike Price started the tedious trek down from Mount Rainier's summit.

Beneath the surface were scores of crevasses, giant fissures in the ice formed by the tremendous pressure of gravity relentlessly tugging the glacier downhill. At the same time, Pacific storms constantly rearrange the landscape on Rainier, forming ice and snow bridges over many of the crevasses. Some are so thick and strong that scores of climbers could tromp right over without a problem.

Jim was out front, and it was his job to look for trouble. He used his eyes and his experience. He searched constantly for little dips in the snow, which might be a long snow bridge that had sagged. He looked for a sprinkling of dust along the surface, deposited in a low spot by the winds.

And he used his ice ax, holding the head in his right hand, pushing the pointed tip of the handle - the "spike" - down into the snow in front of him, feeling for trouble.

Probe. Step. Step. Probe. Step. Step.

It was aggravating. They were headed downhill now. Jim, 5-foot-7, and Mike, 5-foot-8, were using relatively short 50-centimeter ice axes, which worked great as they fought their way up Liberty Ridge. But now that they were on the way down, probing meant bending over, with that 50-pound pack bearing down.

Each time he pushed the ax in, Jim felt for tension in the snow. Was it getting easier to shove the handle down, or was it getting harder? Each time he pushed and it wouldn't go any farther, he figured it was solid enough to hold him.

Probe. Step. Step. Probe. Step. Step.

The monotony started to get to both of them. They needed to get down the glacier, then hike through the woods to the White River campground, to the rental car, to a hot shower and a big dinner and a cold beer in a restaurant somewhere.

"Hey Jim," Mike yelled.

"What?"

"Whatever you do," Mike went on, a hint of fun in his voice, "don't think about a hot fudge sundae."

"Ahhhh," Jim shouted. "Why did you bring that up?"

"Don't think about the chocolate," Mike went on. "Don't think about the nuts. I don't want you thinking about that."

Then it was Jim's turn to jerk Mike's chain.

"I promise not to do that," he said, "as long as you don't think about a cold frosty beer with foam on it about 2 inches tall running down the side."

They were even.

Jim and Mike approached a section of Emmons Glacier called The Corridor - sort of like an alleyway between buildings but with giant blocks of ice on both sides. The area was known to be relatively crevasse free - it was in the middle of the glacier, and the pressure from the two sides closed many of the cracks.

They'd been on or near an established trail that zig-zagged across the glacier for hours. The sun burned overhead, and they stopped a couple of times to strip off a layer of clothing or drink from their plastic water bottles.

By late morning, it was so warm that the surface of the glacier was like wet oatmeal, 3 inches deep. They were 45 minutes from reaching Camp Schurman, a little humpbacked hut of a ranger station tucked in against a jutting rock formation. Their crampons dangled from their packs - they were useless in the soft snow.

Mike and Jim glissaded a section - sort of skiing on their climbing boots - then stopped. Jim was a few feet off the main trail of footprints. Mike was right on it.

Jim sensed a change in terrain off to the left.

"Hold up," he yelled.

Then he raised his left hand, a signal to Mike to stop. Mike stopped. Jim took a step forward. He didn't like what he sensed over to the left.

"Tension," Jim shouted.

Mike tightened the rope, cupped his ice ax, ready to arrest a fall. He nodded to Jim - a silent signal: I've got you on belay.

Jim took two steps and could see a big drop-off to the left - a spot where part of the glacier surged over a rock cliff, falling maybe 50 or 75 feet, and crevasses. A series of them.

"Whoa, big crevasse down here, Mike," Jim hollered. "We're not going this way."

"Why don't you swing back to the right?" Mike asked.

"OK," Jim said. He moved a few steps, then stopped, sensing a difficult descent just ahead.

"Water up," Jim yelled, and both of them dropped their packs and sipped water, taking a short break before they would regroup and get going again.

They pulled their packs back on, and Jim looked at the footprints in the snow left by dozens of climbers who'd taken this route to the summit. It curved over to the right, and Jim figured he could angle straight across and get back on that trail. He turned and looked back up the hill at Mike, 55 feet away.

"Ready?" Jim asked.

"Ready," Mike said, nodding his head.

"I'm going to cut to the right," Jim said.

"Sounds good," Mike answered.

It would be the last words the two friends would share.

~~~

Jim probed with his ax, took a step, and felt his foot sink in snow up to his ankle. He was maybe five steps from rejoining the main trail of footprints, the "known" terrain, the place where he and Mike would feel safe.

Jim took another step, sinking to his ankle, and another.

Wow, this is really deep snow over here.

And then, in a flash, as his foot kept sinking, a different thought shot through his mind.

The snow beneath my foot is collapsing.

The next 10 seconds seemed like an eternity, and Jim would later look back and remember how his mind seemed to slow it all down so that he could process it, think through the frantic seconds of panic.

Jim started to tip forward, and in an instant he realized what was happening, realized he was on a snow bridge terribly weakened by the beautiful, sunny weather that ushered them up Liberty Ridge, warm weather they gave thanks for many times.

"Falling," he screamed as loud as he could.

Mike was back up the hill, over Jim's right shoulder. Jim's scream told him there was trouble - maybe something simple, like a drop off a short ledge; maybe something awful, like a fall into a deep crevasse. Jim's scream told Mike to dive onto the mushy snow and fight with the toes of his plastic climbing boots and the pick on his ax to get hold of solid ice, to get hold of Jim.

It was so startling. Jim had carefully scanned the surface for a sign of trouble - a crack in the snow, a sag, a powdering of dust. He hadn't seen any of that.

In the next fraction of a second, as snow consumed his feet like quicksand, Jim reacted on instinct, swinging the ax in his right hand, hoping to catch solid ice with the sharpened tip and stop his plunge. By now, he was in to his waist, maybe his belly.

The tip of the ax cut into the mush.

Good stick . . . Oh my God, I'm going to fall all on one arm . . . This is gonna rip my shoulder muscle big time.

Jim didn't care. He didn't want to go any deeper into the hole.

And just like that, the tip of the ice ax slid sickeningly toward him in a spray of slush.

Jim tried to scream again.

"Fall . . . "

The glacier took the rest of his shout away as he shot through an ever-widening hole. His face slammed the crumbly surface and ripped across crunchy, wet snow, and he felt a finger of pain shoot up between his eyes, and he felt his feet flapping in nothingness, and his mind grasped one last instant of hope.

Maybe my pack will stop me.

He realized the snow bridge he'd been on was 21/2 or 3 feet thick - 6 inches thicker than the length of his ice ax's handle, just enough so that his repeated probing told him nothing of the danger just beneath his feet. And he kept falling, the sides of the hole squeezing his abdomen, and then his shoulders, the crumbling snow crunching and scraping in his ears.

My pick's not going to stop. I'm going all the way in.

And then all the squeezing and scraping stopped, and Jim realized he was no longer touching anything. For maybe a tenth of a second he was calm, and then a wave of panic slammed him.

I'm in the crevasse.

He sensed light above him, quickly dissipating, and he swung his arms wildly in a desperate attempt to hook the icy walls of the crevasse with his ax. He felt nothing.

Whoa, this is a big crevasse.

For a moment, he hoped it was just a little one. Ten feet deep. A hard landing. A quick climb out. He felt fear but not terror. He knew Mike heard him, saw him. He knew Mike was a pro, that he was on his belly right now, digging in. That any moment the rope would jerk him to a stop. His climber's mind kicked in.

Ten feet. OK, all the slack should be out of the rope by now.

Jim sensed that he wasn't slowing down. He seemed to be gaining speed in the darkness, falling upright.

Twenty feet. Man, I'm going too fast now.

Jim swung his ice ax again, but his arm felt funny. His ax was gone.

Thirty feet. I'm going too fast. This has gone on too long. Something's wrong.

A moment passed.

Forty feet. I should have stopped by now. Mike should have stopped me by now. Something's wrong.

Jim reached out, a desperate attempt to grab something. Anything. His purple glove screamed on the icy wall. Zzzzzzuuuuu. The pitch increased as he fell ever faster.

Fifty feet. That can't be right. Mike and I are only separated by about 55 feet of rope. If I'm really in 50 feet, that means Mike's almost at the lip of the crevasse. Oh my God, he has to stop us. He's running out of space to stop us . . . C'mon Mike, dig in man. Dig in. You gotta stop us.

The rope jerked hard for an instant, and for the briefest moment Jim wondered whether Mike had done it, whether he'd stopped the disaster. But then it was gone, and Jim felt like he'd been dropped, and he accelerated wildly, and he knew that the rope had pulled Mike in behind him.

Oh my God, we're both in the crevasse.

Gravity had hold of Jim. He rushed down, down, down. Jim's mind danced around.

If we've got an ice screw in, it might stop us.

Then he realized it. In the slushy snow on the gently angled glacier, they didn't have an ice screw in. There was nothing to stop them.

Please God, don't let us cork.

Jim had read Jim Wickwire's awful account of a 1981 climb on Mount McKinley and his partner's head-first plunge into a crevasse, of the hours that passed while Chris Kerrebrock was wedged between the walls, very much alive, unable to move. Of Wickwire's futile attempt to uncork him.

Please God, let us die in the fall or let us land safely.

And then his mind went somewhere else, somewhere unexpected. It went to Wide World of Sports and that iconic footage of Serbian ski jumper Vinko Bogataj careening out of control on the takeoff ramp and Jim McKay saying, "the agony of defeat." Bogataj had not been seriously hurt because he had relaxed during his wild fall.

That's when he heard them: the voices - Emotion and Logic - that for years came to him in difficult situations, playing out his options.

"Go limp," Logic said.

"You think that's going to make any difference?" Emotion asked.

"That's all I can do," Logic answered.

Just then, the right side of his face grazed the icy wall, just a kiss of a touch, just enough to push him the other way. He bashed into the other wall hard, and his head snapped sideways, and he realized he was getting close to the bottom because the crevasse was only a couple of feet wide. Pain knifed through his left shoulder and left hip when he hit.

Jim pinballed back to the other wall, smashing against it with his right side, jamming his helmet down over his forehead and into the bridge of his nose. He knew that he had to be close to the bottom as he crashed back and forth between the walls of the crevasse. Logic spoke up again.

"It's all going to be over in a second," the voice said.

Careening off the walls knocked Jim sideways, and he plummeted pack-first for an instant and then he slammed to a stop. It felt as if someone drove a 2-by-4 right between his shoulder blades, and his head snapped backward violently, stretching the tendons in the front of his neck, and the impact expelled all the air from his lungs and threw his arms to the side.

He blinked and gasped and tried to get a breath. He touched the right wall with his glove, and there was no noise. He wasn't moving any longer. He was alive, and he felt the briefest flicker of joy.

I'm still alive. I just fell all that way, and I'm alive and I'm not that hurt.

~~~

Jim wiggled, and pain stabbed up his left shoulder and the back of his neck. He realized he had landed on his back, facing upward.

Then something about the size of a grapefruit landed on his belly. Whump. It was a handful of wet, sloppy snow. A pinhole of light high above him flickered, and more wet snow hit him in the face. The light blinked again, and more slushy snow poured onto him. The snow fell faster and harder and bigger. Whump. Whump. Whump, whump, whump. It poured in like concrete rushing down a chute, filling over his shins, his thighs, his belly.

Oh my God. I'm going to be buried alive.

Jim had taken classes on avalanche survival. He knew he had to get out of the snow. But when he tried to sit up, the slop pouring in around him sucked at his arms and legs and chest, and his pack, corked between the walls of the crevasse, pulled at his shoulders, and he couldn't move.

Emotion, panicky now, shouted at him: "Keep your face clear. Keep your face clear."

Every instant the light above him fluttered, he knew another chunk of snow was about to smash into him. The snow buried him to the chest, and the light went out. Logic spoke up.

"Cover up. Something big's coming. Cover up."

Instinctively, Jim threw both his arms up in front of his face, and an enormous chunk of snow crashed over him, blowing his right arm away from his head, and filling up around his ears, burying him completely.

Oh no, no deeper, no deeper - just stop, please stop.

There was silence beneath the vault of snow.

Oh God, no more, no more - that's enough. Stop there.

Emotion was in full-blown panic.

"Sit up . . . sit up . . . sit up," the voice screamed, but Jim pushed with all his might and he couldn't move anything.

Oh, my God, I'm buried alive . . . This is a bad way to go. I wish I'd been killed in the fall.

He figured death would come in 10 minutes if he was lucky, or 20, or 30. None of it seemed fair. He'd just survived an incredible fall and he'd even rejoiced for half a second and then, just as quickly, he was buried alive.

Jim pushed again. Nothing. His mind jumped back to his avalanche training, and he knew he had to get out before the snow froze. But being buried in avalanche debris, he'd heard, was like being held down by a thousand wet hands, and now he knew how true that was.

"Get out before it freezes solid," Emotion screamed. "Sit up, sit up, sit up, get out, get out. I can't breathe."

But Jim had done one very smart thing in that split second before the biggest crush of snow came - he'd thrown his arms in front of his face, and his left one had formed an air pocket the size of a volleyball. As he tried to assess where he was, how he was situated, he thought again of avalanche training. He tried to spit, but a chunk of ice was in his mouth, as if he'd stuffed in half a Popsicle, and it stopped him, so he drooled. The saliva slid down his left cheek, confirming what he suspected - that he was on his back, facing up. For a moment, he felt pleased that he'd even remembered such a thing.

Panic - or building carbon dioxide - sharpened his breathing.

Maybe this is it. I can't move anything. I'm buried. I'm running out of air. Maybe this is where it ends for me.

Jim tried to accept that his life might end. He tried to tell himself to remain calm, to face what happened, not in panic - he had never lived that way - but in peace.

Ride it out, but don't ride it out in fear, ride it out as best you can, the way you've lived your life.

But he didn't want to die. He wanted to live, and he remembered an old adage from a martial arts class: "Focus your power." So instead of trying to push all over, he concentrated on his right arm, and he was able to shove something heavy - a chunk of ice the size of a cinderblock - away from him, and his hand burst out of the snow above him. He desperately reached around with his hand, sweeping at the snow, and he could hear crunching and feel a slice of rope, and he realized he could clear his face and frantically he started pawing at the mush and tossing handfuls of it away.

The air Jim breathed grew stale.

"I can't breathe," Emotion screamed. "Hurry up. Faster, faster."

"I'm digging away," Logic shouted back. "We're making progress - stay calm."

"Stay calm?" Emotion asked.

As Jim dug, he felt like he was the third person in the conversation, the mediator who had to keep Emotion and Logic at bay, who had to decide which was right each second. At times, he wondered if he was going insane.

He dug, and a moment later he felt the slop above his right eye move. He pawed and grasped at the snow, and his hand swept close to his eye. And then it was clear, and he could see up a little tunnel through the snow and make out a hand. Jim was so disoriented he didn't know at first it was his own hand.

Dense, cool air drifted down to his eye, and he dug faster, reaching his nose, then his mouth - sweeping the ice ball free - and then his face. He could breathe, and he sucked in a bunch of panicky breaths before he tried to calm himself, his heart pounding, blood rushing in his ears.

Bring it down. Bring it down.

His heart pounded, and Jim realized that a grip of fear was tightening, and that he had to do something. He had to slow the fear.

An hour - I can last an hour under this snow.

A moment passed.

Mike.

In the first glimmer of thought of his partner, Jim believed he must be all right. Jim had survived the fall, in relatively good condition, so he figured Mike had, as well.

"Mike, Mike we fell in, we fell in, I'm buried," Jim shouted. "Dig me out."

Jim heard a moan. He thought it was because snow was still jammed up next to his ears, so he shouted again.

"You gotta get up," Jim yelled. "You gotta get up. Dig me out before it freezes."

He heard another moan.

"I'm here - I'm here," Jim yelled, waving his hand around. He bumped into Mike's calf.

"Mike I'm right here," Jim yelled. "I'm right here. Get up. Get up."

For a moment, Jim believed that Mike was merely stunned. Then dread washed over him as he realized that Mike was probably badly hurt and couldn't dig him out. He had to get himself out and try to help Mike.

Frantically pushing snow with his free hand, Jim widened the hole around his face. After a minute, he had uncovered his head. Mike's breathing was slow, labored. Jim's first-aid training kicked in, and he tried to coach Mike.

"I can't get to you Mike, I'm trying," Jim said. "I've gotta dig out. I'm coming. I'm coming."

Jim just about had his left hand free when Mike stopped breathing. The silence frightened him, and he stopped for a moment to try to make sure that he was right.

"Mike," Jim screamed as he grabbed his partner's calf and shook it, pinching his skin, trying to get a reaction. Nothing.

Pure panic clutched Jim, and he thrashed at the snow, trying to free himself, trying to get to his partner.

"Mike," he screamed.

Jim threw snow behind him, frantically trying to get to Mike, and tried to sit up. Something pulled him back - his helmet. He unsnapped the strap, and it stung as his helmet fell away and yanked the nylon over his face. The helmet fell deeper into the crevasse.

Clunk. Clunk. Silence. Clunk.

Jim tried to sit up again, and he realized his pack straps were holding him back. He loosened them, did a sort of half-situp, and reached out. He felt Mike's helmet. After slithering out of the pack, Jim tried to look into Mike's eyes in the near darkness.

"Mike, Mike," he screamed.

Jim grabbed Mike's cheek and twisted the skin, hoping that he just needed to be roused. He searched for a pulse but found nothing.

This can't be real. This can't be real.

Jim knew he had to try to do CPR, but it was all so unbelievable. CPR was something you did on a life-size doll in a training class, something where you get a card to stick in your wallet. It wasn't something you did on your friend.

Jim stuck with the basics, giving Mike breaths, trying to compress his chest in the cramped space between the crevasse walls, trying to make something happen. At one point, Jim had to move Mike's legs so he could give him more powerful compressions, and the thought terrified him. What if Mike had a spinal injury? What if I make it worse?

But Jim knew he had no choice, and so he moved Mike's legs and kept fighting, blowing air into Mike's lungs, compressing his heart. After 10 or 15 minutes, Jim realized it wasn't working. He was going to have to stop.

No. When you start CPR, you do it until you're relieved by somebody with more knowledge or a doctor declares him dead. There is no stopping.

Jim kept going, and as he did the voices talked to him. Logic told him that Mike was gone, that he had to stop. Emotion told him he had to keep going.

In the middle of it, a chunk of snow sailed down from high above. Finally, Jim stopped. He looked into Mike's eyes, and he realized his friend was gone. Jim shook with fear, and tears welled in his eyes, and he gently laid his head down on Mike's chest.

A new voice shook him from the shock - a voice of survival, half-Emotion, half-Logic.

"Dig," it screamed. "Dig out of the snow. You've got to get out of the snow before it freezes up."

Jim dug like a madman, and at one point he tried to pull his left foot free. But something gripped his boot, and his knee hyperextended. He dug more slowly, and then he realized that Mike's body was sliding away from him, so he clutched his partner's jacket as he pawed at the snow. Eventually, he got one foot free, and then the other, and Jim decided to try CPR again. He thought it would magically be different.

After working for a few minutes, he heard a rumble above him, and he leaned in over Mike - just as he'd seen paramedics do on a rescue on Longs Peak the year before - and tried to cover him. A hunk of snow and ice the size of a refrigerator ripped right past them, crashing into the bottom of the crevasse in a thunderous explosion. Snow dust billowed up around them.

As the frigid air cleared, Jim realized that more light was filtering into the crevasse. He could see Mike's eyes more clearly. They did not react, and the battle raged in Jim's mind anew as he concluded that he had to stop CPR a second time. Again, he rested his head on Mike's chest, and again tears came. It was all so bewildering.

"Where are we?" that survival voice asked a moment later. "Where are we?"

Maybe 30 minutes had passed since Jim had taken that step on the surface, and the snow beneath his feet had disappeared. Jim raised his head and for the first time he began to really look around. All those summers working with his dad's painting crew, estimating building heights and calculating the rigging and scaffolding they would need, came back to him as he stared up from an icy ledge where he and Mike landed, the crevasse walls no more than 2 feet across.

Jim's eyes traveled up the frozen walls, first dark gray, then dark blue, then, near the top reflecting splotches of light. He would estimate that it was 80 feet to the sunlight flaring through the hole he and Mike punched in the snow bridge. The walls above him climbed up at about 80 degrees until the crevasse was 6 or 8 feet wide, and then they went dead vertical, and then, near the top, they closed toward each other.

Oh Mike, we're in trouble man, we're in big, big trouble.

He looked down the crevasse, hoping there was a way to simply walk out the end of it, but it stretched for 200 feet and showed no signs of ending. He looked up again, and he could see the underside of the snow bridge that covered the fissure - the hole that opened beneath his feet, with sunlight pouring through it, and places where the frozen veil was so thin he could see light filtering right through. It was as if he was looking out from the belly of a beast, the jagged white teeth interlocking above him.

He looked in the other direction, up the mountain, and the crevasse disappeared into darkness. And then he crawled over to the edge of the ledge and leaned out, looking down. And when he did, he realized he was a long way from the bottom - everything disappeared into darkness 20 feet below him.

Jim realized that the only thing that stopped him and Mike from hurtling all the way to the bottom was a chunk of snow and ice wedged between the walls, and his own pack, which corked and was now helping to hold them up.

Alarm bells clanged in his mind.

We're not secure. If this ledge collapses, we're both going in deeper. I've gotta get pro in. I've gotta get pro in.

Jim pulled an ice screw from his belt and started fighting it into the wall. Mike's hammer was the only ice tool he could find, and the aluminum screw screeched in the ice as Jim cranked it in. He clipped his rope into it, then fumbled around and found Mike's end of the rope and clipped it in, too.

Jim could reach only one of the zippers on his pack - he couldn't get his hands on the others, jammed against the ledge or the crevasse walls. He opened a pocket, fished out his red-handled jackknife and his headlamp, pulling it onto his head and flipping the switch. For the first time, he could really see what he was up against.

Looking over the edge of their perch, he saw the icy walls converge to about 6 inches, 30 or 40 feet below him. He twisted in a second screw. He knew if the ledge collapsed he and Mike wouldn't go any deeper. He looked again, and he realized that he could lose all the gear, so he tied the packs into the screws.

Jim was thinking now. He was shocked and weakened by what had happened, numb with sorrow about Mike's death, but his climber's instincts kicked in, and he pulled on another jacket. He looked up and began to really consider whether he could climb out.

The first 30-foot section? He could do it. The vertical stretch? He could do it. But the overhanging part - the last 20 feet? No way.

Jim yelled. More than a dozen climbers had gone up to the summit that morning - some of them were undoubtedly coming down, maybe walking within a few feet of the collapsed section of the snow bridge.

"Help. Help. Help," he screamed, but he could sense the walls of the crevasse grabbing his shouts and swallowing them, and he quit. He thought about his predicament. He and Mike had followed the rules, had filled out little cards at a ranger station, had registered the climb. But it would be a day before anyone would consider them overdue - and even then, rangers might wait a day in the event they were merely slow.

Once the rangers started a search, they would have to look in thousands of crevasses. They will start following footprints, Jim figured, and maybe eventually they'll narrow it to this glacier. It will be two or three days before there's a serious search, Jim concluded, and probably another day or two before they looked in this hole, in this crevasse.

There's no way I'm going to be alive in three or four or five days. I'm soaking wet. I'm shaking. I'm exhausted . . . When it gets dark in here tonight, what's going to happen?

He knew that nightfall would bring bitter cold. He knew that he teetered on the edge physically, emotionally, and spiritually, there in the crevasse with the body of his good friend just inches away. He knew he had to get out before the sun went down, because if he was still in the crevasse when darkness descended he would not be alive when the sun returned.

Jim looked at his watch. It was just after noon. He figured he had nine hours of sunlight up on the surface.

A battle started anew in his mind. One of the voices told him it was impossible - there was no way to climb that wall, looming above him, arcing back in an overhang near the top. Even the best climber in the world can't do this climb, he thought at one point.

But another voice was talking, too, and that voice told him what he knew: He had no choice. His only chance was to climb.

Jim started to look around for gear. When he'd shot through the collapsing snow bridge, he had an ice ax slung from his right wrist. Now it was gone. His ice hammer was strapped to his pack, wedged impossibly against the ledge and the crevasse wall. He couldn't get to it. He had only Mike's ice hammer, and that was trouble, because to have any chance to scale that wall Jim needed two tools, one in each hand. His helmet was gone - his desperate attempt to free himself had flung it off behind him into the abyss.

Jim looked down, his headlamp casting an eerie light into the fissure below him. He saw a small snow bridge 20 or 25 feet down where about 10 inches separated the frozen walls. Jim's battered orange helmet lay there, next to Mike's ice ax, standing on its head, its handle pointed straight up.

To go up, he would first have to go down.

I can't believe this.

Adrenaline drained from his veins. Pain seeped in behind it. With that came doubt. He looked down again.

I'm not going down there. I'm not going down there.

Jim considered trying to stem to the down-mountain end of the crevasse - a technique where he would put one foot and one hand on each wall and use oppositional forces to straddle the crack all the way out. But he realized two things: He didn't have enough rope, and he might go all the way to the end and be in a worse predicament than he was in now.

A twinge of defeat crept through his mind.

Well that's it then. I can't climb up that wall, and I'm stuck here. Maybe I should try and last long enough for them to find me.

He had a stove. He had a quart of fuel. He had a day of food he could stretch. Maybe he could make it three days, or four. Maybe. It was as if he was fighting to find a way to not climb, to find something - anything - to do short of going down and getting that ax and trying to fight his way up that wall and past the overhang, back to the opening in the snow bridge.

Finally, he concluded he had no choice. His only chance was to climb. Jim started gathering gear together, started thinking about how frightened he was, about how awful a spot he was in. And about having to go deeper, to embrace more fear, to give himself a chance. He almost laughed at the irony.

Jim started rigging, using a piece of nylon webbing to secure himself and Mike. Then he started fighting the rope, now soaked and partly frozen with meltwater dripping constantly from above into the frigid air. He struggled to get it free from Mike's harness, and he opened his jackknife and was about to slice through the rope when he stopped.

I better think this through.

There was about 150 feet of rope. Mike was tied in about one-third of the way from the end. If Jim cut it, he'd have about 100 feet of rope left. He looked up. It was 80 feet to the surface, he figured. But what about the zigs and zags? What if the climb required him to double up the rope?

He thought back to all those years of rigging scaffolding with his dad in New England, to the lesson he learned: Think it through before you make a committed move. Make sure you know what you're doing.

I can't cut the rope.

He fumbled with the rope some more, and then he thought about cutting Mike's harness, a move that felt sacrilegious.

What if I cut his harness and I don't get out of here to tell people what happened. What if they find us and find his harness cut? What will they think?

Eventually, Jim undid Mike's waistband, got the carabiner off it, blowing on it and rubbing it with his hands. After a minute, he got the knot untied. He tied slings to two ice screws, ran the rope through them, and prepared to go deeper into the crevasse, into the throat of the beast to get that ice ax.

Jim stepped off the ledge, worked his way deeper into the crevasse. He reached a point 4 feet above the ice ax, a place where the walls squeezed him as he lay out sideways. He remembered a caving trip nearly a decade earlier, how he'd learned to make himself skinnier by exhaling. So he forced the breath from his body and slid down another foot or so, reaching out for the ax. He stretched and got a finger through the hole in the tip of the handle, pulled the ax up to him, clipped it to his belt, and stuffed it inside his jacket.

He looked at his battered orange helmet, but it was deeper, and broken. So he left it and started pushing himself back up the wall using the ice on either side for a series of scissors kicks. He planted his feet and extended himself, steadied himself with his hands, planted his feet and extended himself.

All around him, chunks of snow and ice crashed to the bottom, and melting snow fell like rain. A few times, he stopped to scrape ice from the rope so he could slide it through the belay device clipped to his waist. When he reached the ledge, he felt a little momentum trickle through him.

And then he crumbled.

"C'mon Jim, I mean, look at this," one of the voices in his head said. "There is no way you can climb that."

Then Jim remembered the book Touching the Void - an account of a climbing disaster on 20,813-foot Siula Grande in Peru, one that saw Brit Joe Simpson suffer a horribly broken leg and then a plunge off a cliff and into a crevasse. Simpson's partner had cut the rope that held them together after concluding that he had no choice, that failing to act would mean death for them both. And he remembered that Joe Simpson got out of his crevasse alone, and dragged himself miles to base camp, his shattered leg useless, and survived.

"Well, Joe Simpson did it," Logic said in his head.

"Yeah, well, but Joe Simpson's a better climber than me," Emotion answered.

"Yeah, but he had a broken leg," Logic shot back. "You don't have a broken leg. You're one up on him."

"Yeah, but, you know - he was still probably a better climber than me," Emotion said.

"His crevasse was not as hard as yours," Logic said, "but he had a broken leg; your crevasse is harder, but you don't have any broken limbs, so that's about even, so if he did it you can do it."

The debate in his head gave Jim a spark. He thought about Joe Simpson, and he thought about something he'd never done - aid climbing on ice, a technique where he would use gear such as ice screws and nylon slings and ropes to get himself up the icy wall. He had read about aid climbing, but he'd done it only once, a decade earlier in Montana. This time, he didn't have the right gear, but he also didn't have a choice. When the walls turned vertical, and then overhanging, he knew he would have to figure out a way to aid climb with what he had. And he would need to rig up a knot system that would slide up the main rope and catch him if he fell.

Jim tried to envision what lay ahead. He pressed his face against the frozen wall next to him, the first real rest he'd taken since the snow bridge opened up and the crevasse swallowed him and Mike. It all seemed so unreal. He wondered if he were already dead.

Featured

• DNC in Denver

  

  Complete coverage of the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

• The Crevasse

  

  A five-part series that examines one tragic day on Mount Rainier.

• Deadly denial

  

  Sick nuclear workers applied for government compensation but most haven't seen a dime.

• Final Salute

  

  The Rocky followed Maj. Steve Beck as he took on the most difficult duty of his career.

• 'Colorado's burning'

  

  Coverage of the state's worst wildfires.

• Columbine shootings

  

  Coverage of the April 20, 1999, shootings at Littleton's Columbine High School.

• The Crossing

  

  Colorado's deadliest traffic accident killed 20 children on Dec. 14, 1961.

• Osveli's journey

  

  Osveli Sales left Guatemala for a better life. Two months later, he came home in a box.

• Wake for an Indian warrior

  

  Oglala Sioux bestow a tribute to the first tribal fatality in Iraq.