The Ledge by Jim Davidson Page B

into this,” she says, scowling. “How likely is a crevasse fall?”
    I’m quiet for a second. She is mountain-savvy and knows there must be some risk; otherwise we wouldn’t be doing all this. But I don’t want her to worry, so I say casually, “Well, not very likely. We’re just being careful.”
    “Besides,” Mike adds, “if anyone busts through a snow bridge, they usually go in only ten feet at most. Then the other guy can just haul on the rope to help them scramble back out.”
    Gloria looks at me, then Mike, seemingly unconvinced; then she turns back to the grill. I glance at Mike, eyebrows raised, feeling a bit guilty that we’ve minimized the danger. Still, her worrying the whole time we’re on the mountain won’t help anyone.
    In the past, she has expressed her concerns about me getting hurt or killed in the mountains. But Gloria’s climbed some rock and ice with me over the last decade, and she’s seen how safety-conscious I am. She also knows how highly skilled a climber Mike is, and how well he and I climb together. So, although she’s a bit nervous about Rainier, she doesn’t press the issue.
    I finish packing on June 16, 1992; then Gloria and I meet Mike at a local bookstore for a lecture by Royal Robbins, a Yosemite Valley rock-climbing legend. In his talk, he urges the audience to follow less-known paths in life. Dreaming of our departure the next day, I feel we are following Royal’s advice.
    At six in the morning, Gloria sleepily drags herself downstairs to see me off. As is our custom before all my big climbs, she kissesmy protective medal, slips it over my head, and gives me a good-bye kiss to send me on my way. When I drive up to the home of Mike’s brother, Daryl, Mike’s bags are stacked in the driveway. Three hours later, our Continental jet is in the air. The adventure has begun.
    ON A PHOTOGRAPH of Rainier’s north face, the line up Liberty Ridge is, in the language of climbers, “elegant”—a distinct route up and up, toward the snow-shrouded summit. The cleaver-like ridge juts out between two great walls. On one side is the Willis Wall—4,000 feet of steep volcanic rock, interbedded with crumbling ledges of ash, mud, snow, and ice, much of it poised to fall away. On the other side of Liberty Ridge stands Liberty Wall, imposing at 3,000 feet and with a terrifying reputation for even more frequent ice-cliff collapses and rock falls.
    Above both walls and the ridge sits Liberty Cap, an ice field hundreds of feet thick wrapping a subsummit of the volcanic mountain. The edge of that ice cap is in constant change, cleaving off building-sized slabs that rumble down the walls in explosions of rock and ice. These collapses sometimes trigger cascading avalanches that can sweep out a mile across the Carbon Glacier.
    We know climbing Liberty Ridge will not be easy; we will ascend 5,000 feet during a five-mile approach through a forest and across two glaciers just to reach the foot of the ridge. Then there’s Liberty Ridge itself. It will demand another vertical mile of muscle-numbing work, roped together, each of us hauling a pack loaded with fifty pounds of gear and supplies. There will be slow-motion glacial flows clogged with ice blocks the size of trucks, a knife-edge ascent up a ridge averaging about forty-five degrees, and a couple hours of melting ice for drinking water each day. It will mean probably four days of hard work and lots of simul-climbing, where to move faster we’ll be roped together and climb simultaneously, neither of us belayingthe other. When we simul-climb, we’ll be fully committed to each other and will have to be completely confident that neither of us will fall, as a mistake could yank both of us off the mountain.
    But we’re experienced, and we’re ready. I am twenty-nine; Mike’s thirty-four. My climbing journey stretches a decade, and Mike’s nearly fifteen years. And after the last of our gear tumbles from the baggage conveyor, we drive away from