Risk Factors Chapter n-1

Chapter n-1

Hendricks' weekend off for February dawned very cold and clear. Perhaps too cold for outdoor activity, but it would get warmer. He had planned to climb the ice formation on the steep cliffs above one of the deep and slender glacial lakes nearby, and his long time partner in this enterprise was already stamping around his kitchen, complaining about his coffee and the late start. Helen burrowed in and pretended to sleep, although she was always nervous when he climbed. She indulged him and tried to hide it, but she couldn't face the early rise, and them a morning left to drink coffee and worry about it. She bade him a muffled "Be careful!", and he clattered off down the stairs carrying ice axes rattling on their leashes, and his oversized backpack. He was already sweating in his pile clothing, and feeling a bit sickly, so he decided to skip the coffee and head out immediately. That was fine with Colin.
"Let's get a move on, boy. We're missing the best part of the day!" Aren't you going to eat?"
"I'll get some grease on the way out. Let's go before the kids wake up."
He hefted his pack and stuffed the lunch he had made into the top pocket. The water bottle was just hitting a boil in the microwave, and he caught it before the obnoxious buzzer could go off.
"You've got this down to a science, huh sport?"
"Sure. Want to nuke some water for yourself?"
"No way. I don't need the weight."
"I don't know about you, but I sweat bullets on a climb, and after you piss off all that coffee, you're gonna be dry, too."
"No thanks I'll suck ice."
"Suit yourself."
He gathered up the last of the mountain gear he had laid out, stuffed it into his pack and started out to the car. The cold air made his stomach better, though it burned his throat and nose. He pulled his ear flaps down and shuddered in his down overcoat. Sitting around on belay was bound to be unpleasant, but the adrenalin during the climb would make up for it. Already it was working on him in the familiar way. His palms were slightly sweaty, and he had to go to the bathroom again. Luckily he'd passed the coffee by.
Colin settled into the driver's seat and started off.
"Let's stop off at Mabel's for an egg sandwich. I need to put a couple of logs on the fire,'cause Jesum I'm cold."
"Okay doc, but it'll be 3:00 before we get started."
"Drive James!"
Their conversation fell into the familiar patter of bygone deeds and planned routes. They compared gear like seven year olds comparing their respective hauls at Christmas. And they both thought silently about how to make the day as unexciting as possible. Both were experienced, conservative climbers, partners on numerous small but serious local adventures. Both were past their physical prime, and climbed with finesse and caution, and never with brute strength or remarkable boldness. Both knew the risks were always present, but generally controllable with proper technical skill, and neither was above backing out of a tight spot. They were a good team in all respects. They had almost nothing else in common, in fact.
They had met climbing at a distant granite slab and had discovered they lived only a few milesa part. Good climbing partners are a rare commodity, so they sought each other out for weekend adventuring.
Colin was a self employed carpenter of high local repute, who made enough money to buy topnotch gear and flaunt it. He had no wife, no apparent commitment to anyone in particular, and no desire to share his oversized house with anyone but his dog. He tended to keep conversations so steadfastly about his various outdoor pursuits, that Hendricks had long ago given up other topics. If Hendricks prattled on about wife, kids or work, it never seemed to bother Colin, but his own life remained a dark cave that yielded only echoes, and no secrets. he was apparently quite happy, and a demon at any sport he took up. He could windsurf in a gale, played a fearsome game of tennis, and climbed at least two grades harder than Hendricks could. He often led the hardest parts, usually with grace and verve that left Hendricks breathless. Struggling to follow that lead was often humbling, and always challenging. If Hendricks sometimes worried he was holding Colin back, he never saw a hint of it in his companion's demeanor. Colin just seemed to enjoy being at it, whatever the level, and never pushed Hendricks past his absolute limits. He seemed to know that limit better than Hendricks himself sometimes, and Hendricks knew that the climbs he was proudest of were largely a product of that interaction. They were a good team indeed.
A stop at Mabel's yielded fried egg sandwiches with sausages and home fries. Hendricks' sickly feeling gave way to raw hunger, and he inhaled all the food, and sucked the ketchup out of the foil packets for dessert. He felt ready.
For the first time that morning he allowed his mind to wander back over the disturbing suspicions he had. He felt a terrible wave of sympathy for his friend at the loss of his child. He could not even imagine his own state of mind if he should ever lose Paul or Maggie. He generally avoided worry over such things, but the reality of it so close to him was overwhelming and frightening. He considered verbalizing his thoughts to his partner, but he looked over at those smooth, unharried features, and knew that Colin could no more understand what it meant then could a grade-schooler. The small sense of loss over that inequality between them lingered only a moment against the magnitude of the rest of his problems.
He still could make no sense of the connections he suspected. It was natural enough for the surgeon to conceal the cause of death of their child, and natural enough of Elliot Tobias to have helped with the concealment. There was tragedy enough, without the stigma and hostility that would follow such a revelation. Perhaps they hadn't even known until late in the child's illness, and Tobias's discomfort with his own failure to figure it out was a piece of the puzzle. But clearly he had known by the end; the record, or lack of it fairly shouted that fact aloud. His reaction to Hendricks' speculation also betrayed his knowledge and guilt. Hendricks felt the same sense of sympathy for the poor pediatrician. It was hard to lose a patient prematurely, and all the worse for a dying child's doctor. He had many times felt the deep, crushing doubts and regrets at the death of patients who had not lived their due time, and knew that Elliot must be tortured by the same feeling. He wondered how Tobias managed, actually. Hendricks didn't think he could deal with a child's death at all. Probably this had something to do with why he went into adult medicine, and shied away from pediatrics whenever it could be avoided. The times his own children had been injured or sick, he was as quivery and anxious as any other father, and had always appreciated Dr. Tobias's firm easy way with them. He rather doubted things between them would ever be the same, after their last confrontation. Another small regret.
Something in Tobias's reaction still puzzled him also. Tobias had bristled at the mention of AIDS, and the implication that he had falsified the record by leaving the diagnosis out. His famous short fuse was immediately in evidence. But in the moment before Tobias' face had twisted into a red faced, bug eyed snarl, Hendricks had seen a hesitation, a spinning of wheels, as though some connection had occurred to him, as though he now suspected how O'Leary's death might be connected. He searched his memory of their previous conversation, at the party, and after numerous tense executive committee meetings, he could not believe that Tobias could be the killer. First of all, he wouldn't be so stupid as to do it with his own gun, and leave evidence around. Second, he had no ability to conceal his emotions. Hendricks had never known a murderer, but Tobias was so reactive to challenge, so quick to flush and bristle, he couldn't imagine him living with guilty knowledge and carrying it off. The crime required a calm exterior, a more calculating and reserved personality. One who could talk to an investigating detective with doe eyed innocence, and say concerned, convincing, and untrue things. Elliot Tobias was not such a man. Perhaps he was capable of a momentary lie under pressure, but the extended lie, the never ending role in an play in which the dialog wasn't yet written, that was clearly beyond Elliot, and beyond almost anyone Hendricks could think of. Tobias had unravelled so rapidly when confronted with the AIDS thing, that his innocence at the party conversation about the murder had to taken at face value. No, Tobias was still puzzling it out, just as Hendricks was, and perhaps was now in possession of the last piece. Hendricks let his thoughts go back to the child. So pale, so thin, and now dead. He felt an urgent sigh, and was surprised as tears brimmed in his eyes. He glanced sideways at Colin, who scanned the road serenely and said nothing. Hendricks daubed at his eyes with his fingers, and looked out the side window as though the snowscape held some interest for him. He bit his upper lip, collected himself, put morbid thoughts of his own children pale and dead firmly away and looked ahead to the cliff beginning to rise before them.
Colin seemed to sense his pensive mood, and held his usual chatter. But as the impressive bulk of 200 feet of bulging, jumbled green ice wound into view, he contained himself no more.
"Man, I haven't been up here in two months. The ice is really thick this year, better than I ever remember. This should be great."
Hendricks said nothing, but the sheer height and bulk of the ice face forced him to consider other things for the moment. He was intimidated by the cliff, and by the extended route they planned to try. His impression of himself as an insignificant gnat on an impossibly huge, treacherous face became his only thought, and as rapidly as the tears had come on him, his eyes and mouth had gone quite dry.
"You up to this, old man?" asked Colin.
"Hope so, fearless leader. It only looks this big from far away. Once we get to where we can stick axes in it, I'll be ready."
"This will be great. I'm really psyched for this route. I did the one called 99% Perspiration last Spring, just to the right of where we're going today."
The route they planned on was called "Air Time", named in usual tongue in cheek fashion by the first recorded ascenders. Apparently, they had fallen from it on to their rope, and had logged some "air time" during their first effort. Hendricks preferred not to repeat that particular leg during his ascent today. He knew, though, that falls were inevitable. He trusted that their gear and skill would protect him even if a fall happened.
His trust rested on a very expensive bit of climbing rope, 165 feet long. It was constructed of a stretchy bundled fiber core, and tightly woven wrapper. In a fall, the rope would elongate by half again, like a stiff rubber band, and absorb the force of the fall. Falling onto a rope was actually fairly painless, as Hendricks knew well, so long as one did not hit anything else on the way to the end of that stretch.
That was where the skill came in. The rope was attached to each climber at the waist belt of his harness, and only offered protection when fixed to the wall on which they climbed. That was accomplished with ice screws, long spiral threaded tubes made of titanium and other exotic metals. They were able to hold 5000 pounds if properly screwed into ice of good depth and character. The rope was clipped to these screws with carabiners, strong aluminum snap links, also capable of holding tremendous impact forces. As long as the rope was properly fixed, and the climber used enough screws to hold him off the ground if he fell, all was well. The trick was always to use enough screws to prevent ground contact in a fall, but not to burn up all of one's energy bashing in screws every two feet. Placing the screws was very hard work, particularly on vertical faces, where the climber's full weight rested on the toe points of his crampons, and he sagged backwards, restrained by aching shoulders and forearms clinging to ice axes buried nose first into the ice. Colin would be doing most of that work, and Hendricks would be standing below him on belay holding the rope in case of a slip by his partner above. Once Colin was safely on a ledge above, he would set up to catch Hendricks in case be should fall, and Hendricks would follow the same route, removing the screws from the ice as he reached them. Removing them was no piece of cake either, but a fall during that operation resulted in a slip of a few feet only, since the rope was already taut to the belayer above him. It was the leader fall, while placing the screws, which represented the biggest risk. A leader fall meant that Colin would drop to the last screw placed, and then an equal distance past it, before the rope even began to tighten and break the fall. If he had climbed twenty feet, or only four body lengths past his last screw, a forty foot fall would result. That fact had an undeniable effect on the mind and energy of the leader. There was enormous tension getting those screws off the sling, hammered in, then screwed home, leading to the final tension relieving act of clipping the rope to the screw, all while hanging by aching, burning forearms and shoulders. The fear of a fall at that point cost at least as much energy as the placement itself, and a near miss could take all the energy out of a climber in an instant. The leader's job was a completely different prospect, and required banishing fear to a remote compartment of the mind, and total concentration on the task at hand. Colin relished this challenge, while Hendricks took it as his due, but always with a hesitation that echoed his very first lead. He did seek to lead, but relished the memory of his successful leads as his greatest moments, which of course they were.
They arrived at the turnout directly below the ice, and Colin pulled in. He was out of the truck almost before it had stopped, and began pulling packs, boots and ropes out of the rear box with a fireman's urgency. Hendricks looked up the steep jumble of rocks and snow angling down from the cliff, and drew a cold deep breath, which did nothing to satisfy the sense of air hunger he had. Another deep breath was no further help, so he began to force his heavily stockinged feet into his stiff plastic shelled climbing boots. The effort seemed immense, and his fingers were already tired from pulling at the unyielding plastic and laces. He was glumly aware of a small roll of belly, which he hadn't noticed the previous year, and the pressure on his insides wasn't helping his breathing. Al last his feet were solidly encased, laces laced and snowproof gore tex gaiters zipped to his knee. He sat up and peered again up the steep talus and ice jumble sloping up to the base of the vertical ice mass. Only the first few yards were visible under the base branches of trees on the slope. The ice looked opaque and featureless from this distance. It looked impenetrable, like marble, impervious to axes and crampons. Colin slammed the door, shouldered his tall sack and started briskly up the slope in a bandy legged gait evolved over years of walking over broken surfaces. Hendricks was slower to follow, and curiously clumsy, clambering over the frozen jumbled of broken rock. He straightened up, and reset himself into a bent legged gait resembling Colin's, and the walking went easier.
Colin was already at a green white bulge of ice, flaking his rope into a pile of overlapping loops designed to peel off without tangling as the rope was paid out to him. He tied the end of it into his waist loop with an elaborate knot, and sat down on his pack to snap into his crampons. These were rigid gray frames of steel, with two inch points projecting forward from the toes, and downward from the soles of the shoes. These attached to the soles with wire bails, and clipped on in seconds. Colin finished applying both in firm, efficient movements and stood up, now crunching down and biting into the ice with each step. Steps had to be more measured now, as a false step could rip those points through the many layers of cloth and cut the insides of the calf to bone with almost no effort. Colin's dark blue gaiters bore a few small scars from smaller missteps, little reminders of what those points could do.
Now he stood with an axe in each mitted hand and gaudy nylon axe leashes around each wrist. He had a shoulder loop slung like a bandolier across his chest, and ten ice screws and forty carabiners on webbing slings clumped under his left arm. He clipped the ends of five slings onto the rope at his waist, so that the slings hung diagonally between the rope and his bandolier. They would be ready to catch him the instant he unclipped the bandolier end and clipped into a screw. Hendricks had yet to take off his pack and begin to put on his crampons.
"C'mon, man. Your heart's not in this today buddy."
"Sorry my heart's in it, but the rest of me is someplace else." Hendricks bent over to clip his crampons on and strap the safety straps around his boot tops. That belly roll was in the way again, and he sat back up with his vision swimming with white dots from the pressure of bending over. He returned to pulling on the crampons, snapping the grudging wire bales and pulling the leaden straps around his ankles. He felt old and uncertain. He picked up an ice axe from beside his pack. He walked gingerly over to the wall, feeling the sink and bite of those steel fangs on his feet, and placed an ice screw against the opaque white ice down at knee level. He knelt to begin to bash it in. His knees pressed onto the irregular iced ground and little chips frozen into the ground dug into his knees through his padded clothing. He sat back a bit onto his heels, driving his toe points down into the ground and struck the head of the ice screw with his hammer. It set quickly in meaty white ice, and after several hard blows, he holstered his axe at his right hip, and brought out a flat ratchet wrench designed to fit directly over the head of the screw. He turned the flat wrench around and around, and a cylinder of ground ice began to erupt backwards from the tubular center of the screw. It projected out three or four inches before it began to sag, like the ash from a neglected cigarette, and then fell off. The screw was in, finally, and Hendricks was already fatigued. His calves were burning from back of blood, and his toes were crammed forward in his boots. As he stood, a rush of blood back into his nether regions reminded him that legs weren't really made to do that. He clipped a short sling from the screw to his harness, and then picked up the rope tied to Colin. This he threaded through a sprung friction device called a Sticht plate, which allowed the rope to be paid out without friction, but which would bind the rope tightly if there were a fall. The screw would hold him from being pulled off his feet, or worse, up into the air by the rope, if Colin should fall above him.
"Ok Sport, you're on belay "
"Fine uh lee!" Colin turned and faced the wall. He drove an axe tip into the ice as high as he could reach, and then drove the tip of his toe points in about knee high. He stood up on those points, and sagged backwards onto the axe, then straightened and drove the other axe in a bit higher. The axes hit and bit in with single flicks of his wrists. The toe points had to be kicked in a few times to ensure a stable stance, and the bite the points released a shower of ice fragments. Hendricks had set up well to the right of the route, so that he would be spared a harsh shower. Still a few pieces bounded to the side and tacked off his helmet. Occasionally a kick would loosen a "dinner plate", a circular fragment of ice that would pop out and fall below. This would produce a call of "Ice!" from Colin, to warn his belayer of a larger-than-average chunk headed his way.
Colin rapidly advanced to about eighteen feet, and then pulled his wrist leashes into the crook of each elbow. He reached to his sling and pulled up on ice screw, unclipped it, and then hung back by his two elbows to bash it in. It took several minutes to get it into the hard ice, and he was grunting with effort by the end. He clicked a carabiner from one of his "hero loops", already attached to the rope, and was securely anchored. Now a fall would be caught by the rope until he climbed another eighteen feet past that pin. He disengaged one axe and resumed crabbing up the ice on his axes and toe points. Hendricks could see that this would be tough. There was a bulge at that point which actually caused the face to be backward leaning, which would put much more strain on the arms. Colin couldn't pause for a placement there, but clambered over the bulge to an easier spot. He was now well above his first pin, so a fall would result in ground contact, until he could get a screw in. He pulled up a serrated "basher", which did not have to be screwed in, and bashed it in a hurry. He was clipped on at last, and the strain was obvious in his voice.
"That was some move, old man. I didn't leave too much protection to slow you down. If you can't get over the bulge, you can go around it to the right."
"Oh, I can manage, whippersnapper"
"Well I happened to bring a power winch in this pack, so I'll just fire it up and haul you up like a sack of potatoes if you can't do it alone."
This was the usual banter to get his competitive juices going, but Colin was starting early, so he must have been a bit unnerved by what he had just done, or what was above him yet. He was now almost out of sight above the bulge, his axe blows and crampon kicks making only muffled sounds, followed by torrents of small and large ice chips. More pieces ricocheted off Hendricks' helmet, and looking up became painful, as the occasional chip found an exposed cheek under the ski goggle and stung him. At these times, out of direct visual contact, and in a cold isolated spot, it was easy to let the mind wonder, but he shook it off. Colin occasionally pulled on the rope and hooted above, to urge him to pay out rope faster. He was carrying the weight of most of it now, dangling below him, and the friction from Hendricks inattention was an unwelcome additional burden. He was motionless for a long time, probably pounding in a screw, and Hendricks became concerned about the lack of progress. He leaned out to get a look, and could just see Colin's back, laboring at a screw placement, a hundred and thirty feet above his head. He moved slowly and looked tired. Above him stretched another two rope lengths of jumbled, ribbed ice, and Hendricks began to have serious doubts that they could pull it off. He had not seen Colin this slow ever before. His mouth began to dry, his palms to sweat, and his bowel to murmur at him, and he knew his time to ascend would now come. A further eternity passed, and then he heard a hoot from above, saying "Off Belay!" He turned to face the wall. Colin was now in a stance above him slung from two screws by webbing, and setting up with another friction device, to stop the rope if Hendricks should fall. That seemed likely as he looked above him. He unclipped from the bottom screw, and tied a knot through is harness loops, and clipped the rope through a second harness he wore at chest height. He worked his gloved hands through the loops of his wrist leashes, gripped the axes, and leaned back, to shout his signals above.
"On belay!"
"On belay!" came the faint response.
"Climbing!"
"Climb!"
He looked down again at the figure of eight knot at the harness loops at his waist, and the thick rope coming up through the clip at his breastbone, and then snaking off to the heights above. He hyperventilated a bit to steady himself, and buried an axe point. Not so precisely as had Colin, but it stuck in a single flick, and held as he leaned back to weight it, so he planted the left axe next to it , and then drove his toe points in. He straightened his legs, withdrew an axe, and buried its nose a foot higher. Again it stuck in firm, meaty ice, and he began to rise. The rope became a bit slack, and began to dangle in a loop where his next footfall would be, but Colin sensed his progress, and took the slack up briskly. The tug of the rope at his waist reassured him, and he pressed on. He had to concentrate with the axe blows, so as not to strike the rope, which seemed to waver back and forth in a conscious effort to get in the way. Even if he cut the rope accidentally, he would not necessarily fall, but a fall would be the end. He was not dependent on the rope for anything but peace of mind, at the moment. He reached the first screw, and pulled his wrist leashes to the crooks of his elbows, and unclipped the sling from the screw. He let it drop between his legs, leaving it hanging by the clip at the opposite end from the rope at his waist. He pulled up his leashed ratchet wrench, and turned the screw out in a series of short arcs. He had to be careful at the last, so as not to drop it, and managed, after a struggle, to get it clipped to a carabiner on his chest sling. His toes and calves burned and his forearms were worse, but he resumed his grip on the bottoms of the axe handles, and straightened up to continue. The bulge was overhead, overhanging by perhaps two feet in twelve, but enough to block all view above. The rope snaked around the corner above and out of sight. As he hesitated, it become reassuringly taut. Colin knew this was the crux of the pitch, and he was ready for any fall. Hendricks reached above and buried an axe, and started out. He marveled at the perfect condition of the ice. Any harder, and the fatigue of striking and striking again to get a stable grip would have consumed him. There was a chance he could do this, so he continued. The backward lean began to weigh more and more heavily on his forearms and hands. His grip became painful, and his shoulder felt his full weight pulling his arms from their sockets. He flicked and kicked as rapidly as he could, to speed himself over the bulge before he burned out completely. Like a bulky fly, he gained the lip and topped it in only a minute or so. His elation made him forget his complaining body parts, and he actually felt energetic for the first time all day.
Colin sat above him taking up rope and grinning.
"Pretty good for an old dude like yourself!" he hooted.
"Damn good, I'd say." Hendricks retorted, and began to work on the screw above him from the relative security of the forward angled ice above the bulge. The screw secured, he climbed on. He reached Colin at last and found him in an impossible stance, on a precarious web of sling to three different ice screws. It had not been a comfortable belay for him.
"How are you doing?" Colin asked "ready for a lead?"
"More or less." he said dubiously. "Are you okay where you are?" That harness looks like it'll pinch your balls off if you hang there much longer."
"Not a problem, not a problem. No use to me anyway. Climb on, Cochise."
Hendricks clipped into one of the screws and took all his weight off his arms by leaning back on the screw and transferring his entire weight to his harness and toe points. His forearms were tight with blood, and his grip felt wooden. He pulled his collected screws up and clipped the dangling ends of the hero loop slings onto his chest sling, leaving the other ends attached to the rope at his waist. They were now ready to use instantly as hero loops again. He snapped each screw onto a carabiner through the chest sling, alternating with the loops, so they were available as needed. He looked over at Colin, still slung in his web, now ready to pay rope out and to catch him.
"This is the easiest pitch, if you call any of this easy. Don't give up too soon, or the next one will be short of the top. I don't fancy a six pitch rappel off of here if we burn out 30 feet from the top."
The rappel was their escape hatch, a slide down a doubled rope slung through a single ice screw above them. Everything hung on that one screw, and if it failed to hold, death was a certainty. They would have to repeat the process several times, and after each descent pull the doubled rope down, and leave the ice screw and carabiner there for good. It was not only risky, but expensive. It was by far riskier than the actual climbing, and neither climber wished to play that card. This ice face, though, was at their limit, so it was a possibility to weigh as the day wore on, and more steep ice loomed above them. Hendricks cast a glance over his shoulder for the first time. He was so absorbed in the ice ahead he hadn't paused for the view. The lake was a white treeless stripe between gray granite walls, crisscrossed with snowmobile trails, and dotted around the edges with ice fishing shanties. Smoke rose from most of them. The fisher folk were out in force. The road was partly visible through the trees, and nearly empty of traffic. A half mile along the face, another climbing party in neon bright nylon clothing were ranged up and down the face, the leader well above their current stance.
"Ok. No more sightseeing, old man. We've got to move out or will be doing it in the dark." That was enough for Hendricks. He unholstered his axes and buried the left one. He unclipped and started off.
A chill had already set in, in the few minutes he had paused at the change of lead, but two body lengths of toe kicking and axe banging cured it. He broke a heavy sweat and began steaming through his clothes. His breath came in cold ragged rasps, and his goggles fogged with his exhalations. He paused and eased his helmet backward off his forehead with his hand, to cool off a bit, and the sharp breeze blew through his goggles and de fogged them a bit. He had decided to do this pitch on a single screw at the midpoint, since placing them was such an effort, and even a long fall would be caught well above the ground on the stretchy rope. That was all the protection he really needed, although more would have been a comfort. It was all he had the energy for in any case. He progressed quickly twelve body lengths, to a little outward bulge that would give him a stance, and his screaming calves and toes a brief respite. It was less than he had hoped for when he actually got there, but it was enough.
He buried both axes just above his head, far enough overhead to leave room to work, but not so far as to prevent both hands reaching the screw. He thought about a "basher" but he wanted serious protection if he was going to hang it all on one screw, so he pulled out a tubular screw, and pulled his arms again through the loops to hang by the crooks of his elbows. He set the screw with a few cramped blows of the hammer. He reached for his wrench, and as he took his eyes off the screw, it fell out and clattered between his boots before dropping down and spinning out of sight. "Ice!" he yelled, and Colin shouted his success at dodging the plummeting screw.
"You OK down there?"
"I'm OK! Glad you're a rich doctor, so you can afford that kind of thing."
Hendricks tried again, and this time held the screw at the base until he got it firmly in place. The wasted effort had cost him dearly, but the click of the hero loop carabiner into the screw relieved the immediate fear of a long fall, and perked him up a bit. He was nearly spent, but ten more body lengths lay above, followed by placement of at least two screws. He began to have serious doubts, and only a body length later, he felt completely daunted. He could barely hold onto his axes, his grip was so wooden and painful. His right leg began to jiggle up and down from the pure adrenalin of fear, a rapid chattering up and down called "sewing machine leg." He considered down climbing to the last pin to tie off and rest his arms a bit, but even this hesitation was costing him dearly. It was climb or die, and to climb was nearly out of the question. A furtive glance above revealed a mixed rock and ice outcrop, where he could stand on nearly horizontal ground, even if only 12 inches wide. He ignored the distance above the screw, and thrashed upward on dead arms and shouting legs. This was well beyond the limit of where he had ever been, well beyond where he had ever hoped to be. He began to bargain with himself. "Ten more feet, and you'll be OK, then you can give this crap up forever. Why did I do this? Why do I ever do this?" The rock outcrop crawled past, and at last he was able to step left onto it, bury an axe above, and sag against the wall, shaking, sweating, nearly incoherent with fear. He did not move for a minute at least, and Colin called up to him.
"Paul! You OK? Paul!! Get a screw in and rest! Bash in a basher and tie off! Paul!"
The words floated by as though he was eavesdropping on someone else's conversation. He stiffened his legs against searing pain in his thighs, and looked down between his feet at the rope swinging dizzily down over the impressive white face, the circular chip marks of his toe and axe hold bright in the sunshine. Colin's face was tiny, and anxious below. He reached for a basher with dead fingers and brought it clumsily against the ice at waist level, but his right hand was held out of reach by an axe placed too high. He put the screw back to his belt, and fumbled at getting it clipped on, but he couldn't do it one handed. He stuffed it roughly into the pile of slings under his arm, and brought his left axe up to place it. He swung and it stuck, and he unloaded the right axe and placed it closer to himself, so he could reach. He worked his arm through the loop, brought up his hammer, and again reached with the left to bring up the screw. He pounded it in in a weak series of blows, but at last it was in, and he clipped off. The worst was over. The climb was over. He was all in. He sat back and took the weight off his legs and transferred it to his seat harness, and then laid forward with his helmet and goggles against the gritty ice, and sobbed. He had not one more ounce of energy left.
His mind went blank; perhaps he was actually unconscious for a moment, but he found himself looking at the ice up close against his goggles. The particles stood out in sharp relief in the amber glow, and the light streaming in from the gap under his goggles was strangely pink. There was no sound. He felt detached from everything, bizarrely warm and isolated. He became aware of his harness cutting into his thighs through his clothing, and of his toes and calves crying for rest, blood, anything but more of the same. His arms hung at his sides, nearly useless. He stirred, and looked down. Colin's face was far below, anxious, mouthing words, and then the words reached him, and penetrated to his remote place of rest.
"Paul! Paul! Signal me you're OK! Paul! I'm coming up, buddy! Hang on right there!" That got to him finally. He had to turn to get Colin protected with a screw and a friction device, or else Colin would climb the entire pitch protected only by the screw Hendricks himself hung by, and if Colin fell near the top, he would fall a hundred feet before the rope began to tighten, and the screw to take the strain. Failure of that screw would mean death for both of them, especially if Colin had already removed the rope from the screw Hendricks had placed on the way up. He turned to wave Colin off, but Colin was coming on anyway, and had already gotten to the stance below the first screw. Hendricks reached for a second screw and his hammer, and turned back to face the wall to place it. As he straightened his legs to pull up against the wall, he felt a strange shiver in his harness, then heard a horrible ripping sound as the serrated ice screw pulled straight out of the wall. He struck at the wall with an ice axe in a desperate grab for support, but he was already toppling backwards off the face, and the arc missed the ice cleanly, and instead struck his shin as he vaulted backwards. Ice and sky hurtled past, accelerating, and no thought but electric anguish and fear had time to pass before a sharp bite of rope snapped him upright like a fallen marionette, and smashed him headfirst into the wall with the force of a truck impact. He ceased to care about anything.