Blowback

He lay there waiting to be yanked off at any moment, but the moment never came. As the thunderous roar of the collapsing shelf subsided, Harvath began to entertain the guilty thought that for the umpteenth time in his life, he had cheated death.

With his hands beginning to ache from the death grip he had on his axes, he knew he needed to come up with some sort of a plan, the crux of which had to be getting to Jillian to see if she was still alive.

Looking down, Harvath saw that only about two and a half feet of shelf still remained below him. From the edge of it to the face of Mount Viso, where they had rappelled down with their first set of ropes, was about eighteen feet. The shelf which Harvath had crossed, and which had swallowed up Jillian, had been nothing more than a fragile bridge of ice and snow that covered over the entrance to a deep cavern of blue-green ice. Even though his anchor was firmly established on the far mountain wall, using his rope to swing out over the open expanse, Tarzan-style, was not the best of ideas. Eighteen feet might not seem like much, but it was plenty of distance in which to pick up a full head of steam and slam into the other side. He immediately struck it from his list of possible options.

Ice chasms in general were like a big V, wide at the top and progressively narrower as you got toward the bottom. If one were to imagine a huge triangle with its point downward, it would form a pretty good picture of what things had looked like before the shelf had collapsed. Harvath now stood at the top of the chasm looking across to where his rope was anchored on the other side. Since swinging across was out of the question, the only way he could go was down. The problem, though, was that if he established another set of anchor points on this side, when he wanted to climb back up he’d still be on the wrong side of the cavern with no way to get across. There was no telling what condition Jillian was in. He needed to figure something out quickly. Finally, Harvath had an idea.

After pulling up the balance of his rope from where it had fallen into the cavern, Harvath set new anchor points in the ice above him. Confident that they were secure, he tied a small loop in a portion of the rope that led back across the chasm toward Mount Viso and lay between his two sets of anchor points. Then, after attaching an extra carabiner to the loop of rope, he unslung his pack and removed only the most essential items. The key was to leave as much weight in the pack as possible. It was essential for his eventual ascent that it weigh more than the remainder of the line. The few items he needed to have with him he stuffed inside his parka and then attached the pack itself to the carabiner.

Having tested the anchor points to make sure they would hold his weight, Harvath holstered his ice axes and began his descent. With every crack and pop of ice, he immediately froze. There was no telling how stable the remaining portion of the shelf above him was. If it collapsed, he’d be crushed beneath it, and if the ice around his pitons gave way, he’d be set loose on an unstoppable trajectory straight at the wall of ice on the other side.

Inch by inch, Harvath played out the rope, trying to judge how much further he had to go. Crystals of snow hung in the air, obscuring everything from view. Twenty feet, forty feet, fifty-soon Harvath began to lose all concept of how far he had rappelled. His muscles ached more from the careful, measured descent than if he had been tackling it at regular speed, but he knew all too well that regular speed was only advisable under perfect conditions. What he now found himself in were definitely less than perfect conditions.

Harvath needed to take a breather, just for a moment, and as he sat back in his harness, he contemplated calling out for Jillian. The upside of the idea was that if she was alive and could call back to him, he’d be able to get a fix on her location. The downside was that the vibrations from his shout could very well bring the remainder of the shelf crashing down on top of him. Harvath decided it was best to err on the side of caution and held back any yelling for the time being.

Thirty feet later, as his crampons touched the icy floor of the chasm, Harvath saw a pile of what looked like broken snow-white surf-boards, and sitting atop it assessing her injuries was Jillian Alcott.

She was alive! Harvath couldn’t believe his eyes. After securing the balance of his rope, he carefully picked his way across the ice and climbed up the mound of broken snow. “Are you okay?” he asked as he scanned her head and face for any signs of trauma.

Jillian gave him a pained look and said, “I don’t think I like ice climbing very much.”

Forgetting that she had medical experience as well, Harvath continued in triage mode. “Anything hurt?”

“My right shoulder,” she replied as she tried to roll it forward.