Maybe it will be a relief, because the alternative is worse: that I’m no longer in the crevasse but the crevasse is in me.]
My recollections solidify again from the moment that, invigorated by the warm sun on my back, I’m digging into a deep layer of powder snow, in the lee of the mountain faces that enclose the upper glacial combe. Finally, I hit solid snow, into which I can bury my ice axe as an anchor. I tamp the snow. It feels hopelessly unstable, so unstable that I untie myself from the rope, preferring to expose myself to the dangers of possible hidden crevasses than to take the risk of plummeting into the void with Augustin, should the anchor go. But it’s the best I can do. The Flaschenzug is Mountaineering 101; you just hope that you will never actually have to put it into practice: a pulley made of Prusik knots and carabiners on the main rope, which divides the weight you have to pull out by three.
“Here we go, Augustin!” I shout.
I hang on the rope with my full weight, one hand around the unlocked Prusik knot. I have no idea whether Augustin has heard me. As soon as he’s hoisted up, he’ll have to support himself so as to not put any weight on his broken legs. Nothing I can do about it; he’ll have to bite the bullet.
How heavy is he—140, 150 pounds? Soon it will all be on the anchor. The sling is cutting deep into the snow. For a second, I think the buried axe is moving in the snow, and I look intently at the anchor. Nothing. I return to my hoisting.
When I’m halfway, the axe does move, at least five inches. No doubt about it now.
My heart racing, I run back to the anchor and tamp the snow as carefully as possible, afraid that the impacts will actually disturb the delicate balance. I look at it indecisively. It will have to do. Back to hoisting, as fast as I can.
Finally, a sound: a spatter in the snow on the edge of the crevasse.
I crawl to it on hands and knees, aware of the cornice’s instability.
The rope is cut in too deep.
Augustin is hanging under its edge, sweeping the powder snow away with his axes. He doesn’t look up at me, and I can’t see his face under his helmet.
“Wait, man, let me help you.”
I scramble back, hoist him up another half yard.
The anchor moves. Oh Jesus!
As fast as I can, I crawl back to the edge. I have to be quick now, have to get his weight off the axe.
Augustin is suddenly very close and has struck off a big piece of the cornice. I prepare to lie prone in the snow and reach my hand out to him . . . but then he looks up.
And then.
And then.
??*
Sometime later, I wake up. I don’t recall the moment itself. I only know that I become aware that my eyes are open, and I’m looking into blazing, blinding sunlight, and a gust of snowdrift is blowing into my eyes like sand.
I have no idea where I am. I’m lying prone, my face flat in the snow, my limbs motionless beside me. I feel an irregular, icy texture under my body but can’t place it. All I know is the cold.
Only later do I realize how seriously low my body temperature had dropped, inferred from the fact that so much time goes by before it occurs to me that I could actually get up and do something about the situation. But even then, it takes a long time before I actually manage to shake off my apathy. Eventually, the thought of Augustin forces me up. Augustin and the Maudit. Did I hoist him out of the crevasse? I have no idea what happened after the anchor started slipping.
I hear a zipper-like sound as I pull my left cheek off the snow, so gruesome that I expect to have torn off half of my face.
Oh, Jesus, the snow is full of blood.
It isn’t fresh blood; it has seeped in too deep for that. But there’s so much of it.
I raise my right hand to my face but don’t feel anything. Both my face and my fingers are numb, except for a dull thumping in my right cheek, intense, like a throbbing toothache. My palate feels so dry and swollen that my tongue can’t recognize my own mouth anymore.
Nausea and panic sweep over me. It takes all my willpower to not let it hamper me. God, what has happened to me? A gust of wind blows on my face and I wait for my head to clear.
Eventually it does.
When I stand up, I’m astonished to discover that I am now much lower on the glacier. Behind me, my trail loops from the upper glacial combe, across overlapping, snowy slopes, to here, where I had eventually collapsed and passed out. In the north, where the ice, riddled with scree and talus, bulges downward, I see the lake, a perfect circle, and behind it the moraines where our bivouac is. The valley lies anchored in the sun, and despite my severe hypothermia, I realize that it isn’t cold anymore. You can tell by how wet the snow has become. Holes are forming where it is caving in and melting, revealing the scree below. That’s my salvation. If last night’s storm had persevered, I probably never would have woken up. There is no more wind now in the atmosphere’s upper layers, yet there’s something strange brooding in the air, as if the impression the wind had pressed into it hasn’t been wiped away yet.
It’s all I can do to not give in to the urge to lie down again. I swing my arms around, ignore the shivering, and rub myself, trying to get warm so I will remain conscious. I roll my head on my neck. Gradually, I start getting warmer and feel my lethargy ebb away . . . but with mental clarity also comes the pain.
My face. There’s something wrong with my face.
Something happened. Something serious. What it is, I don’t know. I don’t dare touch my face. Don’t dare feel it.
Why does my tongue feel so thick?
I drift toward the valley on frozen feet. The crust of snow is thin, the ice under it bare. The glacier has renounced its dangers. I stick my frozen hands under my Gore-Tex coat and in my armpits. The burning pain that takes over my fingers as the blood flows back into them pushes all my thoughts out of my head and I have to scream. Even the pain in my face pales into insignificance compared with the fire in my fingers. When the pain recedes, I try wriggling them and bury them deep into my sleeves. My gloves are gone. I must have removed them near the crevasse when I was hoisting Augustin out
(Where is Augustin, by the way?)
and left them behind after
(after what? What happened?)
I lost my backpack too.
As I walk down the glacier, I suddenly feel like I’m being watched. Augustin? Or . . .
I begin to hurry, insofar as my condition permits, because no matter how I try rationalizing my situation, I can’t shake the feeling.
I’m worried about my feet. When I try moving my toes, they refuse. They feel like spongy lumps of dead meat. I’ve lost all feeling in them
(like in my face, oh God, what is the matter with my face?)