Honestly, I’m not well at all. I feel weak, like I’ve been put through the wringer, and I’m terribly scared. They’re taking the bandages off tomorrow. I don’t want them to. Everything is going to be different. But who am I kidding? Everything already is different.
And there’s more. I have a bad feeling that refuses to go away. It doesn’t have anything to do with what’s been going on here in Amsterdam. Maybe if you’re like me, someone who willingly and repetitively treads on dangerous grounds, you develop a sixth sense for it, because in the mountains, you have to be constantly alert. But that sense rarely fails me. All the symptoms are there. The slight tanginess in my mouth, a subtle aroma in the air, like the smell of ozone before a thunderstorm. The tense atmosphere, the silence, the day-to-day things that for some reason suddenly seem strange—I can feel it in every corner of the hospital room. I’ve learned to take premonitions like this seriously, Sam. I don’t know what’s in store for me but I’m dreading it.
And I think it has to do with what happened up there.
I wish you were here.
Come home.
Yours,
Nick
At the Mountains of Madness
Nick Grevers’s manuscript (part 1)
I could not help feeling that they were evil things—mountains of madness whose farther slopes looked out over some accursed ultimate abyss.
—H. P. Lovecraft
I am responsible for the death of Augustin Laber.
Not in absolute terms, because, in a way, dying—the very last breath, when the heart stops beating—is the one thing in life that a man does utterly alone. And not even directly; there was nothing I could have done to prevent it from happening when his time came. He simply slid away from life with dizzying speed, into darkness. But I was the one who had discovered that mountain, Le Maudit, and I was the one who had suggested embarking on that fatal expedition. So I am responsible. The longer I think about it, the more I know it is true.
The moment I seal Augustin’s fate comes when we finally leave the rocky section of the ridge behind us and reach the Zinalrothorn’s north shoulder. I am quite shaky after what happened higher up on the crest. Besides, it is a long way down. We are still at 13,000 feet and the descent into the valley leads down a razor-sharp, steep snowy ridge above the gaping amphitheater of the north face. Much lower, it follows a long, crevassed glacier tongue, crosses endless boulder fields, and finally brings you to a trail entering the Val d’Anniviers.
Augustin eats his Amecx Fast Bar in silence, a preoccupied expression on his face. “Don’t worry about it, man,” I say, as laconically as possible. “It’ll have been a killer tour, when we make it down.”
But, like me, I’m sure he can hear that the euphoria about our successful ascent has dissipated from my voice. The temptation of danger, usually a titillating dance with an enigmatic, veiled mistress, has suddenly rebounded hard into our faces, because of his stupid mistake. Right now, he’s probably thinking, Mistakes can be fatal up here. Or actually, Fehler k?nnen hier oben t?dlich sein, since Augustin is German, of course.
The Zinalrothorn is a splendid peak, a tremendous monolith that, like the ruins of an ancient castle wall, towers above the surrounding glacial basins and proudly adorns the crest between the Zermatt and Zinal valleys. There is no easy route to the summit. What’s more, we have decided on a solitary alternative, starting from the imposing north side, in search of the mountain’s essence, which is concealed under the mysterious landscape’s inviolability. It is a compelling landscape, one that gives you the illusion of being in a place where no man has ever set foot before. If you, the climber, hear the mountain’s call, it will bewitch you, it will intoxicate you, and you will realize that you could fathom her only if you succumb to it—if you go up.
Up till this point the climb has gone well, but progress has been slow; this morning we discovered that the entire north ridge was coated with a treacherous layer of rime. The last days’ brief depression in the midst of an otherwise hot stretch of summer has even resulted in a thin layer of fresh snow.
When we look up toward the ridge during approach, eagerly anticipating what lies ahead, we see banners of ice crystals swirling in the first gleaming rays of sunlight between needles and notches, which makes the mountain, crowned with a halo of frozen, silvery mist, appear to be undulating with life.
The pinnacles guarding the ridge have names that speak to the imagination. I know every single one of them from legend alone: Le Rasoir, Le Bosse, Le Sphinx. Razors, hunchbacks, and lions of Ancient Egypt that must be conquered via dark, slippery slabs and ledges and over deep precipices. We are forced to wear crampons the whole time, and instead of the route’s prescribed two and a half hours from shoulder to peak, it takes us almost four. But weather is perfect—sunny and clear skies—so today, this won’t pose any problems. We’re the only climbers for miles around. A guide-with-client who left the hut this morning just after us had opted to retreat lower down due to the tricky conditions. The silence is immense and is broken only by the scraping of my crampons against grooves and cracks, the tinkling of carabiners, and my breathing in the thin air. We know where we are, we have only ourselves to answer for, and we’re doing what makes us whole. The sense of belonging we get when we reach the summit is overwhelming.
You’ve often asked me why I climb mountains. You’ve also often asked me (I wouldn’t say begged, though it’s not far off the mark) to stop. Our worst argument was about this, and it was the only time I was really afraid that I would lose you. I’ve never been able to fully explain it to you. I wonder if it’s at all possible to fully explain to someone who isn’t a climber. There’s an apparently unbridgeable gap between the thought that I risk my life doing something as trifling as climbing a cold lump of rock and ice . . . and the notion of traveling through a floating landscape, progressing with utmost concentration while having absolute control of the essential balance that keeps me alive and that, therefore, lets me live. Conquering that gap is possibly the most difficult climb in the life of any alpinist who is in a relationship. Of any person in a relationship, coming to think of it.
[And what can I say? That you were right? Augustin is gone. You saw the state I’m in. How will I ever be able to face you again? We gambled and we lost; of course it seems indefensible. But I can’t accept it just like that, because what happened to Augustin and me on the Maudit wasn’t simply a futile mountaineering accident.