The events that led to the catastrophe, in retrospect, were so small, so incremental. He kept thinking that if only one little thing had changed, one little thing had been done differently, the outcome would have been completely altered. If they hadn’t assumed that the climb on Mount Washington would be such a cakewalk, they would have planned their expedition better. If they’d set out on schedule instead of arriving at the trailhead later than expected, they wouldn’t have been in such a hurry to get cracking. If they’d taken the time to study the route diagrams, they wouldn’t have wound up on such a treacherous part of the cliff face just as dusk was beginning to fall. And if he had only held her back, just a little, none of it would have happened.
But reining her in was something he hated to do…and something that Kristin would never tolerate even when he tried.
They were dressed for Alpine climbing, in light clothes, and carrying a minimal amount of gear—enough for one overnight on the mountain. And Kristin thought she’d spotted the perfect perch on which they could spend the night—a flat ledge that jutted out like a card table another fifty yards or so above their heads. Michael volunteered to go first, with Kristin belaying him from below, but she said it would be safer to have him do the belaying. “I’m not sure I’m up to stopping you in the middle of a free fall,” she’d said.
But Michael had known that wasn’t really it. Kristin always wanted to be the one who forged ahead first, who planted the flag that others would then aspire to reach.
They’d roped up, and Michael had driven a couple of nuts and cams into a jagged seam in the rock that zigzagged its way all the way up to the ledge. The climbing guidebook showed this very seam, though to Michael’s eye the real thing looked a lot less direct than it did in the diagram. And the rock, to his consternation, seemed more friable. As he’d hammered in the hardware, flakes and grain of the stone had come away too quickly and easily. He’d mentioned it to Kristin, who was already moving, like a spider, up the cliff, but she’d sort of brushed it off, and he hadn’t made a federal case of it. One more thing that he wished he could do over.
It was getting late in the day, but the view was perhaps more extraordinary than ever. For much of the early climb, they’d just been hiking through a pine forest, then scrambling over mild slopes of consolidated pumice. But the climber’s trail had disappeared under the snowpack, and for the past couple of hours they’d been working the rock itself, searching for toeholds, finger grips, fissures sufficient to hang on to for a few seconds and catch a needed breath. Even though the temperature was still mild, the air was thinner, and the afternoon sun was sending its long beams over the crests of neighboring Mount Jefferson and Three-Fingered Jack. Far, far below lay Big Lake, and the parking lot where they’d left his Jeep.
A spray of loose stone rattled down the cliffside and Michael looked up, shading his eyes with one hand. He could see Kristin’s legs, in stretch fleece shorts, scraping at the wall, then one of her feet catching hold on a tiny protuberance. Of just such little bits of luck were successful ascents made.
“You okay?” he shouted.
“Yep.” Then he heard her hammer driving home a nut.
He adjusted the 10.5 mm rope around his shoulder, and bit into a high-protein bar. He could hear his mother’s voice telling him he’d spoil his appetite for dinner.
“There’s a seam here, and somebody’s already left a hex in it!” she called down. There was nothing like coming upon free hardware.
“You think it’s secure?”
He could see her tug at it. “Yeah, it is—must be why they left it.”
And again, a distant alarm bell had gone off in his head; he made it a point never to trust anyone else’s work—especially when it was someone he’d never even met. But he did not insist that Kristin replace it. He was anxious, too, to reach that ledge and start setting up for the night; it promised to be a very romantic sunset.
She’d placed another of her own nuts into the crooked seam, and started inching up again. He made sure she had just enough slack, and he could see her groping for a handhold, when suddenly something went awry.