Chapter Twenty-One
I fell face-first to the ice, my shoulder slamming into the anvil end of my ice ax. I gasped and then frantically kicked my toe points into the snow to lock myself in place. Not a second later, the screaming rope caught up to me. Despite bracing myself, the force yanked me back a few feet and jerked the harness around my waist as if I’d been bungee jumping.
Even without looking backward, I knew what had happened. The danger I’d sensed had come true: the rubble from the collapsed serac had formed a snowbridge that was hiding a crevasse. And then the crevasse had gobbled up the bridge as we stood atop it.
Ever so slowly, I peered around, afraid to see what—or what wasn’t—behind me. I had about ten feet between me and the newly opened void. It was a relief to have some distance, but Phil’s full weight and life dangled from my waist. I strengthened my grip on the ice ax, hardly daring to breathe.
“Phil,” I yelled.
“Down here,” he called.
Thank god. He could speak. This was a good sign.
The problem was that with Phil’s weight on my harness and having only one hand free, there was no way for me to build the anchor I needed to save us both. Especially since all the tools I needed to build that anchor were zipped in my backpack.
“Hold tight,” I yelled. “Don’t move.”
I wanted to scream in frustration. My tools were right there against my back, but they might as well have been on the moon right now.
“Emily, come in, Emily,” Jim said on the radio.
My radio had unclipped during the fall and was lying on the snow near my thigh. I strained for it, but the pain in my shoulder from falling on the ice ax made me curse.
Jim was on the radio again. “Emily, check in for us, please.”
I didn’t know how much longer I’d be able to hold this position, and with an unbridged crevasse opened between me and the rest of the Global crew, it was fully up to me to somehow get stabilized so Phil could ascend out of the crevasse.
“You okay?” I yelled down to Phil.
“I think so. I’m not that far from the top. I can just—”
“No! Don’t move. Just wait.”
I reached around to try to unzip my backpack, but the pain was too great. Instead, I threaded my left arm between the pack and my lower back, attempting to unzip it from the bottom. That didn’t work, but I was able to nudge it enough that I might be able to reach the zipper pull with my teeth.
My radio crackled. “We’re looking from both ends with binoculars,” Jim said. “We don’t see you. Thom’s sending someone down from Camp One.”
They wouldn’t be able to get to us without a ladder. I prayed there was an extra in Camp One and that they would know to bring it.
Phil’s weight dug into my bruised waist. My wrecked shoulder throbbed from my grip on the ice ax. Ironically, Phil and I were currently positioned in the ultimate mountaineering dilemma: cut your partner off the rope and save yourself, or both die together? But this was a commercial expedition where Phil was a paying client, not a partner.
Don’t think about that. Keep your head. Gravity and friction are in your favor. There are other guides just a quarter mile away. Do whatever it takes to hang on.
I pushed my face into the small opening in my pack I’d managed to unzip, grabbing one of the avalanche pickets with my teeth. That’s when I saw someone rappelling down the wall of ice from which the serac had broken off. Luke.
I yelled for him to stop and not come any farther because the wall was unstable, but he ignored me.
Luke landed safely on our side of the crevasse. Wordlessly, he twisted three ice screws into the solid snow, put himself on a flat rappel back to me, tied a figure eight on a bight to the other end of the rope, and clipped it to the daisy chain on my harness. He pulled the slack out of the rope, bent it through the ATC on his harness, and just like that, I was on an anchor, and Phil’s weight was off me and onto Luke’s belay.
He called directions down to Phil as I eased off the ice ax. I twisted around to sit and scooted farther back from the lip of the chasm. I kept a close eye on Phil as he pulled himself over the edge and crawled up to us.
When all three of us were at the anchors, I called Jim on the radio to give an update.
“What’s Luke doing down there?” he replied.
Luke hadn’t been the one Thom sent down? He must have come on his own while they were still trying to reach me on the radio.
“Yes, it’s Luke with us,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “We’re going to need a ladder to get across the crevasse, otherwise we’ll have to descend to Base Camp.”
Thom confirmed there was an extra ladder at Camp One and told us Hulk and Phurba were on their way down with it. Thank god, because I wasn’t sure I had it in me to go all the way back down the gauntlet of the icefall right now.
“Well, that was a scare,” Phil said when the radio calls were done.
You have no idea.
“Are you hurt?” I asked him.
“I don’t think so. But I owe you a big thank-you.”
“Luke’s the one who should get the thanks.”
Phil thanked him, but it was me who he hugged afterward.
In all this, Luke hadn’t said a single word, and he continued to say nothing during the never-ending wait for Phurba and Hulk to arrive, set up the ladder, and redo the fixed line.
I snuck a glance at him. He was frowning, and his index finger tapped anxiously on his knee.
I couldn’t even imagine what he must be thinking about me. I had made a terrible mistake in going across the rubble in a rope team instead of belaying Phil from a fixed anchor. Not only had I nearly gotten a client killed, it was Luke who had seen me in a position that could have only been caused by me backtracking out of a mistake, and Luke who’d had to put himself in a suicidal position to save my neck.
My head sagged with humiliation. I didn’t have any idea how I was going to cope with what had happened, let alone the repercussions it would have on my relationship with Luke. Last night, everything had seemed so sure between us. Now, nothing was.