The Ledge (5 page)

The diamond-shaped tips on the ends of the lateral arms were the worst. I would inch out, on my belly, as far as I dared, with electricity coursing above and below me, stretch one arm through an invisible, shrinking safety zone, and run the brush over those tips. I couldn’t see what I was painting—I’d just blindly dab paint while Dad steered me from the ground with hollered instructions.

“To the right—more to the right,” he’d yell. “Creep out a little farther.”

He’d also yell out if I missed a spot.

“Ya left a skippa,” he’d holler, and I’d reach out again, swabbing the brush over the tip until it was covered and dripping with paint. Once I finished painting, I would crawl backward along the arm, with the steel edging bruising my limbs and power lines snapping above my head.

All these years later, I can close my eyes and feel the tingly surge of that electricity pulsating through my body, as if ants were biting me everywhere. I can hear the incessant hum of power throbbing along those wires.

At times I felt apprehension, even raw fear, but I learned to contain it. You couldn’t be afraid the whole time, but if you weren’t at least nervous or scared some of the time, I figured, you had to be insane. Ignoring the risks was not an option; succumbing to fright, however, would have made me a danger to myself and everyone on the crew. Staying controlled, pushing the fear down, and keeping a clear mind in the face of danger and difficulty—that’s what I learned on those jobs with Dad.

I PLUNGE INTO
the mountain. Rocketing through the gloom, my arms and legs windmill desperately through the air. My eyes are open, I think, but I can’t focus on the malicious ice walls rushing past me.

Partway down, I slam sideways into a thin snow platform that spans the crevasse—an old snow bridge, maybe. I feel the hit across my body and sense myself slowing a bit, and briefly I hope that the fall is over. But I tear right through, and sail deeper into the mountain.

Gravity pulls me in quicker as I careen toward disaster.

Just three seconds ago, I was on the snowy surface of the glacier, anxious to get off Mount Rainier, eager to toast our summit climb with Mike later tonight, antsy to get home to my wife, Gloria. Now I’m plunging down into a crevasse, and my mind seizes a new, more horrifying fear.

Please, God, don’t let us cork
.

The threat of corking is real. If you fall into a crevasse and your partner can stop you, you’ll wind up hanging from the rope, maybe hurt, maybe not. Fall far into a crevasse along with your partner, with nothing to catch either of you, and there’s every chance you’ll
both slam to a stop wedged into the fissure’s maw, like a cork in a bottle. Unable to move, unable to do anything but wait for death’s slow, cold march. Corked.

This can’t be real. But the terror burning a hole in my chest says it is. We’re going all the way to the bottom.

Flopping like a rag doll, I sense I’m going to hit very hard, very soon. An image of myself as a loose-limbed falling man flashes in my brain. This takes my mind somewhere unexpected—to the old
Wide World of Sports
TV show’s iconic footage of a ski jumper tumbling out of control on a takeoff ramp and crashing limply to the ground below as announcer Jim McKay intones something about “the agony of defeat.” In spite of his brutal landing, that skier had not been seriously hurt, I had read somewhere, because he had not tensed up during his wild fall.

Voices erupt in my head—the same ones I’d heard in difficult situations for years, playing out my options.

Go limp
.

You think that’s going to make any difference?

That’s all I can do
.

Just then, the right side of my face grazes the icy wall—merely a kiss of a touch, but it’s enough to deflect me the other way. I bash into the opposite wall hard, snapping my head sideways, and pain knifes through my left shoulder.

I pinball back to the first wall, smashing against it with my right side, jamming my helmet down over my forehead and into the bridge of my nose. The blow stuns me; then I ricochet into the far wall again, faster and harder this time.

Aaah—my leg!

I can’t take much more.

The ice walls are pinching closer together. I’m getting near the bottom of the crevasse.

It’ll all be over soon
.

My heavy pack is underneath me, dragging me down. Trailing behind me, my arms and legs flop wildly, smashing against the ice walls. I’m starting to go head-first, a perfect setup to get corked.

And then … 
WHAM!

My back hits first, and it feels like someone has driven a two-by-four right between my shoulder blades. I hear the air forced from my lungs in one loud, grunting burst. My torso has stopped, but my limbs arrive a fraction of a second later. Both my legs smack to a stop, splayed out; then my arms bounce off hard walls and flop to rest across my chest.

My head snaps back violently, wrenching the tendons in the front of my neck, shooting hot pain through my chest muscles.

I blink and gasp and try to grab a staccato breath in that panicky moment that comes after the wind has been knocked from me. Gulping air, I touch a wall with my right hand, and my glove makes no noise. I reach out with my left hand and feel another wall right next to me. Again, silence. Since the side walls aren’t moving, I’m not moving either. Slowly, my brain becomes convinced that I’m no longer falling.

Joy briefly flickers through me.

I’m alive
.

I JUST FELL
all that way, I’m alive, and I’m not too badly hurt
.

I suck in a smoother breath, wiggle, and feel pain stab down my neck. I’m on my back, with my feet a little lower than my head, and I’m looking straight up through the near darkness toward a small point of light far above me. The crevasse walls are about two feet wide here—just inches from my shoulders.

Bewildered, for an instant I don’t understand why I stopped. I can only assume I landed on a snow pile on the crevasse bottom.

I see moving darkness, a confusing image as the pinprick of light
far above my head vanishes and reappears, almost as if some unseen being is waving a dark curtain in front of a distant spotlight.

Then something about the size of a grapefruit lands on my belly.
Whump
—a handful of wet, clumpy snow. The pinhole of light flickers again, and a double handful of sloppy snow hits me in the face. The light blinks once more, and another load of slush splashes down onto me. It’s falling faster and harder, like someone up there is dumping slushy snow and ice down the crevasse onto me.

Whump, whump, whump
.

Arriving faster now, the snow pours in like concrete rushing down a chute, filling over my shins, my thighs. I stare dully at the pile growing on me. Like a lone voice trying to rouse a stuporous crowd, some small corner of my brain urges me to respond. My sluggish mind finally realizes that the light above me sputters off when falling snow blocks my view. The light flickers rapidly. More snow’s coming.

The momentary relief I felt when I realized I had survived the fall vanishes as fear rushes in. I try sitting up, but my shoulders are pinned. More desperate now, I attempt to force myself upright and feel my stomach muscles burn with the effort. The harder I try curling my body up, the deeper I feel the pack straps cut into my shoulders and hold me back. I can’t get up. I’m trapped.

You’re going to get buried. Dig
.

I throw my hands up in front of me and dog-paddle as fast as I can, pawing at the falling snow, shoving it away in a race for survival. The slop splats onto me ever faster, and I feel its building weight press down my belly.

My thrashing arms feel weak, and a tinge of hopelessness rises within me.

You’re losing. Dig faster! Keep that snow off you!

I flail my arms like some crazy cartoon character whose limbs spin perpetually but don’t really accomplish anything. Snow covers my
inclined body from my chest down to my toes. My legs feel heavy and compressed.

Keep your face clear
.

Now it’s really pouring in. Far above my head, the hole we punched through the sun-rotted snow bridge has made it even weaker. The bridge, I realize, is disintegrating and collapsing in on me. The cascading slop rumbles in my ears as it sprays in around me.

The light far above me goes dark, and doesn’t switch back on.

Something big’s coming. Cover up
.

In that instant, I throw both my hands over my face and turn my head slightly to the right. Survival tips from old avalanche classes race through my mind, so I open my mouth to grab one last breath before I’m covered. I gulp in the air, but I’m too slow closing my lips, so the incoming snow packs grainy wet crystals into my mouth.

A huge load smothers me in a swirling crash, blowing my right arm away from my face. My head’s buried now. I can’t see. Rough ice crystals poke my cheeks. Still pouring in, the wet debris builds up above my ears and sounds become muffled. I hear more snow landing on the pile that grows thicker upon my head.

No deeper—just stop, please
.

The sound of each impact is softer than the last, and I know the top surface of the snow is moving farther away as I get buried deeper.

No more—that’s enough
.

Stop!

BY THE MID-1980S
Mike Price had found a kindred spirit in Everett Ruess, a young Californian who’d ventured into a still-wild West in the early 1930s, wandering and thinking, writing and painting. Setting out while just a teenager, Ruess explored the California coast, the mountains of the High Sierra, and the deserts and canyonlands of Arizona and Utah. He captured the stark beauty of the wilderness on his notepad and in his photographs and memories, and he carved those scenes onto linoleum blocks that were used to make prints.

Ruess’s writings underscored his love for the outdoors, for the mystery waiting over the next hill, his words a poignant articulation of what drove him.

“I prefer the saddle to the streetcar and star-sprinkled sky to a roof, the obscure and difficult trail, leading into the unknown, to any paved highway, and the deep peace of the wild to the discontent bred by cities.… It is enough that I am surrounded by beauty.”

Ruess scaled remote canyons, and he sometimes scrawled “Nemo” high on rocks—Latin for “no man” or “no one,” or possibly a reference to Captain Nemo, who fled civilization in his submarine in
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
. Then, in November 1934, near Escalante, Utah, he inexplicably vanished
into the wilderness, never to be seen or heard from again. He was just twenty when he disappeared, and over the ensuing decades, theories abounded. Perhaps Ruess had been murdered. Plunged to his death while climbing a canyon wall. Set out on an adventure with no intention of returning to his old life.

A half century later, Mike Price became fascinated with Ruess, ultimately deciding to write his master’s thesis in English literature on a young man who, like himself, represented a confluence of intellectual ability and love of the outdoors.

And as Mike set out to write that thesis, he didn’t only research it; he lived it.

TRYING TO UNDERSTAND
the meaning in Ruess’s life—and maybe in his own—Mike struck out into the red rock desert canyonlands of southeast Utah, not only searching for answers to an enduring mystery but pursuing the romantic ideals that had inspired the young wanderer. Mike did not check into the Motel 6 in Moab and take a couple of day hikes. Instead, he slept alone in the sand, hiked under the blistering sun, hunkered down in torrential rains, and scaled canyon walls, all as he looked for clues about Ruess, for those hand-scratched “Nemo” marks.

Mike slept on the ground along a river turned silver in the moonlight, nothing covering him. He awakened at dawn, the call of canyon wrens the first sounds he heard. He sat in the rain reading, oblivious to his soaking clothes—or the protection of his nearby truck.