Of Men and Mountains
An hour later and a hundred feet off the valley floor, covered in sweat, and blood, his heart filled with excitement and anticipation. He set a line end through a carabineer, tied it off, and let himself hang, turning his back to the mountain and gazing out.
The view was spectacular, and, even from his relatively low perch, took his breath away. He was awestruck; his heart filled with wonder, so he simply hung there, taking it all in, breathing the cleansing air and listening to the silence.
Completely absorbed, he lost track of how long he’d lingered there, and eventually looked down, gauging in his climb so far. He examined his lines, his spikes and knots. It looked good, really good, and his confidence at making the top this time rose to a new high. Sure, he should have used a thicker line for the second run, and his base knot really needed a second hitch, but overall it looked—
“Hey, that looks good!” A voice called down to him.
Jordan’s head snapped up and the first thing he saw was how far he had yet to go, hundreds and hundreds of feet. Then he spotted his fellow climber, up a long breadth above him. Even at this distance Jordon could see he had some top of the line equipment, including a brand name climbing suit, very different from the well-worn street clothes Jordan climbed in.
“Hello,” Jordan called back. “Wow, you’re high up. How did you learn?”
“Hold on, I’ll come down,” his companion called.
The man above set a twenty-four volt descending restrictor on his line, kicked away from the mountain, and, with a whirr of sliding rope, dropped down to Jordon’s side.
“Hello,” he said, setting a spike in a tight crevice with a powder charged spike gun. “I’m Grimes, I climb here all the time. Are you new?”
“Jordan,” he said with an uncertain shrug rooted in his amateur status. “I’ve made a few attempts, even made Agent’s Rough once, but then I took a bad fall.”
“That’s too bad,” Grimes said, his tone was set somewhere between arrogant and sarcastic. “I’ve made that climb a lot.”
“I’ve been climbing out at the Pods for a while now; I made a few good climbs, but haven’t been back since the avalanche.”
“Really?” Grimes said, letting his sarcasm pour out. “I only climb here, the big one. I climb here all the time.”
“Really? I haven’t heard of you."
Behind the lenses of his pano-scopic climbing goggles, Grimes’ eyes sprang open. “That’s surprising. I’m very well known.”
“Are you sponsored?”
“Absolutely, I climb with the Yeti Crew.”
“I don’t know them.”
“Wow, you are green,” Grimes said with a chuckle. “I’ll tell you what; if you want I’d be happy to help you climb.”
“Really?” Jordan’s eyes lit up and his first opinion of this climber shifted from skeptic doubt to hopeful potential.
“Sure. I can see you’ve got what it takes. You’ve got talent and I’d be happy to help you use it.”
“Wow.” Jordan’s heart raced, he’d found a mentor at last. “Can you tell me how to cinch a safety line for slide through? I still have to keep retying the knot.”
Grimes smiled and shook his head. “You don’t need to know how to do that. What you need to do is get yourself a sponsor, then have them supply you with all the latest automated gear and the equipment will do the rest.”
Jordon’s brow formed deep lines. “Don’t I have to know all the knots and lines before I can get a sponsor?”
Grimes’ hand waved as if he were shooing a pestering fly. “Not necessary. All you have to do is create the illusion that you know those things, and then you can get a sponsor.”
The grooves in Jordan’s brow deepened. “How do I create an illusion that I know things I don’t?”
Grimes gave Jordon’s arm a friendly sock, and set him gently swinging. “You tell people you know those things.”
“And they’ll believe me?” Hope smoothed over the corners and edges of Jordon’s features. He stared at the Yeti Crew patch sewn on Grimes’ shiny, silk jumpsuit.
“Sure they will.”
Jordon tipped his head toward a shoulder and his mouth filled with the acrid taste of scam. “How much do you charge?”
“Nothing.”
Jordon swallowed some of the foul flavor. “Nothing?”
“Nothing. Now go on and climb ahead, then you pull my line up. When we get to the top we’ll both have a climb under our belts.”
“You’d share your climb with me?”
“Of course, of course, now go on, you climb up.” Grimes, letting himself hang loose on his line, dug into his Velcro pouch, pulled out a protein booster power bar, and began to unwrap it. “I’m going to take a little break.”
Jordon gripped his line, set his feet against the mountainside, and looked up; the cold air played across his exposed face. “This sounds strange to me, but you are the expert.”
“Sure am.”
A rapid hammering of spikes dropped both of their eyes downward. Below them a figure was quickly ascending the mountain.
Grimes pulled back the cuff of his Monster Goat brand climbing gloves and looked at his digital altimeter watch. “Boy, how’d it get that late? I’m going to have to go now, Jordy.”
“Jordan.”
Grimes handed Jordon a full-color business card with a concealed holographic projector casting a miniature image of a mountain. “Here’s my card. Give me a call next week and we’ll talk about my climb.”
“Our climb?”
“Sure,” Grimes said, then pulled a Walkie-Talky from a sheath on his belt and spoke into it, “OK, I’m ready.” He returned the devise to its pouch, then looked over, gripping his rope in two hands. “See you next week, Jordy.”
Rapidly Grimes began to ascend the mountain, his line being drawn upward with the distinct sound of an operating high-speed winch motor. Jordan watched him rise until he passed into the cloud then glanced at the card, Grimes Heysay: Expert Climber, Climbing Instructor, Climbing Adviser, House Painter.
The excitement at a potential contact momentarily overrode Jordan’s common sense. He carefully slid the card into his pants pocket, making sure it didn’t have a hole in it.
Preparing to move on he noticed the other climber was beginning to overtake him. He watched his technique in awe; simple, but practical gear, all in all in sound, but well used condition. The main line slid through his well-worn gloves with deft skill; the knots flowed effortlessly from his fingers. He switched hasps and carabineers and cinched lines with a machine-like attention to detail. His approach was sound, but lacked the flair and flash of Grimes’.
“Hello!” Jordan called out.
The climber glanced his way, and for a moment Jordan though he was going to keep on climbing. But he set a new spike, kicked away from the rock, and pendulumed to Jordon’s side with clockwork precision. He set a spike and tied off a safety line.
“Hello there,” his companion said in a voice muffled by a thick wool scarf.
“I’m Jordan, I’m new here.”
The climber looked up and down Jordan’s line, then nodded. “I can see that,” his mountain-mate said, pulling off the helmet and goggles and drew the scarf down below her chin. “Looks like you could use some advice.”
Jordon swallowed and blinked, trying to conceal his mistaken assumption. “Well, that guy who was just here offered to help me.” He pointed up, the winch had gone silent.
She looked up as if her eyes had some power to pierce the clouds. “You can definitely use some advice,” she said knowledgably. “I’m Alicia, Alicia Druid, but you can call me Ali, everyone does.”
“Hey, I’ve heard of you,” he said more excitedly then he intended to. “You’ve won awards for climbs.”
“You’re only as good as your last climb.”
He looked over her simple, but conventional outfit; sheep skin vest, thick, worn leather boots, double insulated climbing pants, her outfit was a bit outdated, but it was also
effective and efficient and lacked any sponsorship badges. “Is that why you keep climbing then, to stay relevant?”
She laughed, loudly and strongly. “I climb the mountain because I climb the mountain. This is who I am.”
The layers of confusion were deepening over Jordon’s mind like snow on the mountaintop. “Oh. So you make a lot of money climbing.”
Her face opened wide. “A lot of money…Yeah, right!” She laughed again, harder, and Jordan worried she might start an avalanche. But she quickly regained her composure and shook her head in a compassionate fashion. “I don’t climb to make money; if I did I would have quit a long time ago and gone into a better paying field, like fast-food services.”
What she was saying seemed to be in complete contrast to everything Jordon thought he knew, and dreamed of. “But you have all those sponsors, and do all those conventions.”
“Honey, that don’t pay the rent,” she said with a matter-of-factness that while jarring, also struck Jordon as genuine. She looked down his line again. “Now, you look like you need to start at the beginning. These knots are passable, but only just. And you’re using too many links; that makes your line weak, which then you try to compensate for by using a lot of support clips and accent lines, but you’re just weighing the whole rig down, risking a collapse of your entire support structure.”
Jordan gave his set up a good looking over. “Yeah, I know you’re right. But I’ve climbed this far, I don’t want to start over.”
“Honey, I don’t think you have any choice. Better to fall now, closer to the bottom, then when you’re too high.”
“But I’m using almost the same gear as you.”
“But I’ve been using it a lot longer. You’ll get there, but you need to get the basics right before you climb too high.”
Jordan cast a glance at Grimes’ empty spike that, surrounded by a circle of black powder residue, resembled a bull’s-eye. “Well, I met this guy who said he’d help me.”
“And how much did Grimes want?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Well, he said we’d climb together, but we’d share the credit,” despite what he was saying, the truth in his gut pushed Jordon’s lip up on one corner and raised the pitch of his voice into nearly a question.
“I’m sure he did. And did he tell you how to cinch two lines, or how to run out catch hasps?”
“No. I think he uses winches and poly-fiber filaments and an automated line clamp.”
“Look, I know that sounds great. But if you want to climb, learn to climb, climb on your on. It isn’t glamorous, it isn’t quick, and it certainly isn’t easy, but it’s the way to climb.”
Jordan looked up once more, then over at Ali’s gear. Then he looked in her eyes and saw the truth. He pulled Grimes’ card from his pocket and let it drift down to the valley floor. “I want to learn to climb.”
Ali’s head slid back on her neck and her eyes took on a piercing gaze. “Really? Are you absolutely certain?”
Jordon drew in a deep breath then blew it out with determined conviction. “I’m certain; absolutely. When do we start?”
Ali pulled an emergency knife from the sheath on her shoulder strap. “Right now,” she said then cut Jordan’s line.
He screamed all the way down, gripping his safety line so tightly his palms burned and cried for relief. Cold air rushed up his nose, the skin of his face was stretched painfully, the Earth charged him, and he prayed. Then his safety snapped tight.
Hanging like a hooked fish after a long fight, he swung up in a high arc, then swung back to the other side. The spring of his momentum unwound, his rises and falls slowed and grew steadily shallower until he drifted to a stop.
He hung like a forgotten marionette; his body shaking so hard that his line resonated in a low hum. At last the clamp of fear released his lungs; he exhaled then began to gasp. His tremulous breathing threatened to build into a fit of hysterical sobbing, but made an unreasonable u-turn and he began to laugh loudly.
When at last he recovered he looked up at the tiny figure above him scaling the mountain with seeming ease and grace. “She’s crazy, out of her mind, completely mad.” His words echoed angrily off the valley walls. He listened to the phantoms fall silent; then, his eyes still cast upward, his voice softened, “But man can she climb.”
Looking the frayed end of his line over he knew there would be no more climbing for him that day. So he set a spike deep in rock and climbed back down.