Open Bivy - METAMORPHOSIS

The climbing was standard alpine fare. Not too steep, just the right amount of gear, and fun enough to keep our interest, the summit calling like the sirens of Lorelei. Yet fate would have its way — the weather closed in and made us suffer after only four hours. We continued to the ridge crest, feeling the updraft from the West Face. Like crabs, we scuttled left, arriving at what, in the middle of the storm, had to be the summit. No joy, no jubilation, just an eerie sixth sense that we had overdrawn our limits and luck.

We rapped down, leaving single-point stations as waypoints. One more night in the tiny tent, and then the following morning a shortcut down the northeast shoulder to the hanging glacier. Within spitting distance of the Sunshine Glacier and the horizontal, Seth took that fall, leaving me alone with a smattering of gear and no rope — the Big Daddy of transformative experiences. I downclimbed with tether slings and supertape, coaxing placements out of the iced-up crack. Seth had survived and was sitting in the snow. With a little patience, I would be on the glacier with him. And then the No. 3 Friend I was hanging off gave way. I, too, fell to the glacier, 60 feet to the galcier. Winded, with a chest full of snow, I waded through the deep powder that had saved my life. I embraced Seth, happy we were alive. As we trudged back to civilization, the talking ptarmigan came up — we both had heard the bird. Was it real? Our rational side knew that birds don’t talk, yet we heard some thing. Maybe death had come close enough to change our auditory perception.

Our journey in Alaska wasn’t anything exceptional. We repeated a route that had been climbed years before. We were gone just a fraction of time. Yet the hallmarks of an epic were all there, conspiring to make this my most memorable mountain experience. My dear friend Seth died in a crevasse fall nine years later. Our shared saga now rests within me. It is rite of passage that happened once, yet due to its intensity will live forever.