Day 3 - Summit Attempt

“All your life you had been led by the hand like a small child, and suddenly you were on your own, you had to learn to walk by yourself.  There was no one around. . .  At such a time you felt the need of committing yourself to something absolute—life or truth or beauty. . .  You needed to surrender to some such ultimate purpose.”—Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

I had set the alarm on my cell phone for two in the morning.  My headlamp was mounted on my helmet.  Water was tucked inside my tent where it would not freeze.  I would climb for two hours in darkness over tracks that I had seen and memorized the day before.

But the alarm did not sound, and I awoke to the first glimmers of daylight.  The cell phone did not even light up; it was completely dead.  Later I realized that in trying unsuccessfully to obtain signal for two full days, it had exhausted its battery, like a climber who tries too hard.  Still, I did not panic or immediately change the plan.  I had wanted to ascend through the Red Banks, up Misery Hill, to reach the summit about nine.  Then I could return to base camp around noon, before the thaw and its loosening of rocks on the Red Banks, which is the greatest danger on most days.  And on this day I had been advised that ice chunks from the recent storm still hung on the Red Banks and were falling in the afternoon thaws.

Climbers

Looking up at the Red Banks

I climbed with only a light pack, leaving most things at base camp, but the struggle seemed very hard.  I could not climb any faster than a certain speed learned over many hikes as my greatest long-term speed.  And today the elevation made it even slower.  Maybe I was unconsciously trying to make up lost time, but I felt tired in the first hour.  When I was still below The Heart, that bulge of rock in the center of the left picture, I took rest.  Looking up toward the Red Banks, I saw two tiny specks that appeared to be moving.  In the right picture, zoomed in, they are clearly human climbers, probably bearing skis for some sort of wild descent.  

I climbed up past The Heart and rested again, considering my progress relative to the distance remaining.  The numbers did not jive.  I could not reach the summit before noon, if I even had the energy to reach it.  I would descend through the Red Banks in the afternoon of a day that was already turning warm.  There was only one reasonable course of action.  Like I told the lady ranger a week ago when she advised me not to go up because a storm is coming, “I am crazy, but I am not stupid.”

I began a slow descent, disappointed, but determined to enjoy the day.  Above  Helen Lake, I saw the camps of climbers already packing up to descend. 

Near them was a small moving speck, which you can barely see in the left picture, and can see clearly in the right zoom.  It was the only living thing, other than humans, I had seen since Horse Camp. 

Other climbers passed me going down, and where the slope allowed it, they were sliding, glissading, and having a good rollick for their efforts. 

They took my picture doing the same.