When the temperature is below zero, down jackets cease to be effective.
Forty-five minutes of standing still in these temperatures makes one contemplative. It is easy to see the appeal of television, microwaves and thermostats after hanging in a harness dodging chunks of ice for the better part of an hour. Suddenly, ice climbing doesn’t seem like such a great sport anymore.
The weather may have something to do with it as well. Don’t look up; the spindrift avalanches from last night’s snow will blast you in the face and run down your collar. And besides, with all the ice raining down, it would be easy to catch a piece in the face.
After leaning against the anchor for close to an hour, it is easy to question its strength. When you built it, you were hot. You were also relieved. The hard part was over; it was time for your partner to earn his keep. You just fired in two ice screws and clipped into them. The down jacket came out, but you didn’t even zip it up. Slowly, your core temperature dropped. Now it feels like it’s hovering somewhere around 75 degrees. And those ice screws look like they may have fractured the ice around them. Did they do that when you put them in? Why didn’t you notice that right away? Or is it new? Better not to think about it.
Your partner looks like he may be having trouble. You can hear him muttering to himself, something about brittle ice.
Ice at twenty-five degrees is great. It is like swinging tools into hard butter. Ice at five degrees isn’t great. It is like swinging tools into plate glass windows. Eventually the tool will stick, but there is always the question as to whether you bashed away all the fractured ice or if that is what your tool is in now.
The water bottle lid is frozen shut. With thick gloves on, you have trouble handling it in the first place. Now it’s no use. And the wrapper on your energy bar is being a pain in the ass. Stupid gloves keep slipping as you try to tear at the little perforation marked with a dotted line. Aren’t these bars for active people? Can’t they make the wrapper glove-friendly? It’s funny how gloves so thick don’t seem to do shit in terms of keeping your hands warm.
You hear “watch me” come down from your partner, so you stuff the bar in your pocket and put both hands on the rope. He’s scared again. Heard it in his voice. He is at the top of the crux, a pillar of vertical ice. You know it’s vertical because you can see it, but you know how it will feel once you’re on it. He would swear it’s overhanging.
His right tool is in the ice. He is swinging his left one. Each swing results in an explosion of solid mist, and the larger ice chunks that go whizzing by. He is getting tired. His swings have less and less force. Every once in a while his tool glances off the ice, shooting sideways. His arm is barely strong enough to aim straight.
It’s been a little while since he put in a screw. If he falls, he is going for a big ride, maybe twenty, thirty feet. Almost all the way back down to you. You start to shiver. You stop looking up. You hunch your shoulders and try to burrow inside of your down jacket.
It is Sunday. You have homework to do. Work tomorrow, then school on Tuesday. And this is how you wanted to spend your free time? Not one of your best decisions.
The rope starts to move faster. He is past the hard part. You pay out slack, hoping that he will yell down to you soon so you can start climbing. Every time you feel him stop moving, you pray that he is building the anchor. Maybe there are some trees up there, and he will just run the rope around them. Or maybe there are permanent bolts and the anchor will only take a second to set up.
It takes forever. It has to have been over an hour now. But then it comes, “Off belay!” You unclip him from your belay device and prepare to climb.
The rope comes taut. Then it yanks at your harness. You break down the anchor, begrudgingly stuff your down jacket in your pack, and swing your tools into the ice. Slowly, methodically, you swing your tools in the spots cleared by your partner’s lead. Swing left, swing right, move your feet up. Swing left, swing right, move your feet up. The carabiners’ gates are frozen shut. The rope has frozen stiff as a cable. Every ice screw takes an eternity to remove. Slowly you continue upward. Swing left, swing right, move your feet up.
You crest the steep ice. Your partner is huddled behind a boulder, about ten yards away. The wind is calm, and you can hear your metal crampons squeak in the cold as you walk across the hard snow. You reach him; he is shaking from the cold. You smile at each other.
“Let’s get the hell down.”
Two hours later, you are at home. You just had a shower, and you are sipping a bowl of hot ramen noodles. The second Lord of the Rings movie is on TNT. You are wrapped in your -20 degree sleeping bag. Your rope is draped over a chair in the corner, drying with the rest of your gear.
This is when you realize what climbing is and why you do it: the intensity. It makes you appreciate perfect tranquility. At a time when you feel like you can’t waste time sitting on your ass, it forces you to do just that. So sit back and enjoy the Two Towers. You’ve earned it.