We had made it - finally - to the mountains. They were so grand. So big. Sooo much snow. And no more s'wack! As we sat in parallel parked rope teams, discussing how nice it would be to not have any more vegetation until the final days, Jorn simply shook his head and smiled. That should have been my 1st clue.
The solution to the riddle that is "Jorn" was not to be found by the Waddington 68 group despite the use of Occam's Razor. (Yeah, I know. Look it up.) Unlike the 'typical' mountain instructor who is mid-to-late 20's, single, doing what it takes to make ends meet, and has a totally biased world view, Jorn was not any of these. He was quiet. Intense. Not young. At the end of most days we held a CHAI meeting. "Community Announcements, Hot Seat, Affirmations, and Information." A popular question tossed around the circle was, 'What was the most interesting/cool thing you have done?' (One answer told the story of three students that came up from sea level and attempted a 14'er with what could have been deadly results. But it was a cool story.)
"What was the coolest thing you have done, Jorn?"
"The coolest thing that I can tell you about was the HALO jumps I did," he casually replied.
Two things stand out: HALO jump(s) and 'the coolest thing I can tell you about.'
For my non-military friends, a HALO jump is an acronym for High Altitude, Low Opening parachute jump. A plane will fly high above contested territory and drop troopers, who free fall until the last possible moment and deploy their chutes for a 'detection-less' insertion. That was the thing he could tell us about. What had he done that he couldn't talk about?
What we knew about Jorn consisted of:
- He had served 20 odd years in some military, for which country we didn't know.
- He was older then 50
- He had more experience in the mountains than anyone else on the trip
And... The mystery of Jorn continues...
Second Gear
We walked through the clouds into the wonderland below. Stumbling downward, I kept my mind busy by envisioning how I would ski the slope I was on. We kept descending for a few thousand vertical feet. The contour lines grew close together until they were almost on top of each other, each black line on the map bleeding into it's neighbor. An hour and a half later and we were only half way down. The white paths of safety ended, leaving fields and gullies of loose rock and boulders. Off Jorn went, jaunting through as if he was on the way to get coffee. I blinked my frustration, admiration, and fear, hoping for the first time that my sunglasses weren't mirrored so he would understand how I felt because there was no way words were going to cut it. All he had to say about it was to stay out from under each other and keep moving, and off he went again.
This was... different.
There was no protection. No safety. If you fell, and couldn't stop, it would be game over. From within my bones I felt the cold fingers of fear leave my marrow and encase the bone. Webbing across the surface turning the white bone to a dull gray, it began to seep through the muscle pushing the pulse back until my heart had all but been encased. Fear - paralyzing fear - consumed me. I had done some pretty sketchy stuff in the mountains but nothing of this caliber. In any other circumstance I would not have gone down this way. But down we went. When we got there it was all I could do to sit still. Adrenaline was drowning my system, and it's influence continued to pump my body to believe it was not safe. But I was. Somehow, I made it down alive.
Looking back up at the drainage ditch, we saw the rest of the group at the top. One by one they start their descent, slowly, carefully. I could no longer keep Father Time at bay. Sleep was coming like a freight train loaded with coal and I closed my eyes.
My eyes flutter opened. I'd been asleep for 20 minutes already. Jorn's voice drifted through the air saying that something was wrong and that he would be back.
"Zane, packs on in 5," said a voice outside of my dark world.
"I'm up," I responded, wishing it hadn't come to that.
Off we went toward Oval Lake. Another two hours of rope team travel followed with an hour unroped. We arrived on the other side of the range realizing my dreaded enemy was back. S'wack. I might have uttered a curse word.
After a good night's rest, we battled a few hours through the alder and arrived at the lake. The welcoming committee was unwelcome: the mosquitoes had a field day. Pushing on to the next glacier we made good progress, but it not enough. Mandeep took the lead, and was moving fast. We were on the edge of a dry glacier where all of the rocks and trees had been bulldozed. It was a weird world. Everything was frozen in place. Water had melted and refroze into little beads giving our boots traction.
Our first experience with a dry glacier would not be a good one. Faster and faster we went, and then faster still. Our line had spaced out, with the front half pulling away and the second half falling farther behind. "It's only a matter of time before someone gets hurt," I thought. Nick misplaced a step and gravity took over, pulling him down the 60 degree slope. Falling six feet and landing on his shoulder, he bounced. Time slowed. I counted my heart beats, thinking that this might be my first experience with death, it can't go right. Nick's throaty yells filled my ears as he landed on his back, his pack between him and the ground some vertical feet from where he started.
He lay there moaning.
One of the students stabilized his head in case of a spinal injury. The I-team (Instructor team) quickly was there going step by step down the list to make sure Nick was ok. All other sound had stopped. Ten minutes later Nick was sitting up talking. He was shaken but not hurt. The demons came whispering out from behind the dirty ice: why was Mandeep pushing us so fast? Why didn't the other instructors say something? This was the second time in two days that we got lucky. Coming down the steep rock gully, a small boulder had been dislodged and only the student's pack, and it's size, saved him from what very likely could have been a deadly encounter. Jorn took over, making sure the group was okay, then heading onward with renewed speed.
The forced march continued until we found and probed a site to spend the night. We slept, an unfriendly tension in the air. NOLS is big on teamwork and team dynamics, more specifically how to handle conflict. The instructors had a very long meeting. It was obvious there was disagreement in the ranks. We didn't really know what happened, but from then on there was a friction that remained until late in the trip.
We stayed at that camp for a couple of days. One day we practiced building snow anchors and had a nice little rest. The sensation of time is non-existent in the back-country. You move when it makes sense to move; you bide your time when you need to wait. The next step to our journey was to traverse from one glacier up to another, then tag a pass and drop into the valley on the other side. In years past there was a steep but climbable snow ramp connecting the two. On this trip there was no ramp, just a cliff. The plan was for the group to split up into three teams, and then shuttle their way up a top roped pitch connecting the two glaciers. Packs on back time was 0300 in hopes that the water falls would have frozen over.
Tent groups were rearranged so that each tent contained a rope team, hopeful that things in the morning would go more smoothly. We didn't sleep well and the alarms went off at 0130, beginning our day. It began with a hour delay for packs on backs due to weather. Crawling back into our sleeping bags we hunkered for another 60 minutes, not wanting to go back to sleep. 0245, another delay of an hour. Packs on backs at 0500. Time moved like a melting ice-sickle, drop by slowww drop. Another hour delay pushed the start time to 0600. The red tent fabric snapped with the wind, a violent dance that lolled me to sleep until my alarm went off at 0525. Striking camp had become second nature, and we were cleaned up in record time. At the start of our trip it took us 45 minutes to go from bags to packed. By the last few days it was done in almost 15.
The first team headed off across the divide and started the climb. The rest of the group waited until the first team was on it's way up so there would be no line at the belay. We watched as they reached the climb, and stopped and waited. Jorn in his trademark orange shell jacket, and Mandeep in his blueberry colored shell, they ventured up to the left, then back to the group, and Jorn started the climb. Smooth sailing until about halfway up, where he stopped, and waited. The group at camp watched him for a solid 15 minutes. He stood there for that time, then down climbed and the rope team started to come back. No dice, the route was impassable. Upon returning we saw Jorn soaked head to toe, and the I-team had a meeting while the students talked. Story was the entire route was up a water fall, and exposed the entire way. The best case scenario was for people to climb up and everything be soaked and everyone cold. It just wasn't going to happen.
Margaret was part of the team that went up to attempt the climb; these are what she brought back.
The next morning a team climbed the pass that we had come down 3 days prior. They wanted to try the sat phone again, which had broke, tolerance for adversity and uncertainty. So we waited. Jorn called for a meeting, and another fact about Jorn was brought to light: he was one of the higher ups at the New Zealand NOLS branch. He then explained to us what the PNW, Pacific North West NOLS branch, would be doing. It was reassuring to 'know' what was going on and to know what 'would' happen. Which boiled down to the PNW was either going to give us a new route or they would shuttle us to the next food drop in the helicopter. Day one ticked by. Then day two. By day three, we were restless. Food was running low but we didn't have to eat much because we weren't burning calories. We laid in the tents hunting the mosquitoes that entered when we did.
Day three of waiting was filled by a lesson on ice climbing on the dry glacier. Excited to be doing something, we set off toward the glacier. We never made it to the ice that day. As we set off to climb, a helicopter rose form behind a ridge and landed near our camp with instructions to shuttle the group to the next food drop.
The view from the chopper. Our maps show the entire valley to be filled with a glacier, not the tiny ribbon that you see. It should stretch from one hill to the other. I really didn't understand the magnitude of everything until we were flying.
One hour later, we were dropped in the middle of the range. An hour after that, we had set up camp and were told to sleep until the sun came up.
So we did.
Little did we know that the hardest days were ahead of us. Everything up to this point had just been a preview.
Z
