Her friend hung, arms over her head, her ice axe dangling from her wrist, the pack clipped on at her waist.
“Aria.” She grabbed her by the pack harness, bringing her closer. Drew her face next to hers.
Breath, but barely. And then a groan.
“Hang on.” She reached over and grabbed the pack’s haul loop, then unclipped the pack’s waist harness, holding on as the pack dropped away. She managed to not let it jerk, but lowered it by its tether to dangle off Aria’s harness.
“Aria.” She took off her mitten, tucked it into her jacket, and reached over to wiggle her hand into the collar of Aria’s jacket. She found Aria’s neck and pressed against her carotid artery.
A steady beat there. So maybe Aria was just woozy from so much blood to her head.
She needed to hurry and get her down.
She secured Aria’s harness to her rope so she could create a lowering system. Then she grabbed Aria’s axe, removing it from her wrist. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
She climbed back up, breathing hard.
Sasha shouted something, but she couldn’t make it out.
Besides, she was too out of breath to answer.
The snow had turned blinding again, and she had to wipe out her goggles before she headed back up to Sasha.
Her friend was shivering. Maybe going into shock. “Breathe, Sasha. Just stay calm. We’re going to be okay. Aria is alive. She’s hanging upside down, and I’m not sure how hurt she is.” She didn’t suggest anything beyond that.
“We’ll lower her to the snowpack below, and then we’ll hunker down and ride this out.”
Sasha’s eyes were huge in hers, and she nodded.
Yes, they were going to be okay. Jenny would set up their tent, dig in, make some soup, get everyone warm . . .
Maybe pray, although this sort of felt like some divine retribution.
Apparently, a woman with her mistakes didn’t get to feel free.
“Good girl. I’ll be right back.”
Since the load line was clipped to Sasha’s anchor, she climbed up to unhook her line, retrieved her ice screws, and returned to Sasha.
“I’ll belay you down to the serac, and then I want you to clip into the anchor and wait for me. Do you think you can do that?”
Sasha nodded.
She hooked Sasha back into the main line with the descender, then anchored herself to the ice pros and set herself into the snow, seating her crampons and herself into the snowpack. Then she secured Sasha on belay with the final length of the rope. “On belay. Descend when ready.”
“Descending,” Sasha said, her voice thin. But she bravely chipped her way down to the head of the serac and clipped into the anchor.
Using her Prusik to self-belay, Jenny worked her way down to Sasha.
Her breath had created an icy layer in her mask and she needed to rest, her heartbeat dangerously high. She blamed the lack of oxygen and the fact that she wasn’t sure just how terrible her idea was.
What if the serac collapsed and dragged them down the mountain?
Not now. That was thinking too far ahead, maybe. She just needed to figure out right now.
“I’m going to lower you down so you can catch Aria, okay?”
Sasha nodded.
“But I need to set the lip.” She worked her way down to the edge of the serac, then set Aria’s ice axe in horizontally over the edge. “When you go over the edge, let the rope drag over the axe handle. Set an anchor with your axe at the bottom and clip the rope in.” That would at least keep her and Aria from screaming down the mountain if one of her anchors budged.
She returned to her anchor and reset the descender onto the free line to lower Sasha down. “Ready?”
“Ready,” Sasha said.
“Lowering,” Jenny said, and Sasha stepped backward as Jenny took the descender off auto-stop. The rope slipped through her mittened hands, held to friction by the descender as Sasha worked her way over the edge.
The weights pulled against her—her harness, uphill, and Sasha’s body, downhill. Her legs began to shake.
Please, help us get off this mountain. A chill had sunk into her bones despite her exertion. But it wasn’t long before she felt the slack in the rope. Sasha, at the bottom. Hopefully she anchored in separately with her ice axe.
Now to lower Aria.
She added more anchors, reworked the ropes, and created a lowering system, finally clipping Aria’s line into it.
“Ready?” Jenny shouted.
“Lower her!” Sasha said.
Please don’t let her drop Aria on her head.
“I got her,” Sasha finally yelled.
Jenny wanted to weep. But she unclipped the ropes, tied herself back in to the main rope, coiled the excess back into a kiwi loop, and retrieved her anchors. She hoisted her pack back on, retrieved Aria’s axe, then took the long way around the serac.
Sasha had unclipped the pack from Aria, and it sat not far away, an orange beacon in the whiteout.
Aria lay in Sasha’s arms under the unlikely protection of the serac. Some of her dark hair had escaped her hat, turning to ice against her face. Jenny dropped to her knees beside her. “Aria. Wake up.”
Aria’s eyes were already starting to flutter. She woke hard, with a start and a scream.
Jenny put her hand on Aria’s chest. “Shh. Stop. We’re okay.” But Aria was starting to hyperventilate, her eyes wide.
“Listen, we got blown off the mountain. But we’re okay. We’re going to be okay.”
Except now Jenny was shaking hard—needing her words as much as Aria did.
She didn’t want to consider the truth.
They’d tumbled into a whiteout, and for all everyone else knew, they’d fallen to their crumpled, frozen deaths. She didn’t want to think about Kit and what had happened to her, but she had a feeling that perhaps the icy cap had broken away, just as it did on Everest so many years ago. Who knew if High Camp had even survived the inevitable avalanche?
Everyone else could be dead.
No—no. She couldn’t go there.
“I need to get the tent up.”
She took off her pack, reevaluating her crazy thought about camping under the serac. But it gave them protection from driving snow, and with the falling temperatures, it wouldn’t be in danger of melting, breaking off, and careening downhill.
In theory.
Besides, it wasn’t a gnarled-toothed overhang, but more of a jutting, almost-protective shelf.
Okay, her gut said never camp under a serac, but she couldn’t even see the rest of the mountain. They could be ten feet from a sheer drop-off.
And Aria just might be going into shock.
Jenny pulled out her shovel and dug out a well, building up walls in a circle and packing the sides against the wind as high as she guesstimated the tent to be.
Then she pulled out the tent and pitched it in a few quick moves. Sasha helped, holding it down as Jenny assembled the rods and secured the metal stakes into the ice and snow.
She would have liked a snow saw to build actual bricks, but she didn’t have time.
“Let’s get inside,” she said. She helped Sasha bring Aria into the tent, pulling off her crampons. Sasha did the same. Jenny retrieved their sleeping bags and pulled the packs under the tent’s vestibule.
The wind was howling now, a whine in the sky that burned into her ears and bulleted her face. She was so cold her teeth rattled, her toes were numb, her bones brittle.