Ham unclipped too, and Orion wound up the line over his shoulder in a kiwi coil, then tacked it down with an overhand on a bight into his locking biner.
Glissading. Sliding down on his backside, the axe driven into the snow to slow him down, guide him.
It might be a little steep.
He walked over to the edge of the glacier and looked down. The Harper Glacier fell like a white river between the north and south peaks, gliding through Karstens Ridge and the Taylor Spur. At around twelve thousand feet, it cut between Karpe Ridge and Pioneer Ridge, spilled out into the Great Icefall, then cascaded to the lower icefall until it merged into Muldrow Glacier.
Nineteen thousand feet of blue ice, powder, ice chunks, and lethal crevasses.
He spied the final trickle of black smoke and pointed it out to Jake and Ham. “There’s our target.”
He estimated maybe three thousand feet down.
He sat on the icy slope and took off his crampons. Then he clipped them onto his pack.
“Remember, don’t dig in too much with your heels or you’ll launch yourself right over. Lean back into your axe.”
“Sheesh, Starr, you think we’d never seen snow before,” Jake said, sitting down beside him, crampons off.
“Yeah, well, maybe you’ve never slid on your backside down a mountain—”
Jake took off. He held his feet out, the snow shearing up in front of him, leaning back into his axe, riding it as he careened down the glacier.
Not too fast!
But Jake seemed to know his technique, and in a second, Ham also pushed off.
Which left Orion to catch up. He leaned back, letting gravity carry him. After nearly three days of wind, the snowpack was slick and icy and he fought to keep his heels dug in, his axe planted enough to keep him from careening down the mountain.
In front of him, he spotted Jake roll over, grab his axe, and slow himself down.
“You okay?” he asked as he skidded by him.
“Nearly supermanned!” Jake said, stopped now and looking over at Orion.
Okay, so the guy would be fine.
Ham had slowed too, the snow flying over his head.
Orion dug in, veering around a wide serac. He skimmed past that and slowed, suddenly spotting a worked trail.
He dug in and came to a stop at the trail.
Ham shot past him, then rolled and self-arrested.
“Is that a trail?” he shouted.
Jake sprayed him with an arc of snow as he stopped, also self-arresting. Orion was climbing to his feet as Jake said, “Hey, is that a depression under that serac?”
Under a serac? Who would be—
Except, yes. Orion followed Jake’s point and made out what looked like a camp under the shadow of the shelf-like serac.
Huh. He turned, scoping the mountain, trying to find the black smoke. It had vanished under the fall of the ice field.
But somewhere down there, Jacie was alive. He felt it in his gut, just like Ham said.
“No matter what it takes, I’ll find you, Jacie.”
Aria needed to stop letting her heart make decisions her body couldn’t deliver. Like buying a motorcycle, taking lessons, and then letting the sleek Honda Rebel 300 gather dust in her storage unit. Or finishing the online scuba diving course only to avoid taking her underwater test.
The only reason she actually made it onto a mountain was because of Jenny, really. Because Jenny didn’t give up. And because Aria had made herself promises.
But really, she blamed Kia for the impulse inside her that looked at a mountain and heard, “Climb me.”
Yeah. No. Next time the words Just Do It pulsed inside her, Aria was going to turn on Vertical Limit and remind herself just why freezing to death on a high peak might be a bad idea.
Mostly because, aside from dying, she really needed her fingers. All of them.
It was hard to operate on tiny hearts without fingers.
Now, she flexed her fingers inside her liners, inside her gloves, hoping the fingertips weren’t as badly frostbitten as they felt. Which was—not at all.
That had the surgeon inside her concerned, if not edging toward panic.
Numb fingers, numb toes, and in truth, a numb heart—frozen over with dread as she followed Sasha and Jenny through the icefall, pressing her axe into the snow with every step. They went before her, and she stepped directly into their footsteps, but Aria couldn’t help but notice the fissures in the ice, the blue-white glacial walls that fell thousands of feet. She took every step deliberately, waiting until Sasha finished her own deliberate steps across snow bridges and thick ridges, until Sasha had anchored in and waited for her to cross.
Just maybe, they wouldn’t die on the mountain.
Except, she’d burned down the tent. The black smudge they’d left in the snow a thousand feet up made her want to scream. It hadn’t been exactly her fault—Sasha had kicked the stove—but she knew better than to light it inside the tent.
Fingers. She’d just wanted to warm her fingers.
She’d wanted to suggest they stop for the day and dig in, right there, maybe figure out how to resurrect the stove. But probably it was toast, and besides, the doctor in her knew they had to get Sasha to a lower elevation. At least her friend had stopped throwing up.
“We’ll camp at the bottom of this icefall,” Jenny had said during their last huddle, right before they entered the chaos of ice debris the size of small buildings.
The wind whipped up into Aria’s face mask and crusted her goggles with sleet.
Cancun. Yes. She’d only been half kidding when she suggested it.
She may or may not have been kidding about the men showing up to carry the heavy things.
Yes, indeed, men like Jake. I wouldn’t be sad if he showed up right now.
Now that had been Kia talking. Frankly, it had been her inner Kia who’d even said yes to Jake’s invitation to dance in the first place.
Kia was always getting her into messes.
Except, for a moment, Aria had let herself enjoy the idea of dancing with a stranger, of seeing the curiosity in his eyes as she flirted—yes, flirted—with him.
Okay, that had been all Kia too, because Aria didn’t possess a flirting cell in her entire body.
“You’re a charmer, aren’t you, Cowboy?”
Oh brother.
In front of her, Sasha was trudging up a tiny rise. The late-afternoon sun crested down, bathing the mountain valley in deep pink, the sky blue, snow scurrying off the icy boulders around her.
I have to go where I feel most alive. Do the things that ignite my soul.
Good grief. Her sister had a way of climbing into her head at the most inopportune times. Yes, yes, of course. We all want to live wild and dangerously, Kia.
But there was danger, and then there was insanity. And then there was sitting on the sofa, under a blanket, watching the insanity on television.
Definitely Cancun next year.
A crack and boom and Aria stilled, her foot pressed into the snow. Except, it wasn’t a fissure under her boot that opened up, but in the distance, off Karstens Ridge, a glacier head cracked and spilled into the bowl of Muldrow Glacier below them. A poof of white billowed up.
“Careful!” Jenny yelled. “The snow’s melting!” She stood on top of a serac, probably to check on Aria’s progress.
Funny. Back home, it was Aria keeping an eye on Jenny. Making sure she rested, didn’t drive herself too hard, didn’t get in over her head with life, with work. Because, like her, Jenny didn’t have anyone else. Aria didn’t have to be a psychologist to figure out why she loved Jenny like a sister.