She could then use the handle of the axe like a lever to help her push herself over the hanging ledge.
Sweat dripped down her back despite the twenty-eight-degree air. The climbing wall was essentially a vertical skating rink with multiple grades and a plywood-grafted overhang, along with a few man-made holds.
The route setter had created a grade-six climb for tonight’s amateur competition.
She released her left hand and shook out the lactic acid pooling in her forearm. Her entire body shook, and her grip had nearly slipped on the last set, despite the golf gloves she wore. But Aria and Sasha stood below, next to her belayer, and she’d let her mouth make promises she prayed her body could keep.
If she expected them to trust her to lead them up Denali in a little over two months, then she needed to nail tonight’s ice-climbing event.
She gripped the handle, took a breath, and leveraged herself up, slamming her axe in hard to the blue ice. Then, she unwound herself from her right-hand hold in one swift ballet move, wrapping her right leg over her left arm, just like she’d practiced.
Leaning back, she drove her left crampon into the icy wall and kept her heel down as she set her undercling.
“Nice move, Jen!”
She didn’t know who’d shouted from the crowd below—maybe North, watching her apply his lessons. She liked the former SEAL, one of the many former military guys who helped run GoSports.
She eyed the next hold, a man-made jug four feet from her position.
To her right.
Which meant she had to bring her left axe next to her right.
“C’mon, Jen! Make it happen!”
Aria, her best friend and roomie.
Boston played on the speakers—“More Than a Feeling”—but she tuned it out, unwound herself, set her right foot, and unhinged her left-hand grip. She set the left in an undercling beside the right.
It freed her right hand as her feet scrambled to a better hold.
She took a breath and pushed hard, scrambling up the underside of the overhang and lunging for the jug with her right axe.
The axe embedded in the dry hold and she hung one-handed, swinging in the air, the left having unlatched with the move.
Don’t stop moving. Because slowing down meant the burn could catch up.
And the goal was always to keep ahead of the pain.
She swung her left hand over the plywood overhang and stuck the axe into another man-made jug. Swinging free, and with sheer arm strength, she lunged for purchase up the face of the sheer wall crusting the upper layer of the platform.
The crowd screamed, sixty feet below.
Hanging from one arm, she tucked her left axe over her shoulder, pitched a foot into the overhang, and reached for her rope to quick-clip it into the belay biner.
One pitch left.
She glanced at the clock. Forty-five seconds.
But this was it—the final hold always eluded her. Just out of her arm-stretch to the right, the hold was artificial, a thick dry tool hold she could never quite set.
And it was a one-shot deal, because the minute she swung, the leverage on her left axe would twist, unlatch.
Every. Single. Time.
She dreamed about this move, sweating into her sheets in her tiny one-bedroom apartment in Minneapolis. Analyzed it over lunch breaks and sessions in her office at Ascend Therapy and Wellness.
Watched Skeet McKenna and North—both lead climbers at GoSports—land the move over and over.
And she’d come up with a plan. The trifecta of climbing: Leverage. Technique. Guts.
Now, she added the left axe to her hold, twisted her hand into a backhand position, her fist upside down. Then she wrapped her left leg around the hold.
This went wrong, and she just might rip her arm from its socket.
Or, she’d land it.
Relax.
Please.
She released her right axe. Took a breath.
She pushed with her legs, arm and core, practicallly flying through the air toward the hold.
She landed her axe hard into the resin of the dry hold.
She cut her feet loose from the ice and hung free, swinging for a second before she slammed them back into the ice. Sticking her left axe in her mouth, she gripped the other with both hands.
Her body simmered, the adrenaline shunting the trembling in her core. But she spidered up the wall, grabbed her rope, and quick-clipped it into the final biner, three feet higher.
Her feet were already slipping.
But it didn’t matter. She grabbed her axe from her mouth and swung it hard over the top of the overhang. Ice shards chipped and fell into her face, bouncing off her helmet as she dangled from the final hold.
She freed her right axe, joined it with the other, then scrambled to the top.
The buzzer sounded and finally, finally, she looked down.
Seventy feet to the crowd at the bottom—Aria, Sasha, Skeet, and North, not to mention twenty or so other competitors and fellow ice climbers.
Inside, she was fist-pumping. She wasn’t going to fall. Wasn’t going to crash hard and find herself in rubble at the bottom of some icy wall.
Wasn’t going to let the mountain win.
Aria was losing it, her dark hair streaming out of her climbing helmet as she waved. Next to her, Sasha was shaking her head, wearing a grin, the sleek entrepreneur redhead probably evaluating her own climbing techniques.
Don’t worry, Sash. I won’t let you die.
Frankly, this moment was for all three of them. Because if Jenny hoped to summit Denali and get them back down, they needed to trust her.
And she needed to trust herself.
She glanced at Skeet, holding her on belay, and he gave her a nod, so she hooked her axes over her shoulder and sprung out from the wall.
For a second, she flew, no wings needed. Just her and her future.
Just freedom.
Then the belay caught and Skeet lowered her down.
She hit the padding, her legs shaking, and braced herself against the wall.
Aria ran up and flung her arms around her neck. “You beat North’s best time.”
She glanced at the man, who was tall, rangy, and dark. He’d served in special forces with the owner of GoSports, Hamilton Jones—something she tried hard to forget. She didn’t know what drew her, out of all the climbing shops in Minneapolis, to Jones’s outfit. Self-punishment, maybe. But neither North nor Ham had recognized her—and why should they? She’d changed her entire life since those days in Afghanistan. Kept moving forward.
North high-fived her before helping unlatch her rope system.
She unhooked her toe clamps, grabbed them up, and fielded the fist bumps as she headed toward the locker rooms.
Outside the cold room, the regular climbing walls were quiet tonight, but in the weight room next door, a number of athletes worked off their daily stress.
Sasha caught up to her. “Lucas texted and he wants to meet us for late-night appies at Sammy’s in St. Paul. You in?”
Sasha’s husband was still trying to make peace with his wife’s climbing hobby. Probably wanted to grill Jenny again on the specifics and precautions for their upcoming trip. “Sammy’s? The hockey place?” Jenny asked.
“Apparently, they have amazing wings,” Sasha said.
She headed into the locker room, Sasha and then Aria on her tail. The steam hit her cold bones with a sharp bite.
“Not everyone can sleep until ten, Sash,” she said, peeling off her gloves.
Sasha unhooked her helmet. “I am up before six and you know it. Just because I run my own business doesn’t mean I get to set my own schedule.”