They climbed down into the gully and found a place at the water’s edge beside a pool protected from the chaos of the main current and clogged with aspen leaves that looked like gold coins floating in the water. Scott dug the PUR filter out of his pack and inserted the two hoses into the bottom. He fitted the end of one with a bottle adapter and screwed it onto an empty Nalgene bottle. The other hose, he dropped in the pool.
Abigail sat beside him in the fading light, watching Scott pump the filter and holding the newly filled bottles between her legs. She kept looking back up the gully. Scott had been right. Streamside, you couldn’t hear a thing but the chatter of water flowing over rocks. Approaching footsteps would be lost in the noise. When he’d topped off five Nalgene bottles, Scott disassembled the filter and packed everything away.
There would be no dry, easy crossing.
They forded the stream—fifteen feet across and thigh-deep in the middle, so strong that Abigail had to brace herself and lean into the current to keep her footing. The water had been snow less than an hour ago. Her legs burned and her lungs contracted from the freezing shock of it.
They climbed onto the bank and up the muddy gully on the other side, hiked several hundred yards over a forest floor carpeted with brilliant aspen leaves.
The air smelled metallic and stale. It began to rain.
Scott turned to her, said, “I see where we’ll camp tonight,” and Abigail followed him into a thicket of chokecherry, not much space between the shrubs, but enough to conceal a tent.
SEVENTY-SEVEN
F
our nylon bags lay spread out on the ground, containing the footprint, poles, pegs, and the tent itself—a bright red Hilleberg. They unrolled the footprint in a cleared area between the chokecherry shrubs, and Scott unfolded the tent while Abigail took out the poles and locked them together. In the deepening darkness, as the rain set in, they slipped the three poles into the tent sleeves and staked out the guylines, Scott’s hands shaking so badly that he could barely grip the pegs to jam them into the softened ground.
With the tent pitched, they threw their packs into the roomy vestibule, climbed in, and zipped themselves inside. Scott shivered uncontrollably, and he slurred his words.
Abigail said, “You have spare clothes in here?” He nodded. “Why don’t you get in the tent and take off your wet ones.” Scott unzipped the inner tent and crawled inside. While he stripped, Abigail pulled everything out of his pack, realized she didn’t feel right, either—her motor coordination was disrupted and she had trouble focusing on the task at hand.
“I can’t find your sleeping bag,” she said.
“Bottom compartment.” She dragged out the Marmot compression bag, tossed it in with the Therm-a-Rest and his bag of extra clothes. Then she unlaced her boots, pulled off her socks, all her soaked clothing, and climbed in.
Scott twisted shut the air valve on the Therm-a-Rest, laid his sleeping bag on top of it. He wriggled inside, said, “Get in with me. We both have hypothermia.”
Abigail climbed into the down mummy bag and zipped them up. Scott spooned her. She could feel him shaking against her, their legs so cold, like malleable ice.
“I should really get us something to eat and drink,” she said.
“Just stay here with me for a minute, get some body heat going.”
They lay shivering together, listening to the rain patter on the tent. The sky detonated. Thunder shook the ground and decayed like a shotgun blast, Abigail thinking it sounded so different from East Coast thunder. In the West, it was deeper, right on top of you, and seemed to fade forever.
“Think we’re safe in this thicket?” Abigail asked.
“As long as we stay quiet and don’t turn on any lights. Fuck, I can’t get warm.”
Abigail turned and faced him. She ran her hand along the right side of his abdomen. It felt hot, swollen, and sticky. “Your wound’s leaking,” she said.
“My boot was full of blood. I’m hurting pretty bad again.”
“I saw the first-aid kit in your pack. I’m gonna get it out, and you’re gonna tell—”
“You think I’m dying?” he asked.
“No,” she said, though she didn’t know. “I think once we get some food and medicine in you, you’ll feel a lot better.”
She started to sit up, but Scott stopped her. “Not yet,” he said. “Just stay with me. This is the worst shit I’ve ever been in. And I’ve been in some real shit. You believe in karma?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I think it’s fucking me over at the moment.”
“How so?”
“This trip isn’t the first time I’ve gotten someone killed in the backcountry.
I was involved in an accident on Rainier a couple years ago.”
“What’s Rainier?”
“Mount Rainier. The fourteen-thousand-foot volcano in Washington.”
“What happened? Or if you don’t want to talk about it, I—”
“Two years ago, me and a friend drove out from Boulder to do a mid-May ascent. It was stupid. Too early in the season to be on that mountain. Maria was a tall, gorgeous redhead. Strong. A solid rock climber, badass telemarking goddess. But she’d never done any serious mountaineering or glacier travel. She was inexperienced. I was cocky. Thought I could get her up the thing. And I did. We reached the summit cone, Columbia Crest. Had the time of our lives. But on a mountain like Rainier, all it takes is one mistake. A momentary lapse of judgment. And I made it. On the way down, Maria was jonesing to break out her skis. I knew it was a bad idea. Spring conditions. Variable snow. Everything from crust to corn. But I was feeling a little invincible after a perfect ascent.
“We were telemarking the upper edge of Ingraham Glacier. She was a much better skier, got out ahead. I’d told her to stay with me, that it was only safe to ski the top. Thing about Maria, she was always pushing it. She was fifty yards ahead of me when she disappeared. I think she never even saw it. I stopped at the edge of the crevasse. Thing was huge, and it dropped down at an angle, so I couldn’t see to the bottom. I didn’t see Maria, but I could hear her screaming down there in the dark. There was just no way to descend into that crevasse. I mean, some of these ice fissures go down hundreds of feet. I got off the mountain fast as I could, flew back with search-and-rescue in a big Chinook heli copter. But it had snowed, covered our ski tracks. I couldn’t even lead them back to the crevasse she’d gone into. Now all this shit’s happening to us out here. I figure it’s payback karma, and I guess I deserve it.”
Abigail used Scott’s Krill glow stick for illumination, since it put out a soft blue light, which would be almost impossible to see beyond the thicket. Scott talked her through firing up the tiny propane stove out in the vestibule, and as the water heated for their freeze-dried dinners in a slug-punctured pot, Abigail broke out the first-aid kit. She used a syringe filled with filtered water to irrigate the wound, then wiped it with iodine, applied the antibiotic cream, resealed it with several closure strips, and taped on a gauze bandage. Scott took three tablets of extra-strength Tylenol with his supper, and by the time they’d finished eating, Abigail could see in his eyes that the pain had begun to ease.
The glow stick lay on the floor of the tent, casting their faces in a weak blue light, which made them look cold and cadaverous.
They talked—about Maria, about Abigail’s father—their painful memories a diversion from the fear. Abigail could feel sleep stalking her, waiting to pounce. She lifted a Nalgene bottle, took a long drink, the water excellent—pure and ice cold, tasting faintly of iron.