Kate's only hesitation, and it had been a slight one, came because of the differences in their ages. At thirty-seven he was a full sixteen years her senior. Of course she had always dated older men, at least from her sixteenth birthday onward. Her occasional flings with a younger man, inevitably a climber, never failed to end with a row and hard feelings.
With older men she had rarely endured the churlish resentment that comes of besting a young man in a physical contest. Older men simply had more confidence and seemed to enjoy her remarkable skills as a climber. So it was inevitable that the man she finally married was solidly placed in his world and comfortable inside his own skin. Eight, ten, sixteen years? What difference?
'I hope they aren't planning to bivouac with us.'
Kate's gaze left the snowy peaks in the distance and fixed on two figures coming up the rock. They were not easy to see in the gathering dusk, but she could tell they were moving with the steady rhythm of climbers who have worked together for years. They certainly came up faster than she and Robert and Alfredo had done. Of course that was the nature of two on a rope. All the same, they were very good.
Reflecting on Robert's remark about their bivouac Kate looked down at the ledge where they sat. The two climbers might ask to share it, she thought, but it wasn't going to get them very much. The sleeping area was a couple of feet wide and hardly sufficient in length to accommodate two individuals. Above them an overhang protected them from falling rocks. Below a vertical descent of several hundred feet ended in a glacier.
'I doubt they intend to take the Traverse of the Gods in the dark,' she answered. As the fact of the sudden intrusion dawned on her, Kate felt a bit of unfriendly irritation. She didn't want company in these high altitudes. She wanted her husband's complete and undivided attention. She had not even wanted Alfredo, had in fact argued against the use of a guide, but Robert had been insistent. If something happened, he had said, a third climber could make the difference.
Robert continued to watch their approach. T don't know,' he said finally, 'it might be interesting.' He was talking about a night-climb across a rock that only the top climbers in the world would dare in the sunlight.
'Interesting
is what you call the Traverse of the Gods on a sunny afternoon,' Kate answered. 'At night it's just plain crazy.'
'There's a full moon coming up in a couple of hours,' he told her. 'If the sky stays clear a couple of strong climbers could summit by two or three o'clock in the morning.'
Kate considered the prospect and felt a throb of excitement hit her. The idea hadn't occurred to her previously, but now that it had, a moonlight climb sounded like just the finish she was looking for.
She heard Alfredo offering the obligatory Swiss greeting,
Gruezi-mitenand
, to the climbers as they scrambled up the pitch. They answered Alfredo's greeting in High German, expressing a bit of surprise at finding someone bivouacking so close to the ramp. With simply no extra space to share, it was an awkward situation but climbers are famous for helping out and making do.
'You want to bivouac here?' Alfredo asked them in an ambiguous mix of High and Swiss German. Alfredo was Robert's age but with his leathery skin and flecks of grey in his beard he looked closer to fifty. He spoke a countrified version of the Bernese dialect - an unimaginably sluggish patter with its own peculiar mountain charm.
'Not unless we have to,' the larger of the two men answered. 'We're hoping to move on once the moon comes up.' He spoke with an Austrian accent. 'But you don't mind if we settle down here and wait a couple of hours, do you?'
Alfredo looked in the direction of Kate and Robert, 'Up to the man.' The Austrians looked out toward the ledge in surprise, apparently having not seen Kate and Robert.
Robert called from the ledge in good High German that it was fine with him. 'Take as long as you want! When did you start up?'
'We took off at four this morning,' the man answered. 'We are still hoping to make it in under twenty-four hours, but it is going to be close.'
'It took us two days to get this far!' Robert answered.
'Are you the two love birds on the honeymoon climb?' the second man asked.
'That's us!' Kate called.
'If you want to come on up the rock with us, you're more than welcome,' the first man said. 'There's supposed to be a heavy fog coming in early tomorrow - might be a little tricky getting out of here if you wait for sunrise.'
'The last I heard, we were supposed to get clear weather for a couple more days,' Kate answered.
'I expect the three of us would just slow you two down,' Robert added.
'Hey, I read all about you two! There's no way you'd slow
us
down!'
Now Robert seemed to consider the invitation. 'You really wouldn't mind if we joined you?'
'Are you kidding? If we summit with you two tied to our ropes we could end up on the cover of the
Alpine Journal!'
Robert laughed cheerfully. 'I hadn't thought of that. I'll tell you what. Give us a minute to talk it over.'
'No hurry. Take a couple of hours, if you want,' the man answered.
'Alfredo! Why don't you brew up some coffee for them!'
'I think I've got a cup or two that's still warm, sir!'
'That's just the thing!' the first Austrian answered. 'That's very hospitable of you!'
Alfredo, who had run his rope through a permanent anchor to walk down to greet the men, now turned and began pulling himself back to his makeshift snow cave. The Austrians followed up the steep grade using only their crampons.
When the three men had gone up the rock and were out of sight, Kate said, 'Do you really want to do it?'
Robert laughed pleasantly at Kate's enthusiasm. 'I should have guessed you'd be up for it!'
'With a fog coming, it might be the smart thing to do.'
Robert gave the matter some thought. 'I actually feel pretty good, all things considered. How about you?'
'It's what? Four hours?'
'If we keep up with those two, it might be a good deal less.'
Kate heard something like a club striking rock and looked back toward the pitch in time to see a shadow sweeping across the rock.
A body
, she realised with a jolt.
The shadowy form slid at first, then began to tumble with the indifference of an inanimate object. It dropped over the edge and plummeted toward the glacier below. Kate and Robert leapt to their feet in alarm. Inevitably they collided - his shoulder knocking her off balance. Kate could feel herself leaning out and reached for Robert's hand. He didn't seem to understand she was in trouble. She cried his name, and then she was beyond his grasp.
The rope she had anchored to the rock caught with a
snap that sent her crashing back against the mountain. Something brushed across her head and dropped away. Her sleeping bag? One of their rucksacks? She wasn't sure. She looked down, but all she could see was the ghostly ice far below.
She blinked and tried to understand what had happened. She was hanging a few feet below the ledge, twirling slowly from her anchoring rope. She was groggy from colliding with the rock wall and felt a deep sharp pain in her knee, but at least for the moment she was so juiced with adrenalin she would not have any trouble pulling herself back to the ledge.
She studied her situation with a practised eye. She was probably eight to ten feet below the ledge. Her anchor was another three feet higher. The only difficulty was getting some kind of purchase. Unfortunately her ice axes were on the ledge, along with her crampons, so she was going to have to climb the rope.
Then a thought struck her: why wasn't Robert leaning out over the ledge to make sure she was okay? Without daring to answer her own question, Kate felt a sense of doom and loss take hold of her.
No
, she thought, before she could even articulate the terror urging itself upon her. He had tied himself in at the same time she had. She had seen him do it. She looked around, thinking he might have come over right after her and be hanging a few feet below her position.
'Robert?' she said. Her voice was timid, frightened.
Could his anchor have pulled free? The thought sickened her, and she could not stop thinking about the object that had fallen beside her. Sleeping bag, rucksack. . . Robert.
'ROBERT!'
From the ledge above she saw the silhouette of a man's head. Relief rushed over her.
'Robert? I'm here. I'm okay!'
'Cut the rope,' a voice called from the distance.
'No!' she cried in sudden panic.
The silhouetted head pulled back as Kate kicked wildly trying to get to the rock. Her efforts nudged her closer to the wall, but she could still not touch it.
'PLEASE, NO!' she cried.
Her fingers brushed against the rock, but she failed to get any kind of grip. She drifted out, her legs turning away from the wall. She kicked to lengthen the arc of her swing and started back. She lifted her legs and leaned back in her harness, stretching a lone arm toward the rock.
She got close enough this time to grab it but her legs kept twirling and she missed her chance. She looked above her and felt the rope give a slight bump.
'NO!'
When the rope broke free Kate gave a screech of terror and saw the shadow of a protruding boulder come at her. She slammed into its sloping shoulder and rolled away, too stunned to grab anything. Her hips and legs tipped off the edge, but then her rope caught on something.
Fearing the slightest shift might send her plummeting Kate searched the boulder for a fingerhold. What she found was a slight ridge, but it took some of the pressure off the rope. For the moment she was safe, and looked up at the shelf from which she had fallen. The shadows made it difficult to judge distances. She thought she might have dropped another six feet. Twelve, maybe fifteen feet back to the ledge? She saw the same silhouetted head leaning out again. When the shadow disappeared, Kate pulled herself up, realising as she did that her second fall might have cracked a rib. She found the fissure that had caught hold of her rope and struggled to yank it free but it was wedged in too tightly. She knew she could untie it at the carabiner in her harness or even lose the harness if she had to, but she didn't want to leave either behind. A climber's instinct: having a length of rope and a way to tie in might mean the difference between death and salvation. She reached into the zippered pocket in her coat for her Swiss Army knife.
She lost about a metre after the cut, but kept the better part of three metres - enough to tie in to something. She rolled the rope neatly and tied it off, then stuffed it in her coat pocket. Next she examined the mixed character of ice and rock rising up over her position. She glanced out toward the horizon and saw the faint light of the setting sun still reflecting above the mountains. It was going to be dark soon. Climbing in the dark without any kind of lamp was suicidal, but she had no real choice. She couldn't tie herself in here and wait for the moon. In two hours, exposed as she was to the wind, she would be too cold to move.
She tried to shake off the sorrow and fear creeping over her. She knew from hard experience that if she gave in to it she was finished. She had to climb her way out of this, that was all there was to it. But which way? She looked directly overhead. That way would bring her to the two Austrians. She looked to the west and thought she might be able to traverse the sheer face under the ledge. It would bring her out below the Austrians, but she hadn't the equipment to descend the mountain. She took inventory. She was wearing a coat and boots. She had a Swiss Army knife, three metres of climbing rope, and a harness. It was not enough. The only way to survive was to get hold of the right equipment. She looked up. Fire, water, food, crampons, axes, rope, sleeping bag: all of it only fifteen feet away. Without those things there was no way off the mountain.
After a delicate traverse on a narrow ribbon of stone, Kate headed toward the ramp, intending to come out above the two men, but almost immediately her head brushed into an overhanging shelf. She crouched and tried to study the shadow. A boulder was blocking her only way up and forced her to move laterally again. She held her weight with her fingertips and toes. Below her the void waited patiently.
The wind kicked up a notch as she moved round the obstacle. Getting out farther she could feel the wind tearing at her coat. It had been above freezing all day, a bit warmer than ideal for the kind of mixed climbing the Eiger offered, but at night the temperatures usually dropped fast and kept dropping. Tonight was no different. She reached overhead now and found an icy crack. It was impossible to get a grip. She needed her axes! Suddenly standing on a half inch ridge of stone over a yawing abyss with nothing but her boots and bare hands to keep her from falling - not even an anchor to hold her - Kate realised that she was never going to get up to the ramp! What was she thinking? What did she intend to fight - God?
She began to tremble and felt her eyes burning.
Lady Katherine Kenyon died yesterday in a mountain climbing accident on the Eiger. . .