bite of the day before. Instead it was a soft delicate
powder, like other climbers talked about encountering
in the Andes. But he’d never heard of that kind of
snow up here in the Jotunheimen Mountains. His
boots sunk in the loose snow ‘til it piled to his knees.
He had no need for crampons in this powder, but he
didn’t know how much ice lay beneath the snow so
he’d strapped them onto his boots before leaving, and
held an ice axe in each hand.
The going was slow, but the sun blazed silver
against the crystal peaks less than a thousand feet
above. It didn’t take him long to make the climb.
When he reached the top, he sighed with relief,
staring into the abyss below. The beauty of the slopes
stole his smoking breath. Breathing the chill air made
his head light, and he realized he couldn’t see the
bottom. A pale haze blanketed the roots of the mountains, and Reid didn’t trust his eyes to know if it was
real.
Still, this was victory. He’d made it.
He stayed up there maybe an hour or so, and
thought about just giving in then and there. It would
be as good a place as any to die.
But there was another peak just looming to the
south. He decided to see if he could make it there
before dark.
Sighing, he began his descent along the mountain’s
southern slope.
Reid knew between 40 and 70% of all mountaineering accidents happened on the descent. But he
wasn’t really descending. He was just going from peak
to peak until an accident found him.
It didn’t take long.
He was walking across a patch of powdered snow
along the southern slope when suddenly the ground
gave out beneath him. He shot straight down, ice and
snow clawing at his face as he plummeted into the
void.
Instinct kicked in. He hacked at the whiteness
surrounding him, flailing desperately with his ice axes.
Powder gave way before him, spraying up cold and
rocks, until suddenly he caught hold of something
solid—with his foot.
The crampons stuck into ice and rock as he fell. He
screamed in agony and dropped one of his axes as his
shank ripped through the skin beneath his knee. There
was a thud and the crampon broke loose. He was
falling again. Winter blades gashed him. Reid smashed
against a sheet of ice, rolled, and slid against its hard
slope. He slammed his ice axe down, skidding along
the hoarfrost as his axe blades clawed the ground,
grinding down to catch a firm hold. Friction cut
grooves into the slope, spitting up ice, slowing him.
Finally, he stopped.
And he lay there, panting through his pain.
To his amazement, he’d stopped just a few feet
from the edge of a sheer drop. Looking up, he saw that
he had fallen more than fifty feet through the snow.
White flutings and mushrooms swelled on the heights
above, where he’d been walking before. If his foot
hadn’t struck the mountainside and slowed his fall, he’d
be dead.
Amidst the pain, he wished he was.
And yet now he wanted to live more than ever. The
paradox of it would be troubling, except he could
barely focus on anything besides the torment in his
broken leg.
Whatever he decided, he didn’t want to suffer.
With his free hand, he fumbled at his bag, freeing the
bottle of blue pills. They wouldn’t kill his pain, but
might numb it enough to make killing himself more
bearable.
However, amidst the pain and his thick gloves, he
couldn’t unscrew the top of the pill bottle. Fumbling,
he removed his glove—and dropped the bottle, its top
popping off at last. It skidded down the steep bank,
blue pellets raining like tears across the white snow as
they spilled over the cliffside into oblivion.
Reid stared after them. He could follow their lead.
All it would take to end the pain would be to let go
of his ice axe and fall into the void below. There’d be
no pain. No memory. No body for them to find.
He thought of all that’d die with him. All the
memories he’d carried with him. When he’d bought his
first car—an old beat-up Sedan—and driven it to the
Grand Canyon with Mike. Hanging out after school at
the corner pizza shop with his favorite steak-tip subs.
The way his mother used to read to him at night.
And then there were all the memories of Cassie.
Waking up in the mornings and listening to her
breathe. Dancing with her at their wedding. Proposing
to her at the foot of a glacier on their trip to Alaska.
Meeting her at the 4th of July barbecue.
The pain of memory metastasized, cutting down
his spine as his ruined leg bled out in the snow.
He was going to die, along with his memories, his
hopes, and his dreams, but if he let go now, the pain
would also die and this agony would vanish in the
snows below.
But down there, the mists of Helheim waited. After
climbing so high, he didn’t want to fall into the pit.
Gritting his teeth, he sank the crampon of his good
foot into the snow. Then, he did the same with his bad
foot. His lips split in a scream and tears burned in his
eyes, his reward for trying to keep a foothold on life.
He reached to his side and produced an ice drill,
driving it into the steep hoarfrost ahead of him. Then
he looped a rope through it and connected it to his