Gray Skies and Blue Ice (eBook)

Alan Ewert (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2022 | 1. Auflage
198 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-6678-2861-9 (ISBN)

A tragic mountaineering accident has occurred on Mt. Forbidden involving five climbers-four of whom were swept to their deaths in a deep crevasse high on the mountain. The fifth climber, the lone survivor Charlie, made it down to safety, but no one knew he had deliberately caused the accident. On his return to the mountain lodge below, Charlie came to realize his critical mistake, leaving behind a crucial piece of incriminating evidence at the site where the others met their brutal deaths. As the tragic events unfold, two of the deceased climbers' close friends, Elizabeth and Eric, decide to take on the arduous task of climbing Mt. Forbidden in order to reach the crevasse and bring a sense of closure surrounding the loss of their friends forever entombed in the blue ice. When Charlie learns of Eric and Elizabeth's intentions to climb to the site, he insists on going with them in a frantic effort to recover the evidence of his murderous deed. As the sky becomes gray and darkens, the climbers must confront an approaching storm looming on the mountain, as well as Elizabeth and Eric's growing apprehensions that their companion's intention for joining them may be dangerously riddled with lies and deceptions. While Charlie feels certain he can cover up his duplicitous actions, Mt. Forbidden deals him a fate he had not anticipated.

Gray Skies and Blue Ice is set on the beautiful yet challenging mountain of Mt. Forbidden, one of the highest peaks in the state of Oregon. Heavily glaciated with steep snow slopes and unpredictable weather, the summit of Mt. Forbidden represents a prize sought after by mountain climbers around the world. Four such climbers, accompanied by their guide Steve Ague, battled an incoming storm to reach the summit and then experienced a horrifying accident while crossing a crevasse via a snow bridge. The snow bridge collapsed and the guide, as well as three of the climbers perished from the fall. A fourth climber, Charlie Bronson, managed to survive the accident, but his miraculous escape was anything but luck or coincidence. One member of the climbing team that perished, Ed Novak, was the CEO of a new start-up company that developed web-based apps for a wide range of applications. As a project leader with that company, Charlie knew that Novak was beginning to suspect him of committing fraud and anticipated being charged with a crime upon returning from the trip, hence Ed Novak had to be eliminated. The others were considered collateral damage. After the "e;unfortunate"e; climbing accident, Charlie felt confident when he descended to the mountain lodge, knowing he had eliminated his main accuser of his unethical and illegal deeds. But what Charlie started to realize, as he climbed downward, preparing mentally for his version of the terrible incident, was that he had left behind a crucial piece of incriminating evidence at the edge of the crevasse. As information regarding the accident started to percolate among the media and families of the lost climbers, Eric Jackson and Elizabeth Atterly, friends of two of the deceased climbers, began the long drive up to Mt. Forbidden to collect any personal effects they left behind. They met at the lodge and after much soul-searching decided to try to climb Mt. Forbidden and dedicate that climb to their loved ones. Realizing that they needed training to safely achieve that task, they hired a guide, Curt Whitmeyer, to teach them the necessary climbing skills in order to reach the crevasse and summit high up on the mountain. Following their training weekend, they agreed to meet two weeks later and attempt their climb to the summit. In the meantime, the incriminating evidence carelessly left behind by Charlie Bronson started to gnaw at him. He decided to get back up to the crevasse and get it himself before anyone else discovered it and started asking questions. After finding out that Elizabeth and Eric were going to climb up to the crevasse he convinced them to let him become part of the climbing team, and somehow retrieve his evidence. The first day of the climb, their guide had to pull out at the last minute, leaving Elizabeth, Eric and Charlie to proceed without him. Before leaving, the guide mentioned that there might be a storm approaching on the mountain in two days' time, and they should try to be up and down before it arrived. Their first night was spent at a level campsite just below a steep rock rib. Getting through the rocky rib meant that the climbers would have to wind their way through a narrow gap in the rib before reaching their high camp at around 9000 feet. At high camp the group decided they should get to the crevasse and if possible, attempt to climb to the summit as a means of dedication to their lost loved ones. Summit day brought thickening clouds indicating that a storm front might be approaching. Nevertheless, the group made the decision to go for the crevasse and, if possible, the summit. As the weather deteriorates, they delicately crossed a snow bridge to reach the crevasse and took a moment to acknowledge their friends entombed below. Even with the increasing intensity of the storm the group decided to try for the summit. Eric was tied into the front of the rope and as he started up, he noticed a small piece of metal protruding from the snow. It was the picket that Charl

CHAPTER 1

COLLECTIONS

IT WAS COLD AND WINDY with a gray sky like the color of lead that filled one with feelings of emptiness, foreboding, and depression. Like floating white sheets, bands of snow would whip across the road, temporarily creating a whiteout where there was no horizon, no visibility, and, most importantly, no road. Fortunately, the snow was intermittent and, if one slowed down enough, manageable. Eric Jackson was used to driving in the mountains, having done it for years and in all kinds of weather. But this time was different. Driving up Hwy 284 toward the lodge on the west side of Mount Forbidden was pretty much old news, except for today. Today was different, and Eric, deep in thought, hardly noticed the snow, the cold, the wind, or even the road. He had driven this road before, but now as he got closer to his destination with every mile, the weight of why he was heading up there pressed on him like a heavy barbell. And yet, he had to keep going, to a place he had enjoyed from earlier visits, but now hated with a level of passion he didn’t know he had.

Coming from the east on Hwy 191, Elizabeth Atterly was also driving through the same storm toward the same lodge, the Glacier Point Lodge on Mount Forbidden. On this side of Forbidden, the storm was less intense, less demanding of one’s attention, and that was the problem. Without the storm demanding her full attention, Elizabeth had an even more painful task—to think and remember. Like Eric Jackson, Elizabeth also felt the dread growing with each mile, a dread that was mixed with both the unknown and the memories of the known. The love she had known and now the loss of that love combined with an inexorable sense of aloneness.

The first and only time Elizabeth had driven up to the lodge had been to drop off her boyfriend and her soon-to-be fiancé—she hoped—Ed Novak, her love, her soulmate, the person with whom her life and future had been inextricably tied up. Unfortunately for Elizabeth, Ed was a budding mountaineer, a climber, a person who was driven to scale high peaks, not because they were there, but rather because they helped define who and what he was. Elizabeth was a hiker, but not a mountaineer. She grappled with questions like “Why does he do it?”, “What is up there that constantly pulls at him?”. She wondered if she would ever understand the “why.” In the end, she had resigned herself to the fact that she probably would never get it. But then, that was who Ed was, and if she wanted Ed, the mountains had to come along.

Eric had been faced with the same questions. He had hiked up several peaks, nothing too high or too demanding, and, like Elizabeth, had sought out answers, looking for some reasonable and logical explanations as to why his girlfriend, his love, Susan Burns felt the need to battle all that the big mountains had to offer such as blizzards, wind, cold, avalanches, and crevasses that seemed to drop to the depths of the earth. Like Elizabeth, Eric had understood that, if he was going to have Susan in his life, he was also going to have the mountains, a point made even more poignant when he dropped her off at the Glacier Point Lodge’s climber check-in station.

It was a bluebird day, with a light wind from the west and the temperature in the 60s, a beautiful day that spelled the start of a great time for climbing toward God’s heaven.

Both Susan and Ed were part of a climbing team organized by the Glacier Point Mountain Guides. Susan didn’t know Ed or anyone else on the team, but this was an opportunity to climb the southwest face of Mount Forbidden, and who could pass up the chance to get to the summit of that mountain? Many a mountaineer had the southwest face on their bucket list.

In both cars, the talk had been subdued with each person dealing with their own thoughts and feelings. For Elizabeth and Ed, their talk focused on the future. What will they do once he returned back to the lodge? Should they join the team in celebration, or go home to the quietness, the sense of security, the warmth of lower elevations and denser air? Susan and Eric were focused on a more immediate future. Did she bring all the gear and clothes she would need? Did she remember to sharpen her ice axe and crampons? Was there any rock climbing on the route, and how hard would that be while wearing mountaineering boots? Who would be on their climbing team, and what would their guide be like? In a sense, each couple had a feeling of closeness and connection with their companion but were essentially talking past one another.

For each couple, parting had always been a painful experience, but they handled it in different ways. For Susan and Eric, their way of saying goodbye consisted of a close embrace with words of love and “Already missing you” said often and with affection and a feeling of impending distance. For Elizabeth and Ed, their way of dealing with goodbye was by camouflaging their heartache with a more mundane cover of “Did you bring your two water bottles and three sets of woolen socks?” For them this approach worked, but only in the short term and often left both with a sense of important things left unsaid.

Intruding on these interactions was, of course, the beauty surrounding the Glacier Point Lodge. The lodge was nestled in at 5500 feet above sea level and was located in a relatively flat spot surrounded by green landscapes of subalpine firs and alpine meadows topped off by snow-covered mountains of various shapes and sizes—all of which were dominated by the one inescapable monolith of Mount Forbidden. At 11,255 feet, Mount Forbidden looked down on the surrounding area as well as a substantial portion of the state of Oregon. Clinging to its sides were dark brown rocky ribs interspersed with gleaming white glaciers punctuated with sinuous and dangerous-looking crevasses, some well over 100 feet deep. But of course, as everyone knew, it wasn’t the crevasse you could see that was the problem, but the ones you could not see, that held the icy cold hand of the devil ready to grab your feet and drag you down to your death.

Born over five hundred thousand years ago, Mount Forbidden was the child of the fire of the inexorable subduction of the Juan de Fuca Plate off the western coast of North America during a part of the Pleistocene epoch of the Cenozoic Era. This subduction occurs as the Juan de Fuca Plate slides under the North American Plate at a rate of about one inch per year. As the Juan de Fuca Plate takes its dive under the North American Plate, the overlying mantel partially melts and forms magma, which provides the lifeblood of the Cascade range of volcanoes in the Pacific Northwest of North America. Mount Forbidden is a long-lived volcano that has erupted recurrently over these past five hundred thousand years, racked by numerous eruptions and lava flows separated by periods of calm. One of these eruptions and resultant lava flows occurring over ten thousand years ago was particularly eventful in that it resulted in an extruding rocky rib at about seven thousand feet that climbers ascending the south side of the mountain have to surmount. While for much of the year the ridge is buried under snow, by mid-summer, the ridge is often exposed and presents the climber with a steep—almost vertical in parts—weaving ascent of about three rope lengths. The same lava flow produced another steep section just below the summit that climbers must ascend before reaching the summit.

Despite its fiery birth, today Mount Forbidden appeared both resplendent and innocuous. The summit, although always hidden from the parking lot by several false summits, appeared cloud free with only the promise of a light wind. The temperature, this late morning, at the parking lot was a balmy 54° F. Applying the temperature rule of reducing 3.5° per thousand feet of elevation meant that the theoretical temperature at the summit, at about ten thousand feet, was right now less than balmy at 19° F. But, in reality, it was probably colder and more windy up there. Inexperienced climbers could easily be deceived by the soothing conditions of the parking lot acting as a magnet, a clever trick to get one up high when conditions would change, most often for the worse.

Arriving about the same time, both the couples all too quickly performed the ritual of off-loading from the cars the packs, ice axes, food, boots, and all the other paraphernalia necessary to climb the mountain, and now it was time to say goodbye.

Eric embraced Susan tightly and said, “I love you, honey, and will be back soon. Be careful driving back home.”

Susan whispered, “I will. And you be careful. Don’t take any unnecessary chances.”

And with one more look back at each other, that was that, and Elizabeth drove off in their 2015 hatchback Subaru.

True to form, Elizabeth and Ed fought back any tears.

“I should be back down in three days, weather permitting,” said Ed; at least that was the plan.

Elizabeth’s replied, “I’ll be here and will bring you a cold Coke. Bye, honey. See you soon.”

That was that, and Eric got in his 1999 Ford Explorer and started down the curving, but dry, Glacier Point road, driving to a quiet but lonely apartment and a lonelier German Shepard dog named Biner.

Ed and Susan headed toward the climber’s hut. Once up in the guide’s office, they were asked to fill out some official-looking forms, starting with typical bureaucratic information such as name, address, age, and...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	25.1.2022
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Lyrik / Dramatik ► Dramatik / Theater
ISBN-10	1-6678-2861-4 / 1667828614
ISBN-13	978-1-6678-2861-9 / 9781667828619

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