Archer Mayor - The Marble Mask

“Impressive, isn’t it?” Ray Woodman said beside me. “Most people turn their backs to the mountain and look at the valley to admire the view. I like this better-it’s the mountain I have to deal with, whether the view’s there or not.”

I glanced over my shoulder. What view there was seemed imperiled by a series of ever shifting clouds. But what I could see was spectacular. “You can’t blame them, though,” I commented.

“Oh, no. I wouldn’t do that. Once I’m on top, I always look around. Be crazy not to. Besides, by then I’ve earned the right. It’s just that for me, the view’s like the cherry on top, and I always eat the cherry last.”

I resisted mentioning that I found it unsettling putting ice cream sundaes and life-threatening excursions into the same sentence, especially when the speaker was the climbing team leader. “I think I’ll just be happy when the whole meal’s over,” I said softly. “This is not my element.”

Woodman was sympathetic. “You’re in good company. It’s just what I like to do. I wouldn’t be a cop for all the tea in China. Up here, I only get in trouble if I make a mistake. You guys never know what’s going to hit you, no matter how careful you are. I couldn’t live like that.” He swept his hand across the approaching ridge. “You have to admit it does grab the attention, though. Even if all you want to do is slide down it.”

A few clouds were caught on the ridge like translucent ragged cotton, the stark cliffs below them dark and brooding in their shadow. “It is beautiful,” I had to agree.

“People have been taking runs at it for a hundred and fifty years,” he explained. “Ever since the Civil War, when they actually built a hotel right under the Nose, called the Summit House. That’s when the toll road began, too. They ended up having to hold the place down with cables, the wind blew so hard. Even then, they’d lose a roof or a porch every once in a while. It housed fifty people and their horses and carriages. Talk about guts or arrogance or whatever it was-those people were nuts. I never would’ve done that.”

“What happened to it?” I asked, trying to dispel the hint of foreboding that had caught my attention like the sound of something solid sliding under a boat’s hull.

“They tore it down and burned it in ’64. Lousy profit margin. Ironic when you think of all it went through-to be destroyed by the very dynamic that built it, like an out-of-date filling station on Main Street. We’ve pretty much treated the mountain that way from the start,” he added, his voice dripping with contempt. “Turning it into a ski slope, a place to plant radio antennas and entertain flatlanders who drive to the top for twelve bucks to claim they climbed Mount Mansfield. Through the years, they’ve talked about paving the ridge with a parkway, planting a Bomarc missile guidance system on the Chin, and even putting in an airfield.”

I glanced at his angular profile, weather-beaten and hard. Ray Woodman was probably in his fifties. Auerbach had told me he was a high-end building contractor by trade, benefiting from the very excesses he was currently belittling. Had he gotten the contract 150 years ago, I had no doubt he would have built the Summit House, taking pride in beating the elements. Such inconsistency is one of the quirks of our species, and certainly one of the big reasons we’re so amazed by our own behavior.

We were nearing the cave-like entrance to the gondola’s top station, perched on the slope a couple of hundred feet shy of the ridge, when Woodman abruptly pointed off to the right. “There’s the Chin,” he said. “That big dome on the end with the cliffs below it. Left of it and much closer to us, angling this way, is the swale I showed you on the map-like a shallow gutter running up the side of a roof. That’s our route to the top and back down Profanity.”

“Why not just cut straight across to the saddle between the Chin and the Adam’s Apple?” Sammie asked from behind us.

Woodman didn’t bother turning around. “You’d find out if you tried. It can be done, but it wears you to a stump. Once we reach Profanity, we have gravity on our side. Cuts down on the effort big time.” He finally faced her with a smile. “I may not like skiers much, but they do know how to slide downhill.”

We soon discovered what he’d meant. Snowshoes strapped to my boots, plodding up the angled slope like a clown dressed in floppy shoes, I could only imagine the effort it would have taken to make a right angle traverse. I also had no doubt that’s where I would have ended up had Sammie been team leader.

As it was, I could see her far ahead of me, pressing Woodman from behind like a sports car trying to pass a pickup. Not that he paid her the slightest attention. He was now where he liked to be most, in control and in command, and extremely respectful of all the factors allied to kill him if he erred. No hyperactive cop was going to make him change his ways.

The mountain itself, however, was a different matter. We were still fifty feet shy of the ridge when he turned, raised both hands, and waited until we’d all clustered around him.

His concern spoke for itself. As I reached his position, I found he’d stopped right under the lee of a steady blast of freezing wind coming from the other side. The shredded clouds I’d seen earlier suddenly fell into context. We huddled on our hands and knees to hear his voice above the eerie howl.

“Things’re kicking up a bit,” he shouted. “It’s not too bad and we won’t be in it for long, but since some of you are new to this, you want to be extra careful. We’ll put our crampons on here, stow our snowshoes on our packs, and rope up in single file. Goggles and face masks on, hats secured under your chins. Make sure nothing’s loose anywhere. Keep low, use your ice axes, and keep your faces downwind to breathe.” He paused, eyeing Sammie, and added, “There’s no rush. This is where taking your time will keep you alive.”

We did as we were told, Willy allowing Sammie and me to help him switch his gear, before we all started up once more, in defiance of instinct or common sense, straight into the frigid, moaning, lung-searing blast.

And the shock awaiting us wasn’t just from the wind. As we topped the crest, the entire mountain fell away, revealing a vast, flat, empty stretch of clouds before us, obscuring the entire Champlain Valley to the west as completely as the Stowe side had been clear. The appearance of this featureless plain was so abrupt and disorienting that while we were being pushed back by the icy gale, the sheer emptiness ahead drew us forward like a magnet, tempting the beginners among us to step onto the vaporous field and proceed outward. Despite gasping for air, even through the protection of my ventilated neoprene face mask, I fought Woodman’s instruction to look away and tried to permanently imprint this one instant in my mind. Only the urgent tugging of the rope around my waist brought me back to the task at hand and the need to get under cover. For despite the dramatic feeling of being on an island surrounded by foamy sea, I realized I was precisely where Woodman loved to be most-right on the edge of life itself and in peril of making one of the mistakes he’d warned us against.

The trip to the top of Profanity trail was blessedly short as advertised, and we huddled there as before, just beyond the wind’s bite on the clear side of the mountain, awaiting Woodman’s orders.

“Okay,” he shouted, “that’s basically the worst of it. The rest, as they say, is all downhill.” He pointed to a narrow gap between two rocky outcroppings below us. “What you can see from here is as bad as it gets. It’s steep enough at the top that even the skiers mostly sidestep it, but then things open up a bit, plus we get to move laterally to the north once we reach the bottom of the cliffs surrounding the Chin. We’ll stay roped in for safety’s sake. All set?”