Kim Robinson - Fifty Degrees Below

“No doubt it added some protein to our diet.”

“Not much, it was more a gesture.”

“But anything helped at that point.”

“It’s true. I kind of got to looking forward to it.”

They grinned at each other, looked shyly at Frank.

“Yes. It helped us feel like we were together. People need to be part of a group.”

“And to help the old monk. He would get very distraught.”

“But then he died.”

“Yes, that’s right. But then the rice seemed to be missing something!”

One morning when it was spring and all, cool and green and sweet, like some May day remembered from a distant past that they had assumed would never come again, Charlie drove out to Great Falls and met Frank and Drepung. Frank was going to teach them the basics of rock climbing.

Anna did not thoroughly approve, but Frank assured her he would make it safe, and her risk-assessment realism impelled her to concede it was probably all right. Charlie, only momentarily disappointed that he had lost this best excuse to back out of it, now parked next to the other two, and they walked out the short trail to the gorge, carrying two backpacks of Frank’s gear and a few tight loops of nylon rope. After coming to an overlook, the trail paralleled the clifftop, and they followed it to a spot under a prominent tree, which Frank declared was the top of a good teaching route.

It was a new route, he said, for the great flood had greatly rearranged Great Falls, tearing new routes all up and down the south wall. When that much water ran over rock it tore at it not only by direct friction but also by a process called cavitation, in which the water broke into bubbles that were in effect vacuums that sucked violently at the cracks in the rocks, cracking them further, so that big blocks were plucked out rather than worn away. The walls of Mather Gorge had been plucked pretty hard.

Frank uncoiled one length of rope and tied it off around the trunk of the tree. He pointed down the cliff. “See the flat spot down at the bottom? On the right here, you can basically walk down to it, like on stairs. Then you can climb the wall over here, or there. It’s like a climbing wall in a gym.”

The knobby black rock was schist, he said. The gorge was an unusual feature in this region; there was another smaller one on the Susquehanna, but mostly the eastern piedmont lacked this kind of rocky outcropping. It had been cut in discrete bursts, the geologists had found, perhaps in the big floods that punctuated the end of ice ages. Their recent flood was a minor scouring compared to those.

Now they stood on the rim of the cliff, looking down at the river’s white roil and rumble. “There’s almost every kind of hold represented on this wall,” Frank continued. “Conveniently identified for the beginning climber by the fresh new chalk marks you see on them. There’s been lots of action here already. I’ll have you top-belayed the whole time today from this tree here, so even if you slip and come off, you’ll only bounce in place a little. The rope has some flex, so you won’t be brought up short if it happens. I’ll have you jump off on purpose so you know what it feels like.”

Charlie and Drepung exchanged a reassured glance. It was going to be okay. Neither would die as the result of being a bad student, something they both had been a few times in the past.

That being established they became happier, and put on their harnesses cheerfully, indeed prone to sudden bursts of muffled hilarity ostensibly caused by the difficulties of getting their legs in the proper holes. It was pretty lame, and Frank shook his head. Then they were solemnly studying Frank’s knots, and learning the simple but effective suspension belaying systems used by climbers, techniques that held without fail when needed, but also would run freely when desired. Frank was very clear and businesslike in his explanations, and patient with their fumbling and misunderstanding. He had done this before.

When he seemed to feel they had absorbed the necessary minimum, he retied all their knots himself, then ran Charlie’s rope through a carabiner tied to their tree and wrapped it around his waist. Charlie then carefully descended the staircase analog that ran down to a floor just above the river. Standing at the bottom Charlie turned to look up at Frank.

“Okay,” Frank said, pulling the rope between them taut through the carabiner. “On belay.”

“On belay,” Charlie repeated. Then he started climbing, focusing on the wall and seeing it hold by hold. The chalk marks did indeed help. Monkey up, using the knobs and nicks they indicated. He heard Frank’s suggestions as if from a distance. Don’t look down. Don’t try to pull yourself up by the arms. Use the legs as much as possible. Keep three points attached at all times. Move smoothly, never lunge.

His toe slipped and he fell. Boing, fend off wall; bounce gently; he was okay. Relocate holds, get back to climbing. Was that all? Why, it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as he had thought it would be! With such a system there wasn’t the slightest danger!

The way Frank failed to agree with this served to refocus Charlie’s attention on the wall.

Some of what Charlie was doing was familiar to him already, as it resembled the scrambling he had done on backpacking trips in the Sierra. The steps, grabs, and motions were the same, but here he was performing them on a surface drastically more vertical than any he and his backpacking friends would have attempted. Indeed if he had ever wandered onto such a face during a scramble in the Sierra, he would have been paralyzed with fear.

But being top-roped really did remove the source of that fear, and with it gone, there was room to notice other feelings. The action felt like a kind of acrobatics, unrehearsed and in slow motion. Charlie became absorbed in it for a long time, slowing down as the holds seemed scarcer, until his fingers began to hurt. For a while nothing existed except for the rock face and his search for holds. Once or twice Frank spoke, but mostly he watched. The tug of his belay, while reassuring, did not actually pull Charlie up; and now he began to struggle, with only a final awkward lunge getting him up to the rim.

Very absorbing stuff! And now a surge of some kind of I’M STILL ALIVE glow was flowing through his whole body. He saw how it was that people might get hooked.

Then it was Drepung’s turn. Charlie sat with his feet swinging over the edge, watching happily. From above Drepung looked bulky, and his expression as he searched the rock face was uncomfortable. Charlie had his years of scrambling experience; Drepung did not. After hauling himself up the first few holds he looked down once between his feet, and after that he seemed a bit glued to the rock. He muttered something about a traditional Tibetan fear of falling, but Frank would have none of it. “That’s a tradition everywhere, I assure you. Just focus on where you’re at, and feel the belay. Jump off if you want to see how it’ll feel.”

“It seems I will get to find out soon enough anyway.”

He was slow, but he kept trying. His moves were pretty sure when they happened. His small mouth pursed in a perfect little O of concentration. In a few minutes more he made it up and hauled himself around to sit beside Charlie, uttering a happy “Ha.”

Frank had them do it again, trying other routes on the face; then they belayed each other, nervously, with Frank standing beside the belayer making sure all was well. Lastly he had them rappel down, in a simple but scary operation like the old Batman, but for real. They practiced until their hands got too tired and sore to hold on to anything.

After that (it had taken a couple of hours) Frank changed his belay to another tree on the cliff top. “It looks like both Juliet’s Balcony and Romeo’s Ladder survived. I’m going to do one of those, or Gorky Park.” He dropped away, leaving Charlie and Drepung sitting happily on the cliff’s edge, kicking their heels against the rock and taking in the view. To their left the rearranged falls roared down its drops, every step along the way boiling whitely. Below them Frank was climbing slowly.