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the driving rain that felt like it was part o f a g iant heavenly leak. Climb ing ice is the c l osest you will ever get t o feeling like an inchworm. There's not much t o it, skill-wise. You whack into a sheer ice wall with a spe c ia1i ~ ed i c e axe or two , dig your t oes in, and keep c limb ing . If you fall, s omeone's belaying you from below v ia ice screws and anchors sunk in at the top o f the "p it ch," s o you drop maybe a foot . Even falling is f un ( i f you' ve got a good harness ) . Again, I had t o remind myself that this lark in whi ch I was eng ag ing 1 00 yards from my tent was j ust one o f the skills I needed t o master to c limb the b ig peaks. If you c an't make it up an ice wall, you c an't turn b ack or call in the air rescue. And I wasn 't at 17, 000 fee t yet. It was hard work, too. I recommend two months o f d aily pull-ups f or anyone who wants t o take up ice climb ing . You ' re halfway up a 30-foot wall when suddenly your arms feel like they're made out o f ove rcooked 1inguine . Our group bonded hard this day, l oud ly r ooting f or each o ther to reach the top o f a wall that Cedar c alled "adv anced intermediate." It had a n asty convex lip about three quarters o f the way up, which you tended t o reach just when you started t o get tire d. Cedar said he started us on this wall because we were such a hard-core bunch. The day made me rea1i ~e again how important human chemistry is on a ,i i1derness trip . And how fortunate we were in this reg ard . I n fac t, t he supportive energy o f Tal and Michael got me through the day. Day Four was about personal acc omplishment. On two o f my climbs, I was re ady t o quit after three successive falls from the dastardly lip. My arms felt like they were being pulled out at the shoulder, I was sho rt o f breath, and gene rally out o f energy. Or ,ias I? I sucked it in, grunted like Monica Se1es before a backhand, and made it t o the t op, both times. The group cheered. That night I crashed with a clearer view of myself than I'd had in a l ong time. One that felt right . DAy FIVE: Glacier Camp. Crevasse Rescue Fie1( Workshop Up at Glacier 0 ' clock t o more rain (even the real world pro fessi onal Michael had releg ated his wat ch t o a deep recess of his pack ) . Eli was our alarm clock, calling out his daily, "Beautiful day ! Ho t drinks in fi ve minutes." I don't know how the guides remembered which day we were t o be picked up. I was in full Playing On Ice mode. I l oved walking in crampons: first o ff, I felt like a bear, and my tracks even had claws in them. Second, as a normally Slip- prone person, these thing s grabbed every thing- even my bootlaces. This day we learned how t o rescue s omeone who falls in a crevasse and gets knocked unconscious . And this can happen t o anyone: Even Sean, an Alaskan Mount ain Guides co- owner and among the harder-core climbers on the planet, recently fell into a crev asse in the first hour o f a trip, breaking several rib s (it didn't stop him from completing the trip ) . Crevasse rescue is based on a pUlley-system principle, where you disperse the dead ,ieight by tying a series of anchors and tugging in what' s c alled a ~-drag f ormation . Here I was using everything I had already learned: tying prussiks, self-arresting and burying pickets, all o f which would have seemed part of an inconceivab ly f oreign set o f skills a week earlier. I think I'd need t o go through this part o f the workshop again before I felt confident rescuing s omeone on my own. (I spent half the time working on my knots. ) Practice is key in this s ort o f thing , even for guides. But after this b asic training I think I'd physically be a useful part o f a group rescue. But here we get into the mental aspect o f mountain climb i ng . I was t old by a sports shop salesperson before this trip that at 32 , I am the 51

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