Of the
The weight ice VIOLENTLY STOPPED Terravecchia’s fall, breaking his ribs and his leg.
pulled the handle away from the wall, just slightly, then to the left, then to the right. It held. I returned the handle to plumb and held it steady. The pick of my left tool was torqued, one tooth deep, in the vertical seam of the corner. My legs stemmed between the walls, my front points perched on rough brown f lecks of feldspar between the grains of quartz in the basalt.
My fingers and toes had been numb for several days, even at night in the warmth of the cabin they would not thaw out. I suspect my nerves were damaged from frost nip. The dexterity in my hands started to go on the climb. I committed to the tiny hook and focused on moving upward. I needed to lock off. I pulled hard, steady, drawing my fist into my armpit and ratcheted it beside my chest. I locked my wrist and pulled the handle down by my waist. Releasing the torqued left tool, I extended far overhead toward a pod in the crack, the fascia in my armpit hurt from hyperextension. I snagged my tool, torqued it and lean leftward. I tiptoed rapidly up the rough right wall of the corner with my front points. I stomped the side of my right crampon high onto the narrow edge of the rising dike along the right wall.
The steel skated on the glassy volcanic and angular shattered basalt. I back-stepped my left crampon onto a small sloping slab that was iced with a thin brittle sheet of neve. I thrust upward with my legs and chopped my right tool into the seam above the pod. My body shook and I forced it still. I took deep forceful breaths through my lungs and my upper lip tingles. For an instant, my vision blurred and my mind cleared and the hairs on my neck stood on end. I stuck the move, I somehow pulled it off. I climbed what had to be the crux of the corner, onsight without falling. I looked up at the remainder of the overhanging wall and the rock was more featured. The crack opened and shut in a series of pods. One steep bulge remained, but I knew I would climb it. I placed a solid cam in a pod, and holding myself erect with my stemmed legs, I pulled left on my torqued tool. I alternated shaking my frozen hands and blowing my warm breath on the backs of my fingers through the skimpy fabric of my dry-tooling gloves.
Looking toward the ground between my legs, the orange rope was hanging down and toward the wall. The wind was vibrating my rope. Through the fog, I could see Pfaff ’s eyes looking up at me through the many hoods on her head. She looked scared. Below her, the cliff faded into a blurry grey-white abyss. The snow gully that fell away from the base of the wall toward the dark balsam fir along the shore of the f rozen Ten Mile Pond far below was scarcely visible. The damp coastal air seemed to be freezing in front of me.
I looked up at the gauntlet that awaited. A powder-blue icicle was hanging high over and out from a jagged capstone in the corner. The dagger twisted in an irregular spiral, likely a result of the never-ending wind. It looked like a braided steel cable hanging from the steep roof tops above. That was the part of the climb that nearly killed New Englander Joe Terravecchia, twice. I remembered the story. The first time, he was climbing with Casey Shaw. The two were climbing the iced up gully far below and directly under the dagger, when, spontaneously, the dagger snapped and crashed down into the gully. It pummelled the two men, breaking several of their bones and sending them both to the emergency room at the hospital in Deer Lake.
On the second occasion, Terravecchia was pulling onto the icicle after he climbed delaminated smears of ice to the left of the corner I just climbed. When he committed to the free-hanging