Finding Jim (10 page)

At the reception, Dad made the first speech. “I think everyone here will agree that Jim and Sue make a good couple. And mountaineers are a good sort, don't you think? We are drawn to them in a way. Perhaps because they dare to live closer to the line of chaos and they challenge the illusion most of us have bought into: that we are in control of our lives. They make us feel more alive. I am personally very fond of Jim and am very pleased that he is joining our family.”

Kevin toasted the bride. “You know, when you talk to Sue, you really feel like she cares about what you are saying. She is a good listener. And she'll laugh at anyone's jokes, and I should know! Jim is a free spirit and he has found in Sue a partner who shares his sense of adventure, his love of the natural and elemental, his desire to live life on a daily basis. And she can keep up with him! Welcome, Sue, into our family.”

Jim began his speech. “I feel like such a lucky guy because I have this incredible group of friends and such a supportive family. I often wonder when that luck is going to run out.” The crowd murmured.

Jim turned and waved his arm in my direction but was silent. He clenched his jaw and shook his fists several times before he could continue without crying.

“Now, I feel as if I am the luckiest guy on earth because this intelligent, beautiful, honest, caring, loving woman picked me.”

I felt lucky too. After more than 15 years of interrupted courtship and exploring the wilderness and the boundaries of our relationship, Jim and I vowed to share our lives forever. It was one of those beautiful moments in life.

(1997–1999)

After our honeymoon, Jim and I broke ground on our new house in Whistler with the help of many friends. I left my teaching job in Vancouver and worked as the building contractor. Late into the evenings, the steady whir of machinery cut through the night as Jim and I sanded beams, spray-painted walls, nailed in back-framing and vacuumed the constant piles of sawdust. In five months we moved in.

Jim was adamant about the type of home we should build, “Low maintenance, that's the way to go. Vinyl siding, metal windows … okay, maybe not vinyl siding. But we have to keep it simple so that we have the money to go on trips.” We decided to maintain a reasonable mortgage, spend little other than for travel and have no pets or garden to speak of. Soon after Jim had finished his heli-ski season in the spring, we packed for a three-week backcountry ski mountaineering trip to the Wrangell–St. Elias mountains in eastern Alaska with friends Keith and Julia.

After several hours of driving in a heated rental car from Anchorage, we arrived in the quiet town of Chitina and my body braced against the cold Alaska air. Rubbing my forearms, I glanced about at the grey, weathered buildings, the gravel road and the wind pushing puffs of dust into the air. Even the scant greenery appeared slate coloured. I smelled wet rock, and a gritty mineral taste lingered on my tongue. Chitina reminded me of a Wild West town, without the heat, people or animals.

It was hard to imagine that dance halls, movie theatres and hotels used to line the streets. Chitina had become a ghost town overnight in 1938, when the local mill and mine closed and gave their employees two hours to catch the last departing train. Now, it was home to one hundred hardy residents; the end of the pavement and the last stop for gas before the long, dusty drive to McCarthy. I shivered.

Jim waved his arm downriver in the direction of a distant droning sound, and we knew it would not be long before the bush plane landed. Keith wrenched open the door of a storage shed in which we had organized our gear, placing it out of the wind, and we changed into down jackets and snow boots. The bush plane got bigger and louder as it approached and skidded onto the gravel runway. Paul Claus reached out his callused hand to each of us and welcomed us to Alaska. While he refuelled, we loaded our gear.

We flew along the Chitina River to the Ultima Thule Lodge, run by Paul and his family, surrounded by over five million hectares of parkland and preserve. Huskies barked from their perches on top of doghouses as our Beaver plane tottered its way to the ground. A dozen log cabins dotted the gravel along the riverbank leading to the main lodge. To one side, glaciated mountains rose 4900 metres into the clouds, while on the other side the Chitina River stretched out across the valley in a way that pulled my gaze. I felt hemmed in and drawn out at the same time, deafened by the vastness.

The next day, we bumped through the clouds over a 4300-metre pass to land on the Klutlan Glacier, a massive runway of ice stretching 64 kilometres into Canada's Yukon Territory. Behind us, at the head of the Klutlan, an amphitheatre of ice, like giant blocks of
LEGO
, tumbled down the highest volcano in the United States, Mount Bona, elevation 5000 metres, our climbing objective.

The wind was howling across the mile-wide glacier, so we spent the day building a snow wall around our tents, a roofless igloo. As the sun dipped behind Mount Bona, my fingers and toes froze. I felt familiar vise-grips on my temples: altitude sickness, which remained a mystery to me. I prepared mentally for it but still felt overwhelmed by headache, nausea and lethargy.

I moved slowly and took deep, even breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Relax. I gulped a bowl of soup, which seemed to hit my stomach and bounce back halfway. I rocked on my knees, cradled my head and willed the internal pressure to ease. I forced a smile at Jim who rubbed my back and held a bag while I dry heaved. For better or for worse. I felt in limbo for one hour, out of control, before I escaped into sleep.

During the night, mummified in a down jacket, long johns, down booties and a toque, I wrestled to turn over in my sleeping bag to relieve my aching hips and shoulders. In the morning, I felt wet on the front of my jacket and thought, I'm losing it; I'm drooling. My breath had condensed. Crystals sparkled on the inside walls of the tent.

After several days of ski touring at 3400 metres to acclimatize, we strapped on our packs for a three-day ascent of Mount Bona. I swayed under my load, and Jim looked like a giant frankfurter on a stick.

“If you can't carry on a conversation, then you're going too quickly,” Julia reminded us. I fell in behind Jim and matched his trademark shuffle gait. The sun beat down and we stripped to long-sleeved shirts and baseball hats. Peaks rose regally, looking like snow-covered old-growth trees. Séracs, columns of ice formed by intersecting crevasses, were massive ice cubes. I scanned left to right and jabbed my pole into the snow in front of me as I wove in between crevasses that gashed the glacier like forked lightning.

Every 50 metres, Jim or Keith drove a bamboo stake into the snow that was topped with fluorescent orange tape to mark our route in the event of a whiteout. At the top of the south face, we sat down for lunch, engulfed by a sea of summits, the most impressive being University Peak.

We turned west onto a steeper, bowl-like glacier and I shortened my glides. I timed my breaths. In for two seconds, out for two. I adopted a mantra of one breath, two steps, repeat. However icy, steep or unlikely a slope appeared, however thin the air, I was confident I could keep going if I took slow, small steps. My fingers and toes felt thick. I willed my quads to drag my legs faster to create more heat. After five hours of uphill slogging, we reached high camp at 4100 metres. We worked for two hours to level ice platforms for our tents. I wolfed a frozen Mars bar, dove into the tent and tossed and turned most of the night.

The next morning, I squinted through puffy eyes at the back of Jim as we ascended the ridge toward the summit of Mount Bona. My legs wobbled like wet noodles. As the grade increased, the skins on the bottom of our skis began to slip on the steep slope, so we carried our skis and kicked steps. We took 2.5 hours to gain 370 metres of elevation, and I cursed as my energy reserves drained.

A plateau stretched like a slab of white chocolate to the base of Mount Bona, one hour away. I stopped for a snack.

With several hours of climbing ahead, I felt an urge to soak in a hot tub, eat a couple of loaded burgers and drink a beer. I dropped behind. The group waited for me, and when I caught up we discussed our options. It was 2 p.m. We had half an hour to get to the base, followed by the climb to the summit. A lenticular cloud draped over the peak, hinting at bad weather. I offered to wait while they went to the summit.

“It wouldn't be the same if the whole team didn't go up. It wouldn't seem right.” Julia shook her head.

The four of us turned back to high camp. I fell behind in the whiteout and Jim slowed to check on me, “How's it going?”

“I feel bad about letting the team down, about letting myself down, and more than anything I am exhausted.” I snowplowed.

By 3:30 p.m. I was dozing in our tent. Four and a half hours up and one hour to ski down. I popped a Tylenol and did not stir for 14 hours.

In the morning, we photographed the birthing sun on the highest peak in Canada, Mount Logan. We skied up to the base of Bona in three hours via a shortcut we'd found. En route to the summit, our crampons bit into the Styrofoam-like snow on the 460-metre-steep snow cone. I walked bowlegged to avoid catching my crampons on my pant legs. Plant ice axe, left bowleg step, right bowleg step, repeat. Only crevasse crossings and ice interrupted my rhythm. Jim led me by a climbing rope so that I did not topple off the ridge down the steep face. When the slope angled off, we unroped and I plodded, my mind on tropical places. Six hours after leaving high camp, we hugged on the summit. Mountaineers are one of the few groups to celebrate before the finish line. More mountaineers die on the descent than on the ascent.

On the way down, I concentrated for 1.5 hours, placing my boots purposefully as if nothing were certain. At the base of the cone, I collapsed and Jim removed my crampons. We had another 1.5 hours of skiing back to high camp. The early morning clouds had risen and even rose-coloured goggles afforded my eyes no definition in the snow. I snowplowed, neck strained to pick up clues in the terrain, knocked off balance with each plastic-like ripple in the snow. Every 10 minutes, I leaned on my poles and tried to suck energy from the ground.

Jim grinned, “How's it going?”

“I feel the shits,” I snarled.

Back at high camp, 10 hours after leaving in the morning, I crawled into my sleeping bag.

“Yeah, you're really wasted. I can smell the ketones on your breath.” Jim propped himself up on his elbow beside me.

I popped two Tylenols, and we watched the barometer drop.

I woke to wind snapping and drumming the tent walls and Keith yelling, “I can't even see our first bamboo wand.” The storm swallowed his words.

The barometer continued to drop, but we stuffed gear into our packs to descend to base camp. The gale hurled tiny daggers of snow, so we donned goggles and face masks and slathered wind cream on all exposed skin. We developed a system of movement whereby Jim headed out into the storm and raised his pole when he found the bamboo marker. Voices were useless in the wind. The second and third person followed. The fourth person waited until Jim had found the next marker so that we could see our direction of travel. If Jim disappeared in the swirling snow, Keith ventured out until he made contact.

When we reached the south slope, the wind exploded. I lurched when I stopped, thinking I was still skiing. The ground and air were in perpetual motion. Ice built up under our goggles, on our noses and cheeks. Jim removed his glove and cupped his hand over my nose, saying, “The flesh is turning white.” Like meat in the freezer. I clenched my jaw.

Julia and I huddled while Jim and Keith searched for bamboo wands. We inched our way down until we levelled out on the Klutlan Glacier, a sea of white. Jim trudged, head down, a compass in his outstretched hand, and followed a bearing to our base camp. We missed it by six metres, but Jim doubled back when he sensed we had gone too far. We dove into the tents fully clothed, warmed our faces with our hands and cracked off our frozen
GORE-TEX
.

“What's the point?” I buried my face in down.

“What do you mean?” Jim set up the stove in the vestibule.

“The risk/reward ratio is way out of whack for me. I thrashed my body with the altitude, had minimal skiing, had to descend in a whiteout, and, oh yeah, now I can say I climbed the fourth highest peak in Alaska. It just doesn't seem worth it.” I warmed my hands on my belly.

“I can understand what you're saying, but I love our trips together. I think they make us stronger.” Jim reached for some tea.

“I guess.”

They scare me, I thought.

Do I dislike being on the edge because I am weak, mentally and physically? Because I do not have the energy to feel strong? Because I have little to fall back on in hard times? Why do I not desire the summit the way others do? A workout, laughs with friends, powder snow and sun are the rewards for me. But I wanted to be strong, dependable and self-reliant, and I wanted Jim to be proud of me.

Keith said extreme conditions offer more of a challenge. Julia added that these experiences reveal how much you can tolerate, and that makes you stronger.

But I did not survive on my own steam. Jim guided me. I missed that sense of self-reliance.

The storm raged on, for days. The wind ripped through the col, gathered momentum and whatever loose snow it could find, and screamed down the glacier like a river. At first I stayed in the tent for 36 hours. But I had to get out to help shovel or we would be buried.

Every day, we dug for hours to free our tents and reinforce the break walls until they were three metres high; the wind-driven snow and glacier ingested us. We melted snow for water, cooked, read, played cards and groomed. At first, the days passed quickly.

On the eighth day, the weather was so fierce that Jim and I didn't leave the tent to shovel until after dinner. The tent was submerged. We yelped as the hundred-kilometre-per-hour wind pushed us off balance. I battled to keep my shovel on the ground. Gusts drove us to our knees, where we waited for respite. Two hours later we crawled back into the tent and peeled crusty gloves, hats and
GORE-TEX
from our bodies. Jim did the eggbeater in his sleeping bag to get warm. I remembered the survival Rule of Three: a human being cannot survive more than three hours exposed to severe low temperatures, more than three days without water and more than three weeks without food. I wondered how long we would be stuck on the glacier and if our supply of food and fuel would last.