Gray Skies and Blue Ice

By Alan Ewert

Gray Skies and Blue Ice is set on the beautiful yet challenging mountain of Mt. Forbidden, one of the highest peaks in the state of Oregon. Heavily glaciated with steep snow slopes and unpredictable weather, the summit of Mt. Forbidden represents a prize sought after by mountain climbers around the world. Four such climbers, accompanied by their guide Steve Ague, battled an incoming storm to reach the summit and then experienced a horrifying accident while crossing a crevasse via a snow bridge. The snow bridge collapsed and the guide, as well as three of the climbers perished from the fall. A fourth climber, Charlie Bronson, managed to survive the accident, but his miraculous escape was anything but luck or coincidence. One member of the climbing team that perished, Ed Novak, was the CEO of a new start-up company that developed web-based apps for a wide range of applications. As a project leader with that company, Charlie knew that Novak was beginning to suspect him of committing fraud and anticipated being charged with a crime upon returning from the trip, hence Ed Novak had to be eliminated. The others were considered collateral damage. After the "unfortunate" climbing accident, Charlie felt confident when he descended to the mountain lodge, knowing he had eliminated his main accuser of his unethical and illegal deeds. But what Charlie started to realize, as he climbed downward, preparing mentally for his version of the terrible incident, was that he had left behind a crucial piece of incriminating evidence at the edge of the crevasse.
As information regarding the accident started to percolate among the media and families of the lost climbers, Eric Jackson and Elizabeth Atterly, friends of two of the deceased climbers, began the long drive up to Mt. Forbidden to collect any personal effects they left behind. They met at the lodge and after much soul-searching decided to try to climb Mt. Forbidden and dedicate that climb to their loved ones. Realizing that they needed training to safely achieve that task, they hired a guide, Curt Whitmeyer, to teach them the necessary climbing skills in order to reach the crevasse and summit high up on the mountain. Following their training weekend, they agreed to meet two weeks later and attempt their climb to the summit.
In the meantime, the incriminating evidence carelessly left behind by Charlie Bronson started to gnaw at him. He decided to get back up to the crevasse and get it himself before anyone else discovered it and started asking questions. After finding out that Elizabeth and Eric were going to climb up to the crevasse he convinced them to let him become part of the climbing team, and somehow retrieve his evidence. The first day of the climb, their guide had to pull out at the last minute, leaving Elizabeth, Eric and Charlie to proceed without him. Before leaving, the guide mentioned that there might be a storm approaching on the mountain in two days' time, and they should try to be up and down before it arrived.
Their first night was spent at a level campsite just below a steep rock rib. Getting through the rocky rib meant that the climbers would have to wind their way through a narrow gap in the rib before reaching their high camp at around 9000 feet. At high camp the group decided they should get to the crevasse and if possible, attempt to climb to the summit as a means of dedication to their lost loved ones. Summit day brought thickening clouds indicating that a storm front might be approaching. Nevertheless, the group made the decision to go for the crevasse and, if possible, the summit. As the weather deteriorates, they delicately crossed a snow bridge to reach the crevasse and took a moment to acknowledge their friends entombed below. Even with the increasing intensity of the storm the group decided to try for the summit. Eric was tied into the front of the rope and as he started up, he noticed a small piece of metal protruding from the snow. It was the picket that Charl

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667828619

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CHAPTER 1

COLLECTIONS

IT WAS COLD AND WINDY with a gray sky like the color of lead that filled one with feelings of emptiness, foreboding, and depression. Like floating white sheets, bands of snow would whip across the road, temporarily creating a whiteout where there was no horizon, no visibility, and, most importantly, no road. Fortunately, the snow was intermittent and, if one slowed down enough, manageable. Eric Jackson was used to driving in the mountains, having done it for years and in all kinds of weather. But this time was different. Driving up Hwy 284 toward the lodge on the west side of Mount Forbidden was pretty much old news, except for today. Today was different, and Eric, deep in thought, hardly noticed the snow, the cold, the wind, or even the road. He had driven this road before, but now as he got closer to his destination with every mile, the weight of why he was heading up there pressed on him like a heavy barbell. And yet, he had to keep going, to a place he had enjoyed from earlier visits, but now hated with a level of passion he didn’t know he had.

Coming from the east on Hwy 191, Elizabeth Atterly was also driving through the same storm toward the same lodge, the Glacier Point Lodge on Mount Forbidden. On this side of Forbidden, the storm was less intense, less demanding of one’s attention, and that was the problem. Without the storm demanding her full attention, Elizabeth had an even more painful task—to think and remember. Like Eric Jackson, Elizabeth also felt the dread growing with each mile, a dread that was mixed with both the unknown and the memories of the known. The love she had known and now the loss of that love combined with an inexorable sense of aloneness.

The first and only time Elizabeth had driven up to the lodge had been to drop off her boyfriend and her soon-to-be fiancé—she hoped—Ed Novak, her love, her soulmate, the person with whom her life and future had been inextricably tied up. Unfortunately for Elizabeth, Ed was a budding mountaineer, a climber, a person who was driven to scale high peaks, not because they were there, but rather because they helped define who and what he was. Elizabeth was a hiker, but not a mountaineer. She grappled with questions like Why does he do it?, What is up there that constantly pulls at him?. She wondered if she would ever understand the why. In the end, she had resigned herself to the fact that she probably would never get it. But then, that was who Ed was, and if she wanted Ed, the mountains had to come along.

Eric had been faced with the same questions. He had hiked up several peaks, nothing too high or too demanding, and, like Elizabeth, had sought out answers, looking for some reasonable and logical explanations as to why his girlfriend, his love, Susan Burns felt the need to battle all that the big mountains had to offer such as blizzards, wind, cold, avalanches, and crevasses that seemed to drop to the depths of the earth. Like Elizabeth, Eric had understood that, if he was going to have Susan in his life, he was also going to have the mountains, a point made even more poignant when he dropped her off at the Glacier Point Lodge’s climber check-in station.

It was a bluebird day, with a light wind from the west and the temperature in the 60s, a beautiful day that spelled the start of a great time for climbing toward God’s heaven.

Both Susan and Ed were part of a climbing team organized by the Glacier Point Mountain Guides. Susan didn’t know Ed or anyone else on the team, but this was an opportunity to climb the southwest face of Mount Forbidden, and who could pass up the chance to get to the summit of that mountain? Many a mountaineer had the southwest face on their bucket list.

In both cars, the talk had been subdued with each person dealing with their own thoughts and feelings. For Elizabeth and Ed, their talk focused on the future. What will they do once he returned back to the lodge? Should they join the team in celebration, or go home to the quietness, the sense of security, the warmth of lower elevations and denser air? Susan and Eric were focused on a more immediate future. Did she bring all the gear and clothes she would need? Did she remember to sharpen her ice axe and crampons? Was there any rock climbing on the route, and how hard would that be while wearing mountaineering boots? Who would be on their climbing team, and what would their guide be like? In a sense, each couple had a feeling of closeness and connection with their companion but were essentially talking past one another.

For each couple, parting had always been a painful experience, but they handled it in different ways. For Susan and Eric, their way of saying goodbye consisted of a close embrace with words of love and Already missing you said often and with affection and a feeling of impending distance. For Elizabeth and Ed, their way of dealing with goodbye was by camouflaging their heartache with a more mundane cover of Did you bring your two water bottles and three sets of woolen socks? For them this approach worked, but only in the short term and often left both with a sense of important things left unsaid.

Intruding on these interactions was, of course, the beauty surrounding the Glacier Point Lodge. The lodge was nestled in at 5500 feet above sea level and was located in a relatively flat spot surrounded by green landscapes of subalpine firs and alpine meadows topped off by snow-covered mountains of various shapes and sizes—all of which were dominated by the one inescapable monolith of Mount Forbidden. At 11,255 feet, Mount Forbidden looked down on the surrounding area as well as a substantial portion of the state of Oregon. Clinging to its sides were dark brown rocky ribs interspersed with gleaming white glaciers punctuated with sinuous and dangerous-looking crevasses, some well over 100 feet deep. But of course, as everyone knew, it wasn’t the crevasse you could see that was the problem, but the ones you could not see, that held the icy cold hand of the devil ready to grab your feet and drag you down to your death.

Born over five hundred thousand years ago, Mount Forbidden was the child of the fire of the inexorable subduction of the Juan de Fuca Plate off the western coast of North America during a part of the Pleistocene epoch of the Cenozoic Era. This subduction occurs as the Juan de Fuca Plate slides under the North American Plate at a rate of about one inch per year. As the Juan de Fuca Plate takes its dive under the North American Plate, the overlying mantel partially melts and forms magma, which provides the lifeblood of the Cascade range of volcanoes in the Pacific Northwest of North America. Mount Forbidden is a long-lived volcano that has erupted recurrently over these past five hundred thousand years, racked by numerous eruptions and lava flows separated by periods of calm. One of these eruptions and resultant lava flows occurring over ten thousand years ago was particularly eventful in that it resulted in an extruding rocky rib at about seven thousand feet that climbers ascending the south side of the mountain have to surmount. While for much of the year the ridge is buried under snow, by mid-summer, the ridge is often exposed and presents the climber with a steep—almost vertical in parts—weaving ascent of about three rope lengths. The same lava flow produced another steep section just below the summit that climbers must ascend before reaching the summit.

Despite its fiery birth, today Mount Forbidden appeared both resplendent and innocuous. The summit, although always hidden from the parking lot by several false summits, appeared cloud free with only the promise of a light wind. The temperature, this late morning, at the parking lot was a balmy 54° F. Applying the temperature rule of reducing 3.5° per thousand feet of elevation meant that the theoretical temperature at the summit, at about ten thousand feet, was right now less than balmy at 19° F. But, in reality, it was probably colder and more windy up there. Inexperienced climbers could easily be deceived by the soothing conditions of the parking lot acting as a magnet, a clever trick to get one up high when conditions would change, most often for the worse.

Arriving about the same time, both the couples all too quickly performed the ritual of off-loading from the cars the packs, ice axes, food, boots, and all the other paraphernalia necessary to climb the mountain, and now it was time to say goodbye.

Eric embraced Susan tightly and said, I love you, honey, and will be back soon. Be careful driving back home.

Susan whispered, I will. And you be careful. Don’t take any unnecessary chances.

And with one more look back at each other, that was that, and Elizabeth drove off in their 2015 hatchback Subaru.

True to form, Elizabeth and Ed fought back any tears.

I should be back down in three days, weather permitting, said Ed; at least that was the plan.

Elizabeth’s replied, I’ll be here and will bring you a cold Coke. Bye, honey. See you soon.

That was that, and Eric got in his 1999 Ford Explorer and started down the curving, but dry, Glacier Point road, driving to a quiet but lonely apartment and a lonelier German Shepard dog named Biner.

Ed and Susan headed toward the climber’s hut. Once up in the guide’s office, they were asked to fill out some official-looking forms, starting with typical bureaucratic information such as name, address, age, and date. But each form got a little more serious with questions requiring an answer as to whom to contact in case of emergency, whether they had a car in the parking lot, if yes, then what type of car and its license number, etc. Then came the climbing forms with a checklist of necessary equipment and information regarding the color of their tent, the route they were planning on attempting to climb, etc. Since this was a guided climb, meaning there was a guide hired to lead the group, neither Ed nor Susan was sure whether they needed to fill out the climbing forms, when in walked the answer, Steve Ague, their guide.

Hey, are you two here for the Glacier Point climb? Steve asked without any hesitation.

I am, responded Susan.

That includes me as well, said Ed.

Ok, great. I’m your guide Steve Ague, so grab your stuff and let’s go over to the equipment room.

Steve Ague looked the part, from his tanned face with raccoon eyes from wearing sun goggles, to the Patagonia fleece jacket and synthetic climbing pants. He acted the part as well, with a swagger and mannerism that cried out that he was in charge and knew exactly what he was doing; no need to ask.

One flight up some well-trodden steps led to a small but sunlit guides’ office where two other people, decked out in clothes obviously made for climbing, similar to Ague’s, were looking at the posters on the walls.

Ok, we are all here, finally, so let’s get right to it! announced Ague with a great deal of authority.

Perhaps a bit too much, thought Susan. Susan would know. As a licensed counseling therapist, she had come to recognize when small, seemingly inconsequential behaviors and mannerisms oftentimes hid much bigger issues. But then again, perhaps she was imagining it. She hoped so.

Steve Ague started a more or less formal climbers’ briefing by having everyone announce their names and where were they from. Besides Susan and Ed, the other two climbers were Charlie Aronson from Portland, Oregon, aged fifty-nine, and Claire Bronson, aged forty-two, from Little Rock, Arkansas. Susan, aged thirty-four, was from Eugene, Oregon, and Ed, aged thirty-nine, hailed from Portland, Oregon. Ed and Charlie actually worked at the same company, Apps for Life, a new but highly profitable upstart in the technology industry, based in Portland. Ed was the founder and the CEO of the company. Charlie worked for Ed as one of the company’s project directors. Unknown to Charlie, at the time, Elizabeth Atterly played a role with Apps for Life as well, but at a distance. Elizabeth was employed as a financial analyst with Northwest Financial Services, the auditor for Apps for Life. At thirty-two, she was a bit young, some thought, for such a position, but highly competent and insightful. And little did Elizabeth know that her role as a financial analyst would create a liaison with Charlie that would be both unexpected and dangerous to her.

With the exception of Charlie and Ed, the other climbers, Susan and Claire, had little to no prior mountain climbing experience, and none of the group, except the guide, had attempted anything like Mount Forbidden. Not surprisingly, Ague was more expressive in his climbing experience with his declaration, This is my second season with Glacier Point Mountain Guides, and I’ve had considerable climbing experience and reached the summit of Mount Forbidden, or at least close enough, last summer.

He went on, I’ve briefly looked at your application forms and didn’t see any real problems or medical issues. Does anybody have any creaks or groans that I need to know about?

Ed admitted to a dislocated shoulder that occurred about five years ago and at times was a little sore, but not too much. I’m also pre-diabetic, but I’m controlling it with diet, so it shouldn’t be a problem, he added.

Charlie added to the list (not that Ague was writing anything down). He had a trick knee, but it hadn’t bothered him for over two years. Susan and Claire indicated no physical or medical issues.

Ok, let’s go over the equipment list, said Ague, and quickly produced a fairly extensive form of all the equipment the climbers would need.

Ague led with, These are the items you will need. I’ll read them out and let me know if you are missing anything: mountaineering boots, packs, an ice axe (two if you prefer), several layers of clothes, two water bottles, three pairs of wool or synthetic socks, a warm hat, gloves, and so forth. Items like boots and ice axes could be provided by the guide service at a nominal charge.

With the exception of Susan and Ed, all of them indicated they would need an ice axe.

Susan asked, What about tents, stoves, pots, food, and a medical kit?

Ague, with a slight air of irritation, said, Yes, we provide all that stuff, and I’ll hand it out in a minute.

Ok, thanks, replied Susan, but she had a feeling something was missing. Just what that something was she couldn’t quite put a finger on, and nobody else had said anything, so maybe, once again, perhaps this was just her imagination. Just when she felt that it might have been nice for the guide to talk a bit about the climb and how they would be sufficiently trained to take on the challenge, Ague started talking about how he planned to train them in climbing once they set up their first camp which he termed the base camp.

Ague continued, Ok, our plan is to climb the southwest face of Forbidden. It should take us three days to get up and down. The route has a lot of snow on it right now, so we should be able to cross the crevasses pretty easily. About two-thirds of the way up, about seven thousand feet, we have to climb through a black-colored rock band. It will probably have snow on it, and when I climbed it last year, it was ok, although we needed to place some pro. Once above that, we will put in our high camp. Beyond that there may be some steep snow and ice higher up, but let’s deal with that when we get there. Other groups may have left a snow trail and maybe put some fixed ropes on that part, so the steep stuff should be a breeze. We’ll come down the same way we went up, pretty straight forward.

Susan asked, What about the weather?

Ague came back with, Oh right, the weather. Well, looks ok right now. Might be a small storm coming in later today off the west coast, but we should be up in our base camp before it gets here, and besides, it doesn’t look like anything we can’t deal with.

There was that nagging, unsettling feeling again, with Susan wondering how he knew what they could deal with; after all, they had never climbed this mountain or worked together as a group. Ed had mentioned while in the guides’ office that he would never climb a big mountain without working with the group beforehand, but now here he was. Now, I’m beginning to see his point. Well, she thought, at least our guide has been up to the top. Or has he?

Ague went on to say, Any extra stuff you have put in your gear bags you can leave it here. You won’t need any wallets, money, and stuff like that. Hey, also, for some reason cell phones don’t work higher up, so you should leave them as well. I have a radio that reaches down to the company, so we have communication whenever we need it. That pile over in the corner is our group gear, so grab your fair share, including the rope, and when you’re all geared up and packed, make a last pit stop and let’s get going! His tone suggested a bit of impatience. Everyone on the team wondered how far they would be able to get before dark.

With Ague out of the room and most of the packs loaded, Charlie said in a whispered voice, which seemed to suggest he definitely did not want Ague to hear, Geez, this pack is heavier than I thought it would be.

Claire nodded her head in agreement and added, I know, and we haven’t even packed the metal rods he mentioned. Metal rods, officially called snow pickets, are needed to stop a fall if someone peeled off a steep snow slope, fell into a hidden crevasse, or careened down the rock band. Hopefully, Ague would teach them how to handle this gear with enough skill for it to actually work, Claire thought.

After a great deal of adjusting and readjusting, stuffing things in the packs and then re-stuffing, getting a drink of water, visiting the restroom facilities, and each individual trying not to look too apprehensive, the group collectively declared itself ready to start their adventure.

Ok, we are a little late, so will have to move at a good pace. I’ll lead the way up and let me know if I’m going too fast and stay aware of hot spots. Those are places on one’s heel where the back of the boot will rub itself into a blister. You can stop this by putting some moleskin on the spot. If it turns into a blister, we will have to stop and bandage up the blister, and that means taking more time and that’s something nobody wants to do. So, stay aware of your feet and don’t overheat. That’s easy to do on a warm day like this is.

So the group of five intrepid adventurers started their climb at around 11:00 a.m. on a beautiful crystal clear and warm Wednesday morning, although some very thin clouds were beginning to come in from the west.

The going was slow with numerous and often frustrating stops for clothing adjustments, water breaks, or just plain dealing with the rising altitude. By 4:00 p.m., the team had reached the steep ice and snow at about sixty-five hundred feet and the blue sky had unexpectedly changed to gray with snow beginning to fall. As the snow dropped in tiny slivers, apprehension grew within the group.

During a rest stop, Ed, usually quiet but now out of character, brought up the first concern. I wonder if we shouldn’t turn around. It looks like this weather is getting worse and starting to snow.

Ague, always aware of his role as the guide, snapped back in a manner consistent with a leader who is not completely confident as to what he should do, We’re fine. If it gets worse, we can find a place to set up the tents and wait it out. It will probably just blow over. We’ll put in our base camp pretty soon. Then on Thursday, we will climb through the rocky rib, and from there it’s a pretty short distance to where we can put in the high camp. Thus, began a long chain of events and decisions that ended up putting the team in harm’s way.

After about another thirty minutes of climbing Ague designated a relatively flat area as their base camp. They put up their tents, and then ate a quick meal. After this, they settled into a night of increasing wind and snowfall.

Thursday came, and as per schedule, the group reached the rocky rib. Although steep, the rocky rib had plenty of snow in it, and the

Reviews for Gray Skies and Blue Ice

[richvanwinkle · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A fast-moving highly satisfying story combining adventure, crime, mountaineering, and a nice touch of romance. With both likeable and despicable characters, plenty of innovative story-telling, and even enough technical detail to make it educational, readers will be looking forward to the next book from the author.