Jon Krakauer's THE DEVIL'S THUMB Alexsus seibert & baily Like
I John Krakauer have decided to take upon myself the challenge of climbing the Devils Thumb in Alaska. I plan on climbing the never before climbed North face of the mountain. "An intrusion of diorite sculpted by ancient glaciers into a peak of immense and spectacular proportions, the thumb is especially imposing from the north: Its great north wall, which has never been climbed, rises sheer and clean for six thousand feet from the glacier at its base, twice the height of Yosemite's El Capitan. I would go to Alaska, ski inland from the sea across thirty miles of glacial ice, and ascend this mighty norwand. I decide, moreover, to do it alone."
"I had been working as an itinerant carpenter, framing condominiums in Boulder for $3.50 an hour. One afternoon, after nine hours of humping two-by-tens and driving sixteen-penny nail, I told my boss I was quitting: 'no not in a couple of weeks, Steve; right now is more like what I had in mind.' It took me a few hours to clear my tools and other belongings out of the crummy job-site trailer where I had been squatting. And then I climbed into my car and departed for Alaska. I was surprised, as always, by how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt. The world was suddenly rich with possibility."
"The Devils Thumb demarcates the Alaska-British Columbia border east of Petersburg, a fishing village accessible only by boat or plane. There was a regular jet service to Petersburg, but the sum of my liquid assets amounted to a 1960 Pontiac Star Chief and two hundred dollars in cash, not even enough for a one-way airfare: so I drove as far as Gig Harbor, Washington, abandoned the car, and inveigled a ride on a northbound salmon seiner. In exchange for a ride north, I only had to take regular turns at the helm and help tie endless skates of halibut gear. After five days out the Gig Harbor, the Ocean Queen docked in Petersburg to take on fuel and water", allowing me time to leave the boat and start my journey to the thumb.
"I shared a ride with some tree planters to the head of Thomas Bay, where I was put ashore on a gravel beach. The broad, rubble-strewn terminus of the glacier was visible a mile away. Half an hour later I scrambled up its frozen snout and began the long plod to the Thumb. The ice was bare of snow and embedded with a coarse black grit that crunched beneath the steel point of my crampons."
"After three or four miles I came to the snow line and there exchanged crampons for skis. Putting the boards on my feet cut fifteen pounds from the awful load on my back and made the going faster besides. But the snow concealed many of the glaciers crevasses, increasing the danger."
"In Seattle, anticipating this hazard, I'd stopped at a hardware store and purchased a pair of stout aluminum curtain rods, each ten feet long. I lashed the rods together to form a cross, then strapped the rig to the hip belt of my backpack so the poles extended horizontally over the snow."
"I had planned on spending between three weeks to a month on the Stikine Ice Cap. Not relishing the prospect of carrying a four-week load of food, heavy winter camping gear, and climbing hardware all the way up the Baird on my back, I had paid a bush pilot in Petersburg $150-the last of my cash- to have six card-board cartons supplies dropped from an airplane when I reached the foot of the thumb. On his map I'd showed the pilot exactly where I intended to be and told him to give me three days to get there; he promised to fly over and make the drop as soon as possible."
"On May 6, I set up base camp on the ice cap just northeast of the Thumb and waited for the airdrop. For the next for days it snowed, nixing any chance for flight. Too terrified of crevasses to wander far from camp, I spent most of my time recumbent in the tent-the ceiling was too low to allow my sitting up right- fighting a rising chorus of doubts."
"As the days passed, I grew increasingly anxious. I had no radio nor any other means of communicating with the outside world. It had been many years since anyone had visited this part of the Stikine Ice Cap, and many more would likely pass before anyone would again. I was nearly out of stove fuel and down to a single chunk of cheese, my last package of Ramen noodles, and half a box of Cocoa Puffs. This, I figured, could sustain me for three or four more days if need be, but then what would I do? It would take only two to ski back down the Baird to Thomas Bay, but a week or more might easily pass before a fisherman happened by who could give me a lift back to Petersburg."
"When I went to bed on the evening of May 10, it was still snowing and blowing hard. Hours later I heard a faint, momentary whine, scarcely louder than a mosquito. I tore open the tent door. Most of the clouds had lifted, but there was no airplane in sight. The whine returned, more insistently this time. Then I saw it: a tiny red-and-white fleck high in the western sky, droning my way. A few minutes later the plane passed directly overhead. The pilot buzzed my tent three times in quick succession, dropping two boxes on each pass: then the airplane disappeared. As silence again settled over the glacier, I felt abandoned, vulnerable, lost. I realized that I was sobbing. Embarrassed, I halted the blubbering by screaming obscenities until I grew hoarse."
"I awoke May 11 to clear skies and the relatively warm temperature of twenty degrees Fahrenheit. Startled by the good weather, mentally unprepared to commence the actual climb, I hurriedly packed up a rucksack nonetheless and began skiing toward the base of the thumb. Two previous Alaska expeditions had taught me that I couldn't afford to waste a rare day of perfect weather."
"The climbing was steep and so exposed it made my head spin. Beneath my Vibram soles the wall fell away for three thousand feet to the dirty, avalanche-scarred cirque of the Witches Cauldron Glacier. All that held me to the mountainside, all that held me to the world were two thin spikes of chrome molybdenum stuck half an inch into smear frozen water, yet the higher i climbed the more comfortable I became."
"I had fallen into a slow, hypnotic rhythm- swing, swing; kick, kick; swing, swing; kick kick- when my left ice ax slammed into a slab of diorite a few inches beneath the rime. I tried left, then right, but kept hitting rock. The frost feathers holding me up, it became apparent, were maybe five inches thick and the structural integrity of stale corn bread. Below was thirty-seven hundred feet of air, and I was balanced on a house of cards. The sour taste of panic rose in my throat. My eyesight blurred, I began to hyperventilate, my calves started to shake. I shuffled a few feet further to the right, hoping to find thicked ice, but managed only to bend an ice ax on the rock."
"Awkwardly, stiff with fear, I started working my way back down. The rime gradually thickened. After descending about eighty feet, I got back on reasonably solid ground. I stopped for a long time to let my nerves settle, then leaned back from my tools and stared up the face above, searching for a hint of solid ice, for some variation in the underlyinh rock strata, for anything that would allow passage over the frosted slabs. I looked until my neck ached, but nothing appeared. The climb was over. The only place to go was down."