The Climb #3

I crawled through the incredible white to the innermost part of the alcove where the basecamp was located. I huddled up tight the the sheer wall, and closed my eyes for what felt like months and then years, but only one dark night passed. I didn't sleep so much as I shivered and then everything went black. I woke up, if you can call it that, clenching my bag around me with everything that I had. My eyes could only open as far as my eyelashes would extend, they were quite literally frozen together, I had to warm them with my cold fingertips until they gave way, and my eyes saw, one at a time, the newness of the morning. Still cold and frozen, but, morning. I didn't get out of my bag when I heard what sounded like a distant growing roar. Something scraping and digging in, high up on the mountain, almost above me. Closer and closer it came sliding down, until it flew down over the cliff, almost directly above me, just a few feet to my left. All at once it dropped from the edge. A tangled mess of climbing equipment, and winter, as mingled together as you could get. It was only in my vision for mere seconds, but I saw it for what seemed to me to be a half hour. My father, frozen, no look in his eyes. Tumbling down into the treeline. He hit again at my nearest edge with a terrible sound, and continued on his wretched path to the base of the mountain. With each pounding he took, my heart leaped and crashed against my own rib cage. His broken body was somehow intricately attached to my own. No pain as deep as a son's for his father's. And at that moment I then realized it would just be the two of us. My mother still up there, alone on the mountain.