Sliding. I'd read somewhere that the first ten seconds of the slide were the only ones that mattered. If you were still sliding at the end of that, you were in it for the long haul. I swung my ice axe, a glancing, panicked shot that bounced ineffectually off the smooth surface above me. Damn, how many seconds did that take. My thoughts meandered back to slope below me, another thousand feet of firm crusty snow. Snow that had taken the better part of an hour to struggle, sometimes walking, but mostly climbing, up. Time ticked by as my thoughts edged slowly through this mental sludge.
Ice
shards scraped along my arm, their incessant bite a gentle
reminder. I swung the ice axe again, driving the pick
deep into the firm snow. I felt a bite, pressure on my
wrist as the weight of my body pulled against the axe
and I began to slow. Then, a loud scrape and the pick
broke through the snow. I was sliding again. Below me,
I could still hear his yells, and the scrape of his snowboard.
Even though it'd been a mad hop to avoid his plummet which
had cost me my precious grip on the slope, I hoped he'd
be ok because I knew he'd be on his back all the way to
the lake below.
There
wasn't anything I could do for him. But, myself, on the
other hand ... I swung back, and after issuing the obligatory
primal roar, crashed the ice axe a third time into the
snow, deep, so deep. I slowed, and then slammed the toes
of my crampons into the snow below me. I stopped, struggling
to my feet to assess. It seemed I was still alive. My
hands were a mess. The snowboarder had finally slid to
a stop... just in time for another above me to start his
plummet. It appeared it might be a long day!
Postfix:
A short while later, the Dana Couloir was behind me. A
short trip up the summit slopes led to the top of Mt.
Dana, and from there, a nice afternoon descent back to
the trailhead, sometimes along the banks of a rushing
tumbling stream.