Awakening to the sound of the wind, I opened my eyes and watched nylon rippling above me. The pale light of the coming dawn was just starting to brighten the tent panels.
My full bladder was screaming for attention.
Reaching around inside the sleeping bag, I compressed the little plastic ball and slid it down the drawstring, opening the hood. Catching the zipper outside, I pulled it down, and a flood of cold air rushed into the bag, making me shiver. Sitting up, my head touched the tent, sending piled snow falling down the side. I suppressed a second shiver as best I could. It was dozens of degrees colder in the tent compared to what the inside of my sleeping bag had been.
Hearing a mumbled grumble, I looked down at Jan's face, the only part of her visible, zipped up like a mummy in her bag. Just like I had been seconds before.
My bladder making me quick, I pulled on my boots and stepped through the unzipped tent out into the powdery show. Walking away a few feet from the tents I worked my way through the multiple layers of cloth, then yelped when finally my bare cock was exposed to the air.
"Fuck," I muttered, my teeth chattering.
The yellow stream smoked and cut its way into the white snow like a blowtorch. As terrible thoughts of frostbite were running through my head, I heard the tent open behind me. As my cousin came out in a near sprint, she hurried over to a spot and, with her legs wide for balance, squatted her bare ass just inches from the snow. We had both long ago given up on things like privacy and modesty. Looking up at me, she shook her head.
"Oh, God damn you lucky bastards!" She cussed me and all men in general.
Smiling, I tucked my cock away and headed back into the tent. Opening the flap I turned around and kind of fell into the tent butt first. Taking off my boots outside, I knocked them together to shed the snow then sat them on the old towel we were keeping by the side of the door.
Jan came plowing in ass first, shivering.
"Fuck!" She pulled the zipper back around, closing the tent. "Why the fucking hell couldn't we be climbing a mesa in the Arizona desert? Hell, anywhere warm!" She sat back down on her sleeping bag and wrapped the sides of the bag around herself as she shivered like mad.
"Because you, my beautiful-in-the-morning cousin, wanted to get to the top of this bit of rock." I shifted the water cup on the portable burner away from her bag and cracked the lid on the heating element. Soon the chemical reaction started and we had water heating. As I waited for it to boil, I worked on getting the rest of our breakfast out.
"I'll have kippers on the south portico this morning James," she told me as she worked on dragging her rucksack around from beside her.
"I'll get right to building a portico if you can get the fish." I told her as I dumped oatmeal into the two collapsible bowls. A little instant coffee into our cups and we were ready for the hot water. If it would ever boil at this altitude.
I looked over at her as she pulled her top off and struggled into the other heavier thermal liner. Cousin or not of course I watched her breasts, encased in their bra,with the typical interest of any male seeing that much female skin.
"Want some help?" I asked when I saw her having trouble.
"I think I got it," she said, with the same determination that got us stuck once in the snow for fifteen days.
Reaching over, I pulled the back of the thermal shirt down past her bra strap where it had been caught.
"Why are we climbing this bit of rock again?" she asked when I finally handed her the steaming cup of coffee.
"Because K2 and Everest cost too much to get to." I sipped my coffee and stirred the oatmeal. Damn, I wished I had thought to pack along some butter. It's not like it would have melted or gone bad. I might have had to chip it out the tub with an ice ax.
"Yea, but they might be warmer." She shivered, huddling around her cup of coffee.
Glancing over at the thermometer hung by the door I noticed that the gauge was reading the same thing it had been the last time I looked at it. Reaching over I gave it a tap, and damned if it didn't drop another five degrees.
"I don't know what you're complaining about. It's only minus fifteen outside." Looking at my coffee I grimaced and tossed it back in one long sip. It was already nearly cold. Instant and cold, not a good combination.
"I'm complain cause it's frigging July, James! You remember July? Soaking up the sun on the beaches in south Florida. Not freezing ourselves to death on the side of a mountain in Alaska."
"My god woman, you're bitchy in the morning." I unzipped one corner of the door and stuck my cup outside long enough to wash it in snow. Wiping it dry, I looked back at her. "You're the one that said that nuthin' under twenty thousand feet would be a challenge."
"I don't want to be challenged at five in the morning," she said in a low child like voice.
I shook my head completely devoid of pity.
"Jan, I love you. Eat your food and get your ass in gear." I grabbed up my climbing clothes and started the long process of crawling into them.
She eyed me with a disgusted look and dug into her oatmeal. I tuned out her running complains about the oatmeal already being cold till I was dressed. Leaving the zombie to finish her food and start getting ready, I unzipped the tent and climbed back outside.
Looking up the snow-covered hill, I saw the sunrise just begin to light up the side of Mt. Denali like it was on fire.
"Jan! Hurry up you've got to see this."
There was low grumbling from behind me then the tent door unzipped.
"Wow," she said softly. The snow crunched behind me. Then she leaned into my shoulder. "James?"
"Yeah?" I asked, not looking away from the awesome sight before me.
"Never mind a word I said," she told me in a breathy whisper.
"We're going to stand on the top of that," I told her softly.
Rising to its full double peak height of twenty thousand plus feet the mighty Mt. Denali, or Mt. McKinley...depends who you ask, glowed before us like a pyramid of living, liquid fire. The snow was turned to gold and the rock to a dazzling river of silver. Flames ignited the clouds around its peak in patterns of lacy fire. Ever-so-slowly, the sun rose higher and the effect changed and faded till at last we were looking up at the massive mountain. The snow, the rocks, the fluffy-as-cotton-candy clouds.
Beautiful.
I heard other zippers opening. I felt sorry for my fellow climbers that they missed the show, but it would be the same, or nearly the same tomorrow. As I pulled Jan's hand into mine I saw her look at my face and smile. Suddenly, I was no longer sorry for the others. This had been a moment for just us.
Very slowly the growing bustle of activity tried to break the spell over us. She slid in under my arm and hugged me tight. I held her and looked around at the others.
Our guide told us it would take about two weeks to hit the summit from the drop off point on the glacier. The plane ride down had been a thrill that my stomach still wasn't fully recovered from.
"Thank you for this, James," Jan whispered by my side.
"It's as much your doing as mine. Thank you," I told her, reluctant to turn her loose. When she looked up at me, I saw the tears in her eyes. I smiled and gave her a tighter quick hug. That had been our agreement. Hug away the tears whenever they showed up.
Not all of them were hers.
"Let's break camp," she said after a few minutes comport. I watched with admiration as she walked back to the tent. I wished I had her willpower. Her strength. Jan had watched, for three agonizingly slow months, her husband of a decade plus succumb to cancer just a year ago.
A deep feeling of guilt that I had not been there for her through that hit me as it always did. I wished I could have been there to help... but there had been too many broken bones at the time. I looked down at the glove covering my left hand. I could feel my wedding ring like a cold band of fire around my finger. The climbing guide had told me I should take it off. That the metal would draw the cold to my finger. I can't tell you how close I had come to telling him where he could stick that suggestion.
I shivered as a goose walked over my grave and went to help pack up.
We split the camp between the two of us so that if one pack was, lost the other pack would have enough stuff to help at least. I didn't like to think about just how a pack could be lost. I looked up at Denali,"the High One" the natives call it. I knew from my reading he has claimed more than a few climbers since those first "crazy white men" went up it looking for gold.
Jan and I packed quickly. We have had a lot of experience at it in the last seven months. After the...well, after the... Let's just say after the several "it" happened she and I had made a pact together. We would not let the past drive us into empty lives of memories and depression. We would go see the world. We would swim it, climb it, hike it, or plain just jump off it, till old age caught us or death took us. Thinking about some of the things we had done in the last few months, I can't say I'm seeing a rocking chair in my future. A wheel chair maybe, but not a rocking chair.
Shouldering my pack I felt "the rush." That surge of energy that was not adrenaline but wasn't the coffee either. I helped Jan settle her pack, and taking up my walking sticks slash climbing ax, we headed out and up. I hooked my lifeline to her belt before we were too far out of camp.
Some of the other climbers called out to us and waved as we headed past them. They would be following us up. We blazed the trail, they hauled the load. Well most of it. My pack probably weighted about fifty pounds. Jan's, maybe thirty to forty.
The air was bitter cold and cut razor-like pathways into my lungs as we climbed. We stopped after about an hour of steady walking and looked back. The camp looked absurdly close but I knew it wasn't. I could make out some of the other climbers getting started following our trail.
Lifting my head I looked out at the Denali National Park, and at the other white capped mountains that were standing shoulder to shoulder with "the High One."
Jan crunched up beside me.
"How's your leg?" she asked after a second to catch her breath. The air was noticeably thinner here than what we were breathing two days ago when we landed in Anchorage. The one night on the mountain wasn't enough to get us fully adjusted. But it would come, in the days that followed.
"Attached. My leg's fine. I took my pills," I told her before she could ask.
Jan nodded, but the worried look didn't leave her face till I stared at her with bulging eyes. She laughed and moved up to take the lead again.
I followed her higher into the West Buttress Route, what the area where were walking was called. One of the easier climbing paths up the mountain. Jan had bitched about that. I told her if it was too easy we could always come back down after we got to the summit, and take a harder trail back up.
I was glad now we were taking this way. My leg was hurting just a bit. Well, it should be I guess, since it was broken in four places only a little more than a year ago. Some would call it a damn miracle I was walking on it, let alone doing all the things we had been doing.
In truth though only the bungee jumping had been too much for it. Well, that and the landing that time when we went skydiving.
We climbed in beautiful weather all the way till lunch, then the clouds began to roll in over the neighboring mountains. Like waves of white cresting over breakers at the beach.
Unfolding a pole with a orange flag at the top I wedged it into a crack in the black rocks, near the stone overhang where Jan was starting to set up the tent. Looking down the ledges, I could just make out the other climbers down below, then they were lost in clouds.
I followed my guide line back to the tent and began helping Jan get us set up. By the time we got inside and zipped up, the wind was howling around the tent making the thin walls dance.
"I hope the others saw the weather coming and got to a good sheltered place," said Jan, as she stripped off her climbing clothes.
"They should be fine. The guide is with them after all. He knows these mountains far better than I know climbing. He'll get them through the night." I listened to the wind. The bright sunlight we were just climbing in was gone now. We were surrounded by the thickest wind-driven fog you would ever think to see. Spooky, almost silent other than the wind.
