Peak (Peak #1)

by Roland Smith

Writers should tell the brutal truth in their own voice and not let individuals, society, or consequences dictate their words!

The Hook I WAS ONLY TWO-THIRDS up the wall when the sleet started to freeze onto the black terra-cotta. My fingers were numb. My nose was running. I didn’t have a free hand to wipe my nose, or enough rope to rappel about five hundred feet to the ground. I had planned everything out so carefully, except for the weather, and now it was uh-oh time. A gust of wind tried to peel me off the wall. I dug my fingers into the seam and hugged the terra-cotta until it passed. I should have waited until June to make the ascent, but no, moron has to go up in March. Why? Because everything was ready and I have a problem with waiting. I had studied the wall, built all my custom protection, and picked the date. I was ready. And if the date passed I might not try it at all. It doesn’t take much to talk yourself out of a stunt like this. That’s why there are over six billion people sitting safely inside homes and one . . . “Moron!” I shouted.

This chapter would be a good study for suspense and character inference

Option #1: Finish the climb. Two hundred sixty-four feet up, or about a hundred precarious fingerholds (providing my fingers didn’t break off like icicles). Option #2: Climb down. A little over five hundred feet, two hundred fifty fingerholds. Option #3: Wait for rescue. Scratch that option. No one knew I was on the wall. By morning (providing someone actually looked up and saw me) I would be an icy gargoyle. And if I lived my mom would drop me off the wall herself. Up it is, then.

The whole point of a spectacular tag is not the artwork; it’s the mystery of how it was done.

The mystery. That’s the point. And there isn’t enough of it, in my opinion.

it.) His name was Joshua Wood—arguably the greatest mountaineer in the world. He was also my father.

When you’re at the end of your rope there’s no one better than Joshua Wood. Unfortunately, he doesn’t pay much attention until you’re dangling.”

As I sat there watching everyone coming and going, it finally dawned on me that I was free, and this got me thinking about what had led up to this—and I don’t mean climbing skyscrapers, or getting arrested, or the trial. I mean way back. Back before I was born

It was a difficult pregnancy. There were complications. She was told to stay in bed or she would lose me. She did, but my father was on the move, teaching seminars, endorsing equipment, and climbing—shattering records on Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount McKinley, and Annapurna, which is where he was the night I was born. He called her from Base Camp on a satellite phone after reaching the summit. “What do you want to name him?” Mom asked. “Peak.” “Pete?” “No, Peak. P-E-A-K. Like ‘mountain peak.’” He didn’t lay eyes on me until I was three months old,

I later learned that it meant we were selling the cabin in Wyoming and moving to the loft in New York. It meant that my real dad would no longer be popping in for visits. It meant the Greene Street School. It meant that the closest I was going to get to a rock wall for the next few years was the fifteen-footer at the YMCA down the street, which I could have climbed backward without protection if the guys manning the ropes would have allowed it. None of this helped to sweeten my relationship with Rolf. The twins saved me. And it also helped that my mom let me subscribe to a half dozen climbing magazines. In the back of one of those magazines I discovered summer climbing camps. It took a lot of sulking to get her to let me go to one of them. What cinched it in the end was that she knew the climbing instructor. A former rock rat gone legit.

Then the time lag between the climbs became a problem. I started eyeing skyscrapers, telling myself that I would just plan the route up but not climb it. Right. To get up a rock wall you study the outside, trying to pick the best footholds and handholds, guessing where you’re going to encounter problems so you have the right equipment with you to get around them. To climb a skyscraper you have to know the inside as well as the outside. (Which is where I screwed up on my last climb.)

“I’m climbing Everest?” I asked, more stunned than I’ve ever been in my life. “I don’t know if you’ll make the summit,” he said. “But if we get you up there before your fifteenth birthday you’ll be the youngest person in the world ever to stand above twenty-nine thousand feet.”

We stopped for the night outside a tiny village. Sun-jo and I started to help set up camp, but Zopa waved us off. “You two go climb.” He pointed to a wall about a quarter mile away. “Don’t fall. Come down before dark.” He didn’t have to tell us twice. We jogged over to the wall. It wasn’t a difficult climb, but about halfway up I had to stop to rest and catch my breath. Sun-jo, who had picked a more difficult route, scrambled up the rock like a lizard, smiling as he climbed past, which taught me a couple of things about him. He had much better lung capacity than me—and he was competitive.

Then I reminded myself that ten days ago I was clinging to a skyscraper a few hundred feet above sea level—not exactly the best training for scaling the highest peak in the world. If I was going to summit I was going to have to do better than watch Sun-jo’s butt disappear over the top as I hung below him gasping for breath.

Sun-jo had given me a short history lesson about Tibet and China. It wasn’t pretty. The People’s Republic of China invaded Tibet fifty years ago. Since that time over six thousand Buddhist monasteries and shrines have been destroyed and hundreds of thousands of Tibetans have been killed or jailed. Which brings me to that boulder in the middle of the road the prisoners were cracking into gravel. We passed by it an hour after we got over the Friendship Bridge, which sort of sums up what’s happening to the Tibetans. Or as Zopa put it later that night, “Our brothers in Tibet have been made slaves in their own country.”

Sardine cans, chip bags, cartons, toilet paper, and other trash blew around the tents like tumbleweed.

Getting a dozen clients to the summit could bring in as much as a million dollars, and if you were simultaneously mounting other expeditions on other 8,000-meter peaks, several million dollars. If an Everest wannabe was going to plop down a hundred grand (or several thousand to get to one of the lower camps) who were they going to give their money to? The company with the best success rate? The company with the best safety record? Or maybe, the company who put the youngest person in the world on the world’s tallest mountain, who also just happened to have the same first name as the company that put him on the top. And did you hear about him climbing those skyscrapers in New York? Don’t worry about the money. I’ll get my portion back. The film crew should be here later this afternoon. She’s here to cover Peak, not herself. I suddenly remembered where I had seen the name Holly Angelo. It was a byline under an article about me climbing the skyscraper. She was the reporter who broke the news about who my real father was. Did she dig up this information on her own? Or did Josh give her a call and spill his guts? The youngest person so far to reach the top of Everest was a fifteen-year-old Nepalese girl named Ming Kipa Sherpa. If I were one year older I might still be in . . . I stopped in midstep. “What’s the matter?” Sun-jo asked. “Nothing,” I said. Would Josh have bailed me out if I had already turned fifteen? I didn’t think so. Was he using me? Probably. Did I mind? I wasn’t...

would have liked it a lot better if he had come to New York to save me because I was in trouble, not because he was in trouble.

As soon as she saw Josh she wrapped her arms around him with a shriek so loud every head for a quarter mile popped out of its tent like turtles coming out of their shells.

Vincent told me that good writers are lousy minglers. They are too busy eavesdropping, or as he puts it: Gathering grist for their literary mills.

Metaphor writers gathering grist for their mills

“Screaming in terror doesn’t slow you down one bit,” one of my instructors told me. “If you want to live you’d better learn to avoid the void.” Self-arrest wasn’t my best climbing skill.

Holly did not mingle, she mangled.

I guess I wasn’t the only one being transformed by the mountain.

“What am I supposed to be filming?” I asked. “The story,” Will said. “What story?” “That’s the big question,” JR answered. “And part of the fun.” “And the mystery,” Jack added. “Josh hired us to film you,” JR continued. “Now Sun-jo’s been added to the mix, which changes the story. If you and Sun-jo don’t make it to the summit the story will shift again. It might be about how you didn’t make it—what stopped you. It might be about the friendship between you two . . .” (Which was pretty shaky at the moment, but I didn’t tell JR that.) “. . . or Sun-jo and Zopa, or you and your father. The point is that we won’t know what the story is about until we know how the story ends. All we can do now is film details. When we get done we’ll piece the documentary together like a jigsaw puzzle.” Which is exactly how Vincent at GSS taught me to put a story together.

Hold the story inside until you are ready to burst. He made me write my research notes on three-by-five cards. On each card was a scene, a character note, or a detail from my research. When you do your research write down whatever interests you. Whatever stimulates your imagination. Whatever seems important. A story is built like a stone wall. Not all the stones will fit. Some will have to be discarded. Some broken and reshaped. When you finish the wall it may not look exactly like the wall you envisioned, but it will keep the livestock in and the predators out.

An hour later, when I finally reached the top, Yogi hauled me over the edge by my backpack, which I was sure was not the shot JR wanted. Yogi’s assist reminded me that seven weeks ago to the day a cop had done the same thing to me on the top of the Woolworth Building. I’d come a long way and it felt like it.

Camp Four was tiny, and to make it worse, there was a gaping crevasse running beneath the crest, which I’d read was getting wider every year. Some believed that one of these days (hopefully not today) the whole thing would collapse and climbers would have to devise a new route up the north side.

“You did good,” he said. “You have a chance.” That was like a whole tank of Os flowing into my bloodstream. Maybe he wasn’t going to try to stop me from getting to the summit. Suddenly, the tent made complete sense. I had it together in less than five minutes.

It’s hard to think straight at that altitude, but I had enough feeling in my oxygen-starved brain to feel a little shame over the way I had been thinking about Sun-jo. Climbing Everest is not a competition. It’s life and death.

No one was laughing at Joshua Wood. I remembered what my mother said about there being no one better than Josh when you are at the end of your rope.

The grin was gone. His easygoing mood had completely changed. “Why’d you write her?” he asked. “Because she wrote to me,” I said a little more belligerently than I intended. (I guess my mood had changed, too.) Josh looked confused. I knew that one day I’d have this conversation with him, but I didn’t think it would be at 20,000 feet with him sick and me so tired I could barely lift my feet. But I guess there is no ideal time or place for something like this. “I thought we had an agreement,” he said. “I thought we were going to let me handle your mother.” “There was no agreement,” I said, and I didn’t think anyone could “handle” my mother. We glared at each other. “The least you could have done,” he said, “was to tell me that you wrote her so I wasn’t blindsided.” “The least you could have done is to write me back!” “What the hell are you talking about?” “I sent you letters.” “You mean when you were a kid?” “Yeah.” “So?” “You got the letters?” I shouted. He stopped and pulled his goggles around his neck. “Yeah, I got your letters. What does that have to do with telling your mother about Everest?” “Everything,” I said.

“She insisted that I take you to the top myself, which screws up everything. I’m either going to have to go with you and Sun-jo, or you’ll have to join my team. Which means there will be a long delay in your summit attempt because it looks like we’ll be the last team to go. I’m in no shape to climb and neither is anyone else on the team.” “Lucky you have a backup in Sun-jo,” I said. “Either way you’ll get the youngest climber in the world to the summit.” “Is that what this is about?” he asked. “You’re mad because it’s not about just you anymore?” “It was never about me,” I said. “It’s always been about you.”

Mom sighed. “Peak, I gave it my best shot to try to talk you out of trying for the summit. But now that the decision has been made, you need to focus on the task. You can’t think about me, Paula, Patrice, Rolf, or anyone else. To stay alive you are going to have to think only about yourself.

To climb at Josh’s level you have to be completely selfish, Peak. When you were born I couldn’t do that anymore.

You need to forget everything else and concentrate on the climb. You have enough experience to know when it’s over. And when it’s over don’t take another step higher. If you do, it could be over for good. Turn around. There’s no shame in it. Live to climb another day. And when you come back down I hope that good and caring heart of yours thaws.

Instead of getting enmeshed in the mountain madness I went climbing. One thing Camp Four had taught me was that I needed to hone my ice-climbing techniques. I think one of the reasons I had had such a difficult time climbing to the Col was my clumsy crampon moves. I hadn’t done a lot of ice climbing. Efficiency saves energy, and energy is as elusive as air the higher you go.

At night I stayed in my tent writing in my second Moleskine and tried to visualize my final assault on the summit. I even went so far as to make a special prayer flag. I took one of the yellow flags and carefully drew a mountain on it with a blue Sharpie. I hung it inside my tent, staring at it for hours. On top of the summit is a pole buried in the ice with a metal wire hanging from it with dozens of prayer flags beaten by the winds. Over and over again I imagined myself struggling up to that pole and tagging Everest.

I look at the twins, smiling, and write my last sentence . . . The only thing you’ll find on the summit of Mount Everest is a divine view. The things that really matter lie far below.