Mountain Ice (David Dean Mysteries)

"Rappel," Dean said. "That's when you jump off a mountain with a rope tied around your waist, and hope it's long enough."

"Something like that," Ryland laughed. "You're on a belayed line that is passed under one thigh and over the opposite shoulder so that it can be paid out, nice and smooth, a little at a time...."

"Don't you even think about it!" Cynthia said.

Dean turned to his wife. "I'm afraid I'd get evicted from Bird Song, if and when I made it back!"

Penny joined the men. "Why are you guys trucking?" she chided them. "The park's practically in town!"

"We're just using it to haul the gear," Teddy, the oldest of the group, answered. "I'm just riding along so's nothing falls off!"

"Wimps!" she called, as she set off at a quick pace beneath a heap of gear that nearly buried her small frame. The rest of the climbers followed in the truck but Ryland declined to join them, turning a perturbed eye to Bird Song. There was still no sign of Edith.

Dean motioned to the odd assortment of apparatus that surrounded the young man. "Tell me why you need so much junk." He picked up a menacing looking tool.

"That's called an ice ax, or piolet," Ryland answered. "You can spend three hundred bucks on a good one. That and the crampons are the key tools" The sinister instrument was serrated on one end of its curved claw, with an adze blade on the other side of the crescent. There was a pointed pic at the base of its handle. "We use two of them, one in each hand. We embed the jagged side into the ice above us and pull ourselves up. Easy as walking upstairs, almost." He fingered a heavy strap attached to the head. "This leash, attached to your wrist, bears most of your weight."

"What's a crampon?" Dean asked.

"They're what you wear on your feet," Ryland explained. He pulled out a pair of spiked apparatuses, with lengthy teeth extending both down and forward. "These fit on the base of the boot, by a variety of means. The teeth enable the climber to scale a vertical wall by holding to the ice while pulling yourself upward. They're not much for dancing, but they are a must for climbing frozen water!"

"You trust those to hold you?" Cynthia asked.

"Ice is an incredible surface. It doesn't take much ice to give you a bomber, a firm hold, provide you set your angle right. It's always changing but it has great holding power. You get used to knowing the different types of hardness and thickness. You're always testing because surface changes, by the season, the time of day, how many climbers hack away at it, sometimes by the hour. That's what make climbing it such a challenge." He poked at the rest of the equipment. "There are all kinds of different tools, pitons, hammers to set pitons, ice screws, pound-ins, ice hooks, wired nuts and cams-different stuff for different surfaces. You're not always just on ice. You get into mixed rock and ice and there's often snow to clear away to get to a hard surface. Being able to scale a sheer wall of rock and ice while lugging this junk requires some advance planning." He held up a waist harness. The heavy leather rig appeared designed to span both waist and upper thigh. It contained a large metal ring in the center.