6.27.2007

Mt. Whitney tried to kick my ass.... Pfftttttttt

[Originally posted 8/4/2005]

So no shit, there I was, hurtling down the eastern flanks of a frozen Mt. Whitney in the southern Sierra Range. Possibly exceeding 10, perhaps even 20, miles per hour ever urged onward and downward by Newton himself. The bowels of mother earth rumbling her unforgiving and unrelenting guffaws and smite. The very thing I came to conquer was turning this obliquely tilted table against me and she was preparing to call out check mate. I parried with my feet, I countered with my elbows, and I gave a Herculean effort to dig the hilt of my axe into this bulletproof ice. It was having none of it. The acceleration wasn’t lessened by any measure and my slide had more than a thousand vertical feet left with a disastrous ending in the offing if not curbed in some manner. It was at this moment that I chose to intervene in my fate and become a factor in this wholly terrifying event. I ended the efforts to punch the hilt of my axe into this impenetrable material. Slowly I brought the head of my tool to the opposite shoulder from the hand that grasped it. I began a controlled roll to my right. As I faced my nemesis I thrust the business end of my tool into it. Glancing blows at first, parried away by the ice like so much flotsam. But three or four good thrusts finally resulted in penetration. A full, deep, and satisfying penetration that instantly began to slow my descent from the crescendo it was nearing. I grasped my tool with all the strength left in my weakening hands and ever so slowly did I finally come to a stop. I was lying there breathing deep and hard, light headed from my efforts. Satisfaction filled me. I was alive and I was winning! I was beating this ice bitch at her own game! She attempted to flick me off of her skirts and I held fast to her frozen undergarments. This day was not my day to die, and the mountain came to realize that. So she did the only thing left to her. In my fight to stop my fall into the abyss, she had struck me several times hard on the hand that was trying to slow me. Struck me with her evil and frozen solid talons. She struck me with the only weapon she wielded that day. Stone hard, bulletproof ice. I absorbed her blows but not without a structural failure of my own. The fourth metacarpal in my right hand was fractured. But if this is the best she can do then I say HA! Double HA! In fact! A broken hand couldn’t stop me from using my tool to foil her plans and I was victorious!

All hail me! Mighty conqueror of frozen dihydrogen oxide!

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