And then, back in his offices, he hadn't been able to tell anyone about it. It wouldn't have been like him.
Remembering that, and remembering his recent talk with Eileen, Roger feels uncomfortable. His past overwhelmed that day's walk through the park: What kind of assumption was that?
Roger spends his afternoon free-climbing above Camp Four, looking around a bit and enjoying the exercise of his climbing skills. They're coming back at last. But the rock is nearly crack-free once out of the Gully, and he decides free-climbing is not a good idea. Besides, he notices a curious thing: About fifty meters above Camp Four, the Great Central Gully is gone. It ends in a set of overhangs like the ribs under the protruding wall of a building. Definitely not the way up. And yet the face to the right of the overhangs is not much better; it too tilts out and out, until it is almost sheer. The few cracks breaking this mass will not be easy to climb. In fact, Roger doubts he could climb them, and wonders if the leads are up to it. Well, sure, he thinks. They can climb anything. But it looks awful. Hans has talked about the volcano's “hard eon,” when the lava pouring from the caldera was denser and more consistent than in the volcano's earlier years. The escarpment, being a sort of giant boring of the volcano's flow history, naturally reflects the changes in lava consistency in its many horizontal bands. So far they have been climbing on softer rock—now they have reached the bottom of a harder band. Back in Camp Four Roger looks up at what he can see of the cliff above, and wonders where they will go.
Another duality: the two halves of the day, forenoon and afternoon. Forenoon is sunny and therefore hot: a morning ice and rock shower in the Gully, and time to dry out sleeping bags and socks. Then noon passes and the sun disappears behind the cliff above. For an hour or so they have the weird half-light of the dusk mirrors; then they too disappear, and suddenly the air is biting, bare hands risk frostnip, and the lighting is indirect and eerie: a world in shadow. Water on the cliff face ices up, and rocks are pushed out—there is another period when rocks fall and go whizzing by. People bless their helmets and hunch their shoulders, and discuss again the possibility of shoulder pads. In the cold the cheery morning is forgotten, and it seems the whole climb takes place in shadow.
When Camp Four is established they try several reconnaissance climbs through what Hans calls the Jasper Band. “It looks like orbicular jasper, see?” He shows them a dull rock and after cutting away at it with a laser saw, shows them a smooth brown surface, speckled with little circles of yellow, green, red, white. “Looks like lichen,” Roger says. “Fossilized lichen."
“Yes. This is orbicular jasper. For it to be trapped in this basalt implies a metamorphic slush—lava partially melting rock in the throat above the magma chamber, and then throwing it all up.”
So it was the Jasper Band, and it was trouble. Too sheer—close to vertical, really, and without an obvious way up. “At least it's good hard rock,” Dougal says cheerfully.
Then one day Arthur and Marie return from a long traverse out to the right, and then up. They hurry into camp grinning ear to ear.
“It's a ledge,” Arthur says. “A perfect ledge. I can't believe it. It's about half a meter wide, and extends around this rampart for a couple hundred meters, just like a damn sidewalk! We just walked right around that corner! Completely vertical above and below—talk about a view!”
For once Roger finds Arthur's enthusiasm fully appropriate. The Thank God Ledge, as Arthur has named it ("There's one like this on Half Dome in Yosemite"), is a horizontal break in the cliff face, and a flat slab just wide enough to walk on is the result. Roger stops in the middle of the ledge to look around. Straight up: rock and sky. Straight down: the tiny tumble of the talus, appearing directly below them, as Roger is not inclined to lean out too far to see the rock in between. The exposure is astonishing. “You and Marie walked along this ledge without ropes?” Roger says.
“Oh, it's fairly wide,” Arthur replies. “Don't you think? I ended up crawling there where it narrows just a bit. But mostly it was fine. Marie walked the whole way.”
“I'm sure she did.” Roger shakes his head, happy to be clipped on to the rope that has been fixed about chest high above the ledge. With its aid he can appreciate the strange ledge—perfect sidewalk in a completely vertical world: the wall hard, knobby, right next to his head—under him the smooth surface of the ledge, and then empty space.
Verticality. Consider it. A balcony high on a tall building will give a meager analogy: Experience it. On the side of this cliff, unlike the side of any building, there is no ground below. The world below is the world of belowness, the rush of air under your feet. The forbidding smooth wall of the cliff, black and upright beside you, halves the sky. Earth, air; the solid here and now, the airy infinite; the wall of basalt, the sea of gases. Another duality: To climb is to live on the most symbolic plane of existence and the most physical plane of existence at the same time. This too the climber treasures.