At the far end of the Thank God Ledge there is a crack system that breaks through the Jasper Band—it is like a narrow, miniature version of the Great Gully, filled with ice. Progress upward is renewed, and the cracks lead up to the base of an ice-filled half funnel that divides the Jasper Band even further. The bottom of the funnel is sloped just enough for Camp Five, which becomes by far the most cramped of the campsites. The Thank God Ledge traverse means that using the power reels is impossible between Camps Four and Five, however. Everyone makes ten or twelve carries between the two camps. Each time Roger walks the sidewalk through space, his amazement at it returns.
While the carries across the ledge are being made, and Camps Two and Three are being dismantled, Arthur and Marie have begun finding the route above. Roger goes up with Stephan to supply them with rope and oxygen. The climbing is “mixed,” half on rock, half on black ice rimed with dirty hard snow. Awkward stuff. There are some pitches that make Roger and Hans gasp with effort, look at each other round-eyed. “Must have been Marie leading.” “I don't know, that Arthur is pretty damn good.” The rock is covered in many places by layers of black ice, hard and brittle: Years of summer rain followed by frost have caked the exposed surfaces at this height. Roger's boots slip over the slick ice repeatedly. “Need crampons up here."
“Except the ice is so thin, you'd be kicking rock.”
“Mixed climbing.”
“Fun, eh?”
Breath rasps over knocking heartbeats. Holes in the ice have been broken with ice axes; the rock below is good rock, lined with vertical fissures. A chunk of ice whizzes by, clatters on the face below.
“I wonder if that's Arthur and Marie's work.”
Only the fixed rope makes it possible for Roger to ascend this pitch, it is so hard. Another chunk of ice flies by, and both of them curse.
Feet appear in the top of the open-book crack they are ascending.
“Hey! Watch out up there! You're dropping ice chunks on us!”
“Oh! Sorry, didn't know you were there.” Arthur and Marie jumar down the rope to them. “Sorry,” Marie says again. “Didn't know you'd come up so late. Have you got more rope?”
“Yeah.”
The sun disappears behind the cliff, leaving only the streetlamp light of the dusk mirrors. Arthur peers at them as Marie stuffs their packs with new rope. “Beautiful,” he exclaims. “They have parhelia on Earth too, you know—a natural effect of the light when there's ice crystals in the atmosphere. It's usually seen in Antarctica—big halos around the sun, and at two points of the halo these mock suns. But I don't think we ever had four mock suns per side. Beautiful!”
“Let's go,” Marie says without looking up. “We'll see you two down at Camp Five tonight.” And off they go, using the rope and both sides of the open-book crack to quickly lever their way up.
“Strange pair,” Stephan says as they descend to Camp Five.
The next day they take more rope up. In the late afternoon, after a very long climb, they find Arthur and Marie sitting in a cave in the side of the cliff that is big enough to hold their entire base camp. “Can you believe this?” Arthur cries. “It's a damn hotel!"
The cave's entrance is a horizontal break in the cliff face, about four meters high and over fifteen from side to side. The floor of the cave is relatively flat, covered near the entrance with a thin sheet of ice, and littered with chunks of the roof, which is bumpy but solid. Roger picks up one of the rocks from the floor and moves it to the side of the cave, where floor and roof come together to form a narrow crack. Marie is trying to get somebody below on the radio, to tell them about the find. Roger goes to the back of the cave, some twenty meters in from the face, and ducks down to inspect the jumble of rocks in the long crack where floor and roof meet. “It's going to be nice to lie out flat for once,” Stephan says. Looking out the cave's mouth, Roger sees a wide smile of lavender sky.
When Hans arrives he gets very excited. He bangs about in the gloom hitting things with his ice axe, pointing his flashlight into various nooks and crannies. “It's tuff, do you see?” he says, holding up a chunk for their inspection. “This is a shield volcano, meaning it ejected very little ash over the years, which is what gave it its flattened shape. But there must have been a few ash eruptions, and when the ash is compressed it becomes tuff—this rock here. Tuff is much softer than basalt and andesite, and over the years this exposed layer has eroded away, leaving us with our wonderful hotel."
“I love it,” says Arthur.
The rest of the team joins them in the mirror dusk, but the cave is still uncrowded. Although they set up tents to sleep in, they place the lamps on the cave floor, and eat dinner in a large circle, around a collection of glowing little stoves. Eyes gleam with laughter as the climbers consume bowls of stew. There is something marvelous about this secure home, tucked in the face of the escarpment three thousand meters above the plain. It is an unexpected joy to loll about on flat ground, unharnessed. Hans has not stopped prowling the cave with his flashlight. Occasionally he whistles.