I looked at him for a moment.
“We may be just beginning.”
Chapter 5
Mount Mansfield isn’t much by global standards. While it’s the best Vermont has to offer, it still measures only 4,393 feet-a relative shrimp compared to its brethren in New Hampshire and New York, and less than a sixth of Everest. But it has great presence, especially since its western slope sweeps straight out across the Champlain Valley, ending at the lake a mere thirty miles off. And it can be brutal because of that bearing. Over the years, several claims have been made clocking the wind on Mansfield’s summit in excess of one hundred miles per hour.
That summit is actually a row of blended peaks, running along a north/south axis, the tops of which in profile, specifically from the east, look vaguely like a mile-long human face staring straight up at the sky-a supplicant giant-silent, determined, without hope of response. The Anglo name “Mansfield” has a murky genesis, but the ancient Abnakis showed how appearance can deceive: They called it “Mountain-with-a-Head-like-a-Moose.”
The most obvious of its summits is the Nose, but the tallest is the Chin, at the north end, and it was at the bottom of the cliff between the Chin and the Adam’s Apple where the frozen body of Jean Deschamps had been discovered by a daredevil skier looking for virgin snow far off the beaten path.
According to Ray Woodman, the head of Stowe’s Hazardous Terrain Evacuation Team-locally known as Stowe Mountain Rescue-such off-trail forays are not uncommon once the snow becomes firmly seated on the higher, sometimes cliff-steep slopes. Hunched over a topographical map at the fire department the following morning, he traced with his finger a reverse-curving, horizontal S, up and over the Chin’s left side, down around to the throat between the Chin’s base and the Adam’s Apple, and across the throat to the edge of a deep, steep ravine above Smuggler’s Notch, two thousand feet farther down, and the hot dog skier’s planned destination.
“We’ll be following roughly this path,” Woodman explained. “A diagonal climb from the gondola to just under the summit, along this swale here. Then down Profanity Trail above Taft Lodge. Another traverse to catch the top of the saddle between the base of the Chin and the Adam’s Apple, and then an easy climb down the saddle’s western slope to where the body was. We won’t be on skis. I never thought that was particularly sane. We’ll have snowshoes or crampons, depending on the surface. And ice axes.”
Willy leaned forward and planted his own finger next to Woodman’s. “If the skiers are trying to end up at Smuggler’s Notch, what was this guy doing on the western side of the saddle? The Notch is to the north.”
“He got disoriented,” Woodman explained simply. “Happens all the time. The saddle is almost flat along its crest. You hit a whiteout like he did, you think you’re sliding north beside the Apple, heading toward Hell’s Brook, but in fact you’re just slipping off the saddle’s side. It’s not particularly dangerous. It just ruins your day ’cause you end up miles from where you want to be. But he didn’t get that far. Way I heard it, he actually fell into the hole with the body.”
Frank Auerbach, towering above most of us, nodded in confirmation. “Talk about ruining a day. He was a basket case when I talked to him. What’s the weather report, Ray?”
Woodman straightened from the broad table we’d been leaning over to see the map. “A little iffy. There’s some activity in the area, but no rhyme nor reason to it. I wouldn’t mind waiting for a better day.”
Auerbach shook his head. “I’m already getting enough heat as it is. You saying we can’t go?”
Woodman looked unhappy. “I don’t know enough to say for sure. That’s why I’m suggesting caution.”
That seemed to settle it for Auerbach. “Duly noted. We go.”
I glanced around the room. Most of the ten people there bore Woodman’s stamp of experienced casualness. Wind-tanned, lean, and sporting their outdoor gear with the ease that older cops wear their guns, they all but radiated self-assurance. My crew and I looked like neophyte hikers in borrowed clothes.
Which was in fact the case. Even Sammie, who’d come with her own equipment, had been further complemented with a few extra items. The rest of us had been outfitted virtually from head to toe. We’d also been given a crash course in climbing protocol, rope use, and how to use carabiners and ice axes, some of which harked back to familiar special weapons training, others of which felt foreign and awkward.
“Jesus,” Willy muttered as we all prepared to leave, “it’s not like we’re assaulting K-2 or anything.”
“Maybe not,” Woodman told him. “But it’s what you don’t plan for that’ll kill you.”
An hour later, I was staring out the gondola window as we were pulled up the mountain’s face, wondering if this was what a spider felt climbing a silken filament up the side of a dormant human, knowing that if the host took notice, the end would be fast and brutal.
The bottom hadn’t been bad, surrounded by base buildings and a swarm of colorfully clad tourists. It had been entertaining looking down on the broad trail below us, watching skiers trying to strike a balance between self-control and speed. Farther up, though, I’d become aware of the mountain’s sheer mass overhead, and of my own comparative insignificance. To challenge such a huge, powerful, prehistoric chunk of the earth’s crust felt like tempting fate. I watched the approaching ridgeline, stretching across my entire horizon, with growing dread.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” Ray Woodman said beside me. “Most people turn their backs to the mountain and look at the valley to admire the view. I like this better-it’s the mountain I have to deal with, whether the view’s there or not.”
I glanced over my shoulder. What view there was seemed imperiled by a series of ever shifting clouds. But what I could see was spectacular. “You can’t blame them, though,” I commented.
“Oh, no. I wouldn’t do that. Once I’m on top, I always look around. Be crazy not to. Besides, by then I’ve earned the right. It’s just that for me, the view’s like the cherry on top, and I always eat the cherry last.”
I resisted mentioning that I found it unsettling putting ice cream sundaes and life-threatening excursions into the same sentence, especially when the speaker was the climbing team leader. “I think I’ll just be happy when the whole meal’s over,” I said softly. “This is not my element.”
Woodman was sympathetic. “You’re in good company. It’s just what I like to do. I wouldn’t be a cop for all the tea in China. Up here, I only get in trouble if I make a mistake. You guys never know what’s going to hit you, no matter how careful you are. I couldn’t live like that.” He swept his hand across the approaching ridge. “You have to admit it does grab the attention, though. Even if all you want to do is slide down it.”
A few clouds were caught on the ridge like translucent ragged cotton, the stark cliffs below them dark and brooding in their shadow. “It is beautiful,” I had to agree.
“People have been taking runs at it for a hundred and fifty years,” he explained. “Ever since the Civil War, when they actually built a hotel right under the Nose, called the Summit House. That’s when the toll road began, too. They ended up having to hold the place down with cables, the wind blew so hard. Even then, they’d lose a roof or a porch every once in a while. It housed fifty people and their horses and carriages. Talk about guts or arrogance or whatever it was-those people were nuts. I never would’ve done that.”
“What happened to it?” I asked, trying to dispel the hint of foreboding that had caught my attention like the sound of something solid sliding under a boat’s hull.
“They tore it down and burned it in ’64. Lousy profit margin. Ironic when you think of all it went through-to be destroyed by the very dynamic that built it, like an out-of-date filling station on Main Street. We’ve pretty much treated the mountain that way from the start,” he added, his voice dripping with contempt. “Turning it into a ski slope, a place to plant radio antennas and entertain flatlanders who drive to the top for twelve bucks to claim they climbed Mount Mansfield. Through the years, they’ve talked about paving the ridge with a parkway, planting a Bomarc missile guidance system on the Chin, and even putting in an airfield.”