Timp, Part 2

We were off to the glacier! The trail to the glacier from the peak was not much pleasanter than the trail from the summit to the peak in terms of scariness. The good thing was that it was shorter and a lot less crowded. As we walked, we talked and got to know Clarissa better. It wasn't so cold now, and spirits were high. When we got our first glimpse of the glacier and how it was almost entirely vertical, we all freaked out a bit, but my dad promised that there was a way around which wasn't as steep.

At one point, the trail almost scared me out of my mind. The rock was a lot blacker than the rest of the mountain (for some reason it reminded me of a volcano), and it was curved sort of inward. The path was a bit narrow, and if you fell, you would die. But no pressure. My dad warned Spencer to be careful and then we all made it across without trouble.

"That was the part I was most worried about," my dad said after we were all safe. It was probably better that he waited to tell us that instead of us having panic attacks in the volcano. I felt so relieved. The worst was finally over.

A few minutes later, we were to the top of the glacier. We all looked down it and decided there was no way jose we would go down it directly. I don't even like steep waterslides, let alone boulder-covered snowfields.

So we went to the left as planned. The last time my dad had come here was in 2004 when the landscape was quite different. Thus, it was a bit more challenging than he had remembered to go to the left. I was in front, and I found myself wondering a lot how I was going to make it down this ledge or that. But we all slowly managed to find our way along the left of the glacier, hoping that eventually it would level out so we could get on at a flatter part.

After one final jump, we were to a gravelly hill with lots of loose rock and boulders. It looked terrifying. Right about that time someone accidentally knocked a rock onto my neck, and it hurt a lot for a few minutes. If that little rock hurt that much, I didn't like to think what would happen if we got into fights with some of the bigger rocks.

But my dad and brother decided to give it a try anyway at one spot which looked easier. As they started to go down, they kicked some rocks, some pretty big. They kept going

and going

and going.

"ROCK! ROCK!" we all yelled, hoping that people sliding down the glacier could get out of harm's way if the boulder turned out to stop there. But it turned out fine.

We sat there for a few minutes, wondering how on earth we were going to make it down the hill. About that time, another lady in white who had been behind us scooted down the hill next to the glacier. She seemed to be doing okay. We considered following her once she was out of the way, but it still was pretty scary.

About the same time, Spencer got tired of us deliberating and just headed down. I did not have a good feeling about that at all. But he seemed to be doing fine -- didn't kick as many rocks down as he had on his first attempt and didn't seem to mind the steepness. When he was close to the bottom, there was a spot where we all wanted him to take a right. I don't know if he couldn't make it over or if he misunderstood, but he went left. I cringed. He went a few steps, then started shaking, a totally panicked shake. He went a few more steps down and then

"Aaaaaahhhh" went careening down a little slope there

My first thought was, "well, it can't be as steep as the top of the glacier, so he'll be fine."

But then he kept going and going, and I realized that he was sliding down into the rock field we had created.

Then he stopped screaming. My heart stopped.

Then, a dreadful bellow. "Aaaaaaargghhh!"

My dad: "Well, at least he's conscious."

Kaylie: "Spence, what's wrong?"

Spencer: "I have . . . frostbite!" and then waved his cold, red hands at us.

True, it was terrible to have to slow yourself down with your hands, but at least he was complaining about that instead of, like, a broken arm. I tried not to laugh.

He never cried, but he sounded pretty miserable so Kaylie went down next to be with him (after us yelling "move move move" over and over so he wouldn't get hit by any loose rocks she might have kicked down). She was a lot more cautious and took the same route the lady in white took, but I was still pretty tense. What if she slipped? How could we all get down all right?

"Is that blood on the snow by Spencer?" Kevin asked. I looked over there and saw a few small puddles surrounding him. I felt even sicker.

Well, Kaylie finally made it down. There was a spot where she froze for a good 5 minutes (to us it looked perfectly fine, so we had no idea why she was not moving, but we trusted her judgment) and then carefully inched her way down the same path Spencer had gone. I'm not sure how she made it without slipping.

Then my dad went down. A little faster, still cautious, went to the right rather than to the left as Kaylie and Spencer did, and then suddenly he was on firm ground. "This is the stupidest thing I've ever put my family through," I heard him mutter. Clarissa laughed.

I figured I might as well go. I inched down, backpack on my chest, sock on my right hand to make it easier for me to grip the ice, and scooted down, down, down, sometimes dislodging rocks, sometimes sliding a bit further than I had anticipated, but never really losing control. I think my dad was a lot more scared than I was. He gave hints about which rocks were safe and which were not, and then when I reached one rock he assured me was safe, I stood on it and then he helped me across over to the firmer ground. The rock was still loose and the hill was still steep, but I was able to sink my feet into the loose rock and walk with relative ease.

Clarissa was next, and she went even faster than my dad or me. Then came Kevin ("I love you" we repeated back and forth to each other, just in case he somehow lost his footing), and suddenly we were all past the menacing, slippery, loose-rock infested hill that had separated us from the flatter part of the glacier.

The labels aren't quite right -- the purple trail was through snow, not through rock. But you get the idea.

And then came the fun part! I sat down on the glacier and scooted down at a pace I felt comfortable with. I found sticks along the way which made it so I didn't have to use my hands as ski poles. My dad and Clarissa both opted for the slide, which was probably about as tame as a shallow sledding hill by then, but I was just fine dawdling along the little bumps and ridges that bruised and numbed me. (If you're numb, then you don't mind bruises.) Meanwhile, Kaylie and Spencer carefully walked down the mountain, since Spencer's leg was hurt and he couldn't sit down very well.

When we all made to the end of the major snow portion (Clarissa took off and went on her merry way to make up for lost time [oh  ps: the glacier is not faster if you spend an hour getting down one hill]), the emergency response team we had seen earlier was waiting for us on a pile of rocks. They sat Spencer down and put hats and jackets on him to prevent hypothermia. They cleaned off his blood-splattered leg (he had gotten a gash when he hit a rock on the way down, but luckily that was the only serious injury), bandaged it up, gave him some pain medication, and told us some horror stories from earlier that day which made us quite grateful that a cut-up leg was the only injury.

This is the smallest I could make this picture . . . sorry if you don't like blood.  It looked a lot better once it got cleaned up, I promise.

The emergency response team cleaning up his gash.

And then . . .we were off! I don't know how Spencer managed to walk on that leg the whole way down from Emerald Lake, but he did and he wasn't much slower than me. The walk down wasn't quite as fun as the walk up because I spent a lot of it on my own. I was too impatient to stay with Spencer, Kaylie, and Dad, and too slow to catch up to Kevin (who for some reason wanted to go inside the smelly outhouse), so I just walked by myself for miles at a time, worried that somehow one of my family members had fallen off of a ridge (yeah, I can be paranoid). And getting stuck within groups of scouts who refused to let me pass despite the multiple areas which could have fit all of them. Eventually I just found a shortcut and bushwhacked to get away from them (and was able to run for a while with all my pent-up energy). After 2 1/2 hours, we all finally made it back to the parking lot, exhausted but alive.

Then we ate Mexican food and yummy cake. And Spencer got six stitches in his leg. The end.

ps: remember how it was overcast and even rainy? Well, I still got sunburned.