Early morning, as I sat in my car enjoying the heat from the engine, I was thinking about the cold outside, and the hike up to the ice climb my brother, Jeff, and I were about to take on. This was the first climb of the ice season for us, and for whatever reason, I was low energy about it. I didn’t have the pre-climb jitters or even the excitement about hitting the ice. I was just kinda… there. I was excited to get out, away from the hum-drum of life and school and work and and and. But despite setting the trip up, I hadn’t gotten in ‘the zone’ yet. Maybe it was the lack of snow, despite the freezing temperatures, maybe it was the laundry list of things in my life I have on my plate that I think are important. Or maybe, something else. For whatever reason, it wasn’t till I actually touched the ice that morning that I felt the energy of the mountain in me.

My big brother Jeff and I have been climbing together, rock and ice, for several years. Jeff has always had an affinity to the outdoors (hard not to growing up in Utah), but was never a hardcore climber. His climbing level is well beyond beginner, but not quite an expert. He owes his skill set to his smarts and his strength as well as to his older and younger (me) brothers. Mike was the mountain climber of the family. His skill on the slopes of tall peaks was top notch. I was the rock climber who did pretty well on ice too, but for many years I was mainly into the sports climbing scene; Mike brought me to the mountains and there I found my new love. Jeff came into climbing fairly randomly (in my opinion), and became committed to it after Mike died in Alaska during an expedition trip. For me, Jeff filled the void Mike left in a climbing partner/brother, and he rocks it. For Jeff, I think climbing is another way he connects to God and reconnects to Mike.

So, there we are, Jeff and I, ready to take on the ice. He pulls, gets his gear on while I escape the warmth of my car. We divide the gear to carry equal weight and get to marching down the trail to the frozen waterfall. The trail is easy and the morning chill freezes my lungs, a feeling that takes me back into the memories of lofty peaks. We take a hard right and start the harder, less traveled trail, to the base of the climb. After 20 or 30 minutes, the sun has lit the sky enough that we could tell is was dawn, not dusk, and we were staring at the daunting routes of “Stairway to Heaven.” Not really all that daunting after the years of our play on it, but none-the-less, the first climb of the year is the time to brush off the cobwebs and remember the love-hate relationship I have with ice climbing.

The weather had been cold, but with very little snowfall. The ice was coming in well, and as I touched it, smelled it and saw it, my pulse raced and I was ready to get to it. Looking at the wall, I saw several solid ice lines and offered the first lead to Jeff. There was one pair of climbers on a pitch above us, and another set coming behind us. Jeff agreed and started to clip on the protection as I got the rope ready. We scrambled up a 30 to 45-degree slope, without protection, till we reached a good starting point, about 15 feet from the rock floor, with the nearly vertical icefall above us. Jeff tied, in, I connected, did our double checks of each other’s safety set up, and Jeff took in a deep breath staring down the pitch.

With tools in hand, he started. I could tell he was feeling confident, but for whatever reason, I felt some hesitancy. Either in him, or in me. Maybe it was that I wasn’t in ‘the zone’ or that I was distracted. Maybe Jeff was nervous, and I couldn’t read it. For whatever reason, I was there going through the motions, but felt like I was on autopilot. There were two times I thought Jeff was going to fall. The first time, wasn’t for anything he was doing, but I had the feeling he was going to slip off. He passed the point I was most concerned about, and I became more relaxed on belay. He set screws well and I could tell from where I was, he had good protection in place. My worry was becoming less and less as he neared the top. He placed a total of four out of his six screws and was just feet away from topping out and setting anchors.

This climb has several sections of dead vertical, and several little sections of platformed ice. That makes standing and setting ice screws pretty easy. Jeff would stand on a platform, set a screw, get through the vertical section, stand on anther platform and set another screw. The last vertical section was roughly 12 or 15 feet tall. Jeff had a screw just below him, so he was well protected. He yelled down about setting another screw before the top, or just finishing it and setting them on the top platform. I gave him my opinion, but then casually said, “up to you bro.” I worried that he was starting to get weaker and wondered if he was feeling it, or if he was doing well. Additionally, Jeff had taken off one of his gloves. Not because he was warm, but because trying to set a screw in ice takes some dexterity, which is totally eliminated by bulky gloves. The downside is, if you take them off and you get cold hands, that takes more energy and strength away from you. Jeff assured me he was doing ok, and carried on.

He started his way up the last curtain, and stopped just below the top. He was 50 feet away from me, about 80 from our starting point and 8 or 9 feet from his last screw but only 2 or 3 feet from the crest of the route. He stopped? I wasn’t sure exactly why, I thought he would run it out, and top it off. Later I learned he had decided to set one more screw before topping off. Jeff’s foot placement was crap, and I had constantly reminded him about footwork throughout the climb; this time they were in some dicey ice. He had his left tool set in place, and was swinging his right. He hit the ice with the right-hand tool and… CRACK!

Ice is a funny thing. If it’s too warm it is like plastic, soft and malleable. If it’s too cold it’s brittle and fragile. Too warm and it will all come apart, too cold and it will all shatter. The biggest part of ice climbing, and the hardest part to learn, is quality of ice and how to climb different qualities. The ice Jeff and I were playing on was cold and brittle mixed in with some thick dense ice. Jeff’s ice screws were placed in the thick, welcoming denseness of the curtain, but his last swings were in the delicate, fragile ice that is known for “dinner plating” when hit. When Jeff swung his right-hand tool, it shattered the top layer of ice causing a 3 or 4-inch-thick “dinner plate” to separate from the ice layer below it. This, in turn, caused his left-hand tool, to pop straight back out of the ice towards his shoulder. Crack. The sound is really no different than hearing ice break any other time, but when you are belaying your brother, and best friend, it’s deafening.

Jeff fell straight back, head over feet. Remember, he was 8 or 9 feet from his last protection making minimum fall distance 16 to 18 feet. Also remember, he had previously been standing on a platform that was within that distance – no way to avoid it. I watched on in horror. Absolute horror. I have been climbing for about 22 years, and have taken some big falls of my own, I have also caught some nasty ones too. This fall was the worse I have ever seen. Maybe because it was my brother, maybe because I somehow felt unprepared. My mind was blank, I forgot what was happening, and in a blink of an eye my brother was dangling from my rope, no moving. Before I caught him on the line, he had hit (what I thought was) his upper back/ shoulders on the platform before bouncing off and hitting the end of my belay. I didn’t feel the jolt, I didn’t register that I was now holding him on my rope, I just saw my big brother, lifeless, hanging in mid-air.

I lowered him down to me, although I don’t remember how. I cradled his big upper body in my arms and yelled at him to wake up. He exhaled a deep visceral breath, one I have heard before. The first time I heard someone breath out like that I was climbing with my brother Mike, and his friend Steve, in St, George Utah. We had just had a day of climbing the day before, and today we were going to Snow Canyon for one last big route. Steve was the strongest climber of the three of us, and took the lead. He was scouting a route, with the rope tied in (no belay) to haul gear while Mike and I waited below. Suddenly, Steve came crashing down from above. I grabbed the rope and stopped his fall about 20 feet below Mike and me. I looked down at Steve who look straight through me into space. He exhaled a primitive breath and went limp. He died of head trauma sustained during the fall. Jeff exhaled the same visceral breath and his eyes rolled back into his head.

Jeff’s right arm was twisted unnaturally behind him, his legs were side-by-side and motionless, his breathing was deep and his head was limp in my hands. I leaned in close, begging him to wake up, to come back to me – he didn’t listen. I panicked. All my climbing experience, my emergency training, all my wits escaped me for what felt like hours. All I could do was beg Jeff.

The other climbing duo was 50 yards off, one of them called out if I needed help, breaking me from my panicked spell. I told them I did. Somehow, my communication with them was calm and collected. I never looked away from Jeff until I checked my surroundings. I wasn’t on a platform and needed to stabilize him. I need to check him for injuries. I needed to get to work.

I ran my hand down his spine and across his ribs. I checked his shoulders and neck for anything obvious. I pulled open his eyes and checked his pupils. All the wile I was talking him out of his distance. “Come on bro,” was my mantra. His body was limp, but there was no obvious injury beyond a cut to his wrist. His pupils were equal and reactive. I leaned in close and repeated my mantra, “come on bro,” adding to it how much I loved him.

Looking back, Jeff was probably unconscious for roughly 2-4 minutes, but it felt like 20 or 30. As the haze began to lift from Jeff’s eyes, I asked him to move his fingers, his feet, his face. My worry that I had killed my brother was slowly evaporating, but I was scared he had been paralyzed. Jeff responded with slow, small movements. I heard one of the onlookers giving a report over the phone to 911. He asked me some questions (like “what’s his name?” “how old is he?”) and I could hear the sound of emergency sirens coming down the canyon. I remember thinking how impressed I was with their response time. Nate, one of the other climbers came over to me just as Jeff was starting to come back into consciousness. Nate said, “I’m Nate, I am an EMT. Hold him still, I need to check him out.” I replied that I am an Emergency Nurse and I have done my checks, I just need to get him off the ice. Nate anchored in, tied Jeff and me together and prepared to lower us down. By this time, Jeff was talking.

Jeff turned to me, and tearfully said, “I just want to go home.” He tucked his head in, and leaned against the ice. “Come on bro,” I chanted again, “let’s get off the mountain.” Jeff sucked in the tears, cleared his voice and said, “Ya, let’s go.” Nate lowered us to the rock, I disconnected and sat Jeff on a rock. Once Jeff assured me he was good to walk, I turned to Nate and asked if he would be willing to gather our gear as I got Jeff to the trail. Nate agreed.

[I must insert here:
for all the negative things the public can (sometimes rightfully) pin on the climbers, I have never felt more part of a community than in the climbing community. There is a sense of taking care of each other, the land we are on, and the future climbers to come. Of course, there are asshats in the climbing community, there are in every community, but generally climbers are interested in others around them. My hope is that climbers (myself included) can continue to foster that community and extend it to the world around us.]

I turned to Jeff, looked him in the eye and said, “aright bro, let’s get the fuck out of here.” I grabbed the belay loop on his harness, put my shoulder under his and stood him up. Jeff has me beat my about 30 or 40 pounds (of muscle), and was a heavy sack of man meat to carry down the mountainside. Fortunately, the further we went, the more he handled his own weight. All the while Jeff asked me what had happened and if he was ok. I would reply with, “You fell man,” and he would come back with, “did I look good doing it?” or “did you get video of it?” then come back to, “am I ok?” Ten seconds later, he would start the same round of questions. This repeated about 4 or 5 times.

I asked him what day it was, where we were, what were we doing, if he knew who I was. Some he could answer, some he couldn’t. By the time we reached the canyon floor, and were back on the easy trail, I asked, “what day of the week is it?” Jeff replied with, “I think it’s Saturday, but you told me it was Tuesday.” It was at that point I knew I didn’t need the life-flight helicopter that had just landed, or the ambulances that had swarmed in. I knew my brother was going to be ok. What I didn’t know was, where do I go from here?

I got the head of the trail, EMS was waiting. One of the crew was a friend of mine, I gave him a report, signed a paper, and took Jeff to my car. I turned on the car as Jeff laid his head back. Minutes later, Nate and his climbing partner, sacrificing their own climbing day, arrived with my gear. He mentioned that the ice screws were will on the climb, and he would collect them and get them to me later. We swapped phone numbers and I started my long drive home, grateful to have my brother next to me. I left his car there, contemplating a trip to the ER. I scrolled through all my training, the literature, and experience in my mind, and went to my house instead of the hospital. To confirm I was thinking straight I called an emergency physician to be sure I was on the right path, I was.

I got Jeff to my home, where our mom had been watching my son. I told her Jeff had taken a big fall, but was ok, and in the basement. I gathered some of my equipment and sutured Jeff’s wrist closed. His cold hand laying limp while I worked reminded me how close I came to losing another brother. Just before that, Jeff’s fiancé, Amanda, arrived, cradled Jeff’s head and extended love to him. My mom went to down to see him after I cleaned him up, and was satisfied he was ok before she left to go home. I kept Jeff at my house for several hours after that. Later in the day, Amanda took him home with strict instructions from me regarding care at home. I checked in every few hours till I was satisfied he was improving. It wasn’t for several weeks till his headache subsided.

Jeff cracked his helmet, suffered a serious concussion, and had a small cut to his wrist. Other than that, he was injury free. I was (am) shocked. He walked out (mostly) on his own. I was convinced I had killed my brother with a sub-par belay that day. My world was spinning. Soon after that fear was resolved, I knew I had paralyzed him, after that was resolved too, I was kept up haunted by the scene. Where did it go wrong? What could I have done to have changed it? Did I pressure Jeff to lead before he was ready? Did I give a poor belay? What about when I got him down to me, what should have I done medically? Here we are, nearly a month later, and I still have nightly nightmares about it. Today went to visit Jeff at work, just to say hi. He brought it up, and today was the first time I have talked about it. We both cried.

I can’t explain his experience, or anyone else’s beyond mine. My experience was full of fear, so much so that it made me question if I could really handle it again. Life has some exciting adventures. I feel like I have had more than most. This adventure was exciting, but one I don’t want to repeat. This adventure reminded me how close death is to the people around me, and what that means. Most importantly, it reminded me what my loved ones mean to me.