Alpine

Gambit 3 - Alpine

The sink hole, or cave, or whatever it was we had fallen into, was small. No more than 40 feet in length, 5 in width and between 10 and 15 in depth depending on where I looked. The frozen mud walls were not smooth, but none of the features made for good hand holds. The surface was too hard to dig into.

As the hours passed, it grew lighter. I could see the meshwork bridge of snow and fallen branches covering the gap between the two sides of the crevasse. While exploring the walls, I discovered a large fallen pine branch. It was long enough to disrupt the snow bridge. He swore at me for sending the snow tumbling down on us, but it gave us a full view of the sky. More importantly, it helped me find the region of the hole where the height difference between the world above and our ground was the smallest.

I spent more than a few minutes jumping in front of that spot trying to reach the upper edge. My efforts ceased when he reminded me that the definition of insanity was repeating the same thing and expecting different results. Also, my stomach was grumbling and wasting energy seemed like a bad idea. I kicked the snow away to create a clear patch and settled down to rest.

"Are you ready for me to tell you the solution, or do you want to keep spinning your wheels?" His tone was strange. Somewhere between his usual singsong and the new, matter-of-fact voice.

"I'm out of ideas."

"If you let me stand on your shoulders, I can reach the top."

"How exactly does that end with both of us out?"

He pointed at the bit of hose dangling off the disk sled. "If I sit on Alpine, there's going to be well over 300 pounds holding the hose in place. What do you weight? 15 pounds? You'll be able to climb out without making a pancake of yourself."

"How about you let me stand on your shoulders."

He gave a sardonic smile. "On my bad leg?" Before I could argue, he said, "It's about time you trusted me."

"You know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I will not leave you behind."

"And? I can't hold your weight up. So, either you trust me, or we freeze to death. And, just so you know, I will not be the one who dies first. I also have no qualms about fucking and eating your corpse."

"Why the—?!" I was not sure where that statement stood in the space between inappropriate humor and fact. "You're not helping."

"I'm motivating you."

"No. You're not."

I stood up and paced the perimeter of the sink hole again. Maybe it was midmorning. Maybe it was noon. Maybe we only had a few hours of daylight left. His plan was the only one we had. Defeated, I wandered back to him.

With my eyes squeezed painfully shut, I said, "It doesn't matter if I trust you or not. We have no other options."

"Great." His tone was annoyed rather than pleased. He climbed to his feet. I followed as he hobbled to the spot I had been jumping at. "Kneel down."

I did as he asked. He tried to step onto my shoulder with his bad leg, but he could not lift off it. Bracing with both hands on the wall, he struggled to put any weight on the bad leg long enough to get his good one on top of me. He gave a frustrated huff, tapping the forehead of his helmet on the wall.

A new strategy came to him. He pushed me down flatter, kneeled on my back, then shakily rose to standing position. He started edging forward to my shoulders, grinding the heel of his good leg into my back. Even through my ski jacket, it hurt.

He panted, "You need to start getting up. Slowly."

I nodded. Carefully, I pushed myself back up into kneeling position. He gave a little hop to get on the top surface of my shoulders, throwing off his balance. My hands shot up to help stabilize him, and I nearly crumpled. Somehow, we held long enough for him to regain his balance and for me to get my hands on the ground again.