Take Me Higher by Pamela Clare

Chapter 1

September 25

Black Canyon of the Gunnison

Megs Hill hikedher way down the steep, rocky chute called SOB Draw, Mitch Ahearn, her partner of forty-eight years, a few feet ahead of her. Their climbing gear jangled as they hiked, the familiar weight of backpack and climbing rope comfortable on her shoulders, her helmet clipped to her pack. Though the first rays of sunlight had hit the rim of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, the draw was still in shadow.

Mitch pointed. “Poison ivy.”

“I see it.” Megs had read somewhere that the canyon was full of that shit.

Every serious climber had a poison ivy horror story, and Megs had no intention of giving hers a sequel.

They’d gotten an early start, leaving the campground at six, an hour before sunrise. This was the fifth day of a two-week climbing vacation, a chance to get away from the day-to-day hassles and do what they loved. Today, they hoped to send Journey Through Mirkwood, a 5.11b route on Painted Wall, a beautiful but brutal granite cliff that rose 2,250 feet above the Gunnison River. The third largest rock wall in the Lower 48, Painted Wall was infamous for its tricky moves and loose rock. Many a good climber had been benighted—or bullied into giving up and going home.

There was a lot of loose stone in this gully, forcing Megs to step carefully so as not to twist an ankle or dislodge a rock that might injure someone in the canyon below. The Black Canyon was accessible to climbing only in late summer and early fall because of closures that protected nesting raptors, so, naturally, the park was now crawling with rock jocks eager to test themselves.

Megs couldn’t care less about adding another ascent to her list of conquests. She and Mitch had been climbing for the better part of fifty years. They’d been part of the free-climbing revolution in Yosemite Valley in the early 1970s and had climbed professionally for much of their adult lives. Neither of them had anything to prove.

Once, climbing had felt like survival for Megs. Now, she climbed for the pure joy of it—or to save lives. She and Mitch were the founders of the Rocky Mountain Search & Rescue Team, a nonprofit organization headquartered in Scarlet Springs. She served as the Team’s director. With the busiest months of the year now behind them, they could take some time for themselves.

By the time they reached the bottom of the canyon, the sun had risen. They stopped and hydrated. Warm from exertion, Mitch removed his outer layers, giving Megs a momentary glance of his rock-hard abs.

They were both in their sixties now—Megs was sixty-four and Mitch sixty-nine—but the fire was still there. Hell, yes, it was.

They hiked downriver toward the approaches to Painted Wall in companionable silence, the green waters of the Gunnison River splashing over rocks beside them. A plop brought their heads around in time to see three otters swimming close to the opposite riverbank. Megs shared a smile with Mitch, and they kept moving.

They needed to get on the wall soon if they wanted to top out before sundown. They’d come prepared to bivouac if necessary, but staying awake and roped in all night on a cold, hard ledge was no longer their idea of fun.

At the base of the wall, they found two young men putting on their climbing shoes and getting ready for their ascent. The men saw them—and stared.

Sweating beneath her layers, Megs set down the rope, her pack, and her rack of climbing gear and stripped down to a long-sleeved T-shirt that had the words Climb Like A Girl printed across the front—a birthday gift from Sasha Dillon, her protégé and the reigning world champion for women’s sports climbing.

One of the young men turned to his buddy and whispered, “That’s Megs Hill and Mitch Ahearn. They’re fucking legends.”

“Are you sure it’s them?” the other whispered back.

“He’s sure.” Megs did her best to be polite, though the celebrity thing had gotten old thirty years ago. “Nice to meet you.”

“Do you boys want to head up first?” Mitch drew his water bottle out of his pack.

The one who had recognized them shook his head. “No, uh, you go. You’ll climb faster. We, um, wouldn’t want to slow you down.”

Mitch nodded, took a deep drink.

Megs packed away her jacket and flannel shirt and drew out her harness, her gaze moving over the Precambrian gneiss and schist, following the veins of much lighter pegmatite that shot upward like bolts of lightning frozen in stone. They’d researched the beta available for this route before leaving Scarlet Springs. They knew about the dangerous chopper flake and the loose block near the crux.

Both would come crashing down one day, but hopefully not today.

She followed Mitch, scrambling over loose rock toward the base of the wall, where they stepped into their harnesses. “You want to lead the first pitch?”

“Sure.”

They roped in, strapped on their helmets, and adjusted the weight of their gear, both of them opting to use a GriGri as their belay device. GriGris braked automatically when someone fell, giving them an extra level of protection. When they were ready, Mitch reached back, shoved his fingers into his chalk bag, and stepped up to the rock, his gaze focused upward.

“Climbing!”

“Climb on!”

Mitch cruisedhis way up the first pitch, moving from one crimp hold to another, flagging with his right leg to maintain balance, the toes of his left foot tucked into a tiny pocket. He reached for a pinch, tested it, then grasped it firmly with his left hand, moving his right foot up to catch the edge of a thin flake.

He was in the flow now, his mind blank, his attention focused solely on meeting the challenge of the rock, Megs feeding him slack from below. This was what life was about—fresh air, vertical exertion, and being with the woman he loved.

Megs led the second pitch, a long crack system that angled to the left and ran up to a ledge. They took a short water break there, turning to look out at the rugged beauty of the canyon, the river a green ribbon 500 feet below them.

Megs pointed. “Mountain goats.”

White shapes moved down a gully across from them in defiance of gravity, handling the vertical terrain with a grace no climber would ever master.

Mitch glanced over at Megs, the top of her helmet barely reaching his shoulder. “Did you think we’d still be doing this forty-eight years later?”

She smiled. “What—spending time together or climbing?”

“Smartass.” He loved that about her.

“Back then, I didn’t think about much beyond the next climb.”

Neither had Mitch. Climbing was life. Life was climbing.

And then Megs had arrived.

He could still remember the first moment he saw her. She’d pulled up to Camp 4, stepped out of her battered, red VW Bug, and stood staring up at El Capitan. She hadn’t seemed to notice them—the dirtbag climbers who’d made Camp 4 their home—not even when some of the guys catcalled her. With the dignity of a woman who didn’t give a shit, she’d gotten her gear out of her vehicle, found a camping spot, and set up her tent without glancing their way.

He hadn’t known it at the time, but his life had just changed for the better.

Mitch led the next pitch over good rock on a solid 5.10. It ended in a stretch of third-class scramble they could hike up. They could have untied from the rope, but they didn’t. They’d rescued enough climbers to know better than to take chances eight hundred feet above the ground. One slip could be fatal.

Megs led the next pitch—a 5.7 crack that unfortunately included an overgrown thorn bush that had somehow made its home there. “Ouch! Fucking bush.”

That’s one reason they wore long sleeves.

“Can you work around it?”

“Don’t think I’m not trying.” She ducked below one of the bigger branches and inched upward. “It’s better than being bitten by a damned bat.”

“Yeah. No shit.”

Megs had been bitten several years ago when they’d been climbing in Utah. She’d had to get a series of rabies shots. She wasn’t the first climber to end up in the ER with bat bites. Bats roosted in these cracks.

They pushed on through a chossy 5.9 section into the first 5.11 pitch. Mitch took the lead here, transitioning into a complicated layback as they edged upward toward the infamous chopper flake—a large flake of stone so loose that it creaked and moved.

“Watch out below!” Mitch didn’t want it crashing down on Megs or other climbers if it chose this moment in history to break from the rock.

He made it past the flake, mantling onto a small ledge, where he switched to a belay stance. A short time later, Megs stood beside him. The sun was high in the sky now, so they slammed down some calories and hydrated.

Megs looked down at the section of wall beneath them. “That flake is a funeral waiting to happen.”

She led the crux pitch, climbing toward an impressive overhang called The Roofs of Mordor, Mitch belaying and watching her progress as she moved cleanly upward. She climbed like no one he’d ever known, part athlete, part artist. She—

Crack!

From above came the ominous sound of stone breaking from stone.

“Rock!” Megs shouted.

“Rock!” Mitch repeated the warning just as something enormous hit the roof above Megs and broke into smaller pieces. “Rock!”

Unable to do anything, Mitch watched as Megs hugged the rockface, stone hurtling past her, hitting the wall, and heading straight for him.

He flattened himself against the cliff. A fragment struck his shoulder, but he barely had time to register the pain when a much larger piece struck his helmet.

An explosion of light. Pain. Darkness.

Megs let outa surprised shriek as she was jerked off the rockface and fell. The cam she’d inserted held, the GriGri braking as it was designed to do. The two devices stopped her fall, left her hanging.

She glanced down, saw Mitch slumped over, motionless in midair, a crack in his helmet. Her mouth went dry, adrenaline hitting her bloodstream. “Mitch!”

No reply. No movement.

“Ahearn!”

Fuck! Son of a bitch!

Fear snaked through her, turned her blood to ice. “Ahearn, can you hear me?”

Was he dead?

Please, no!

Then five decades of climbing and rescue experience kicked in.

Don’t panic!

She drew one deep breath after another until the adrenaline rush had ebbed. She’d be no good to herself or to Mitch if she let her emotions get the better of her. Isn’t that what she told Team members?

With Mitch’s dead weight acting as her belay, she reestablished her holds and rappelled another twenty feet or so down to him. His head hung to one side, blood trickling down from beneath his cracked helmet, his shirt torn and bloody on one shoulder. “Mitch, can you hear me? Ahearn, talk to me!”

He was unresponsive.

“Shit!” She checked for respiration and a pulse, her own heart pounding as relief washed through her.

He was alive and breathing—for now.

“Thank God.”

But Megs had been involved in search and rescue for more than twenty years. She knew that an unresponsive victim and a cracked helmet were never good news.

Think! Pull it together!

She needed to build an anchor, fix her harness to his, and use his part of the rope, which was longer, to rappel them both to a safer position. Then she could call for help and at least try to render first aid.

She studied the wall below them, saw a ledge some thirty feet down. It was wide enough for both of them—if they could reach it.

“I’m going to get us out of this. Hang on, Ahearn. Just keep breathing.”

Please keep breathing!

Pulse racing, she took a cordelette and three quickdraws off her rack and crafted a strong anchor, checking it three times just to be sure she hadn’t made any mistakes. Then she clipped into his harness, telling him what she was doing, just like she would for any other victim in need of rescue. She was pretty sure he couldn’t hear her, but it helped her stay focused. “I’m attached to your harness now. We’ll rappel down to that ledge.”

Before she untied herself from her half of the rope, she made one last safety check. If she had missed something or screwed up, she might shock-load the rope and exceed the strength of her anchor. There was no margin for error. If his harness broke or her anchor failed, they would both die.

When she was certain she hadn’t missed anything, she began the rappel to the ledge below, using the braking mechanism in his GriGri to let them down slowly.

“It’s going great. We’re almost there.”

Down, down, down they went, the anchor holding fast.

After what seemed like a brief eternity, Megs’ feet touched the ledge. She lowered herself into a sitting position, drawing Mitch carefully onto the ledge beside her, resting his head on her lap. He needed a backboard to stabilize his spine, but she couldn’t do anything about that now. “We’re going to hang out here until help comes.”

She created another anchor, fixing it to the wall behind them to keep them from falling and putting more strain on the rope should Mitch come around and start thrashing. Then she retrieved her satellite phone from the side pocket of her pack. The damned thing was finally going to pay for itself.

She called Forest County Dispatch. “It’s Megs Hill. There’s been an accident at the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, and Mitch Ahearn is badly injured and unresponsive. We’re going to need a high-angle rescue at Painted Wall. Tone out the Team emergent, and contact the Black Canyon climbing rangers. They’ll get here faster.”

It wasn’t unprecedented for the Team to conduct search and rescue operations far from Scarlet Springs. As a nationally acclaimed and respected rescue organization, they’d even been called out of state a time or two.

As she shared details, Megs felt like she was an observer, watching herself from the outside. She sounded calm, completely in control. But that wasn’t how she felt.

She waited while the dispatcher called the Black Canyon ranger HQ, panic sliding into her veins again. It would take the rangers hours to set up the rescue. It would take even longer for the Team to reach them. Meanwhile, the man she’d loved since she was sixteen was fighting for his life.

“Megs, I reached the head ranger. He says they’re on their way and asked me to tell you to expect a wait of several hours. I gave him your number so he can reach you directly.”

“Thank you.” Megs ended the call. “They’re coming, Mitch. Stay alive. Do you hear me? Stay alive!”