Mountain of Trouble

On Katahdin, the problems begin as soon as you leave the car.

- Nathan Olsson

After everything we’d already been through here, one of us was going to drown. I could still hardly believe it would happen on an ice-climbing trip.

Dan stood thigh-deep in a 30-foot-wide stream, our final portage on the way to Katahdin. The stream, not even shown on our map, surged in a flash flood that covered an eroding bridge of ice—our only way across. To our left, the foaming, brown-tinted water flowed off the ice bridge, down a rock step and into a dark pool.

Gripping the nose of a pack sled, with Dan holding its other end, I had nearly reached the far side when he suddenly halted and shouted, “I’m stuck!” Our friend Jeremy looked on from the bank behind him.

“Drop the sled!” I yelled. If either of us fell into the stream, we could be tangled in the sled or our skis, or pinned by the current. Dan released the sled. I surged forward to the bank and shoved the sled behind a spruce. Turning back, I saw Dan struggling to free his stuck ski. It detached and tumbled away in the loud, rushing water.

It was February, and for two days we’d labored up the mountain, feeling it would be worse to turn back and recross two other streams and a thawing lake. We were a little over a mile from the Chimney Pond cabin, our planned base camp.

Jeremy and I had been climbing partners for years, living in Massachusetts and climbing across New Hampshire, while I’d met Dan when I relocated to Washington, D.C., the previous summer. It was Jeremy’s third trip to Katahdin, and for Dan and me the first.