A Nexus of Faith

I rappelled to a ledge, where Clarke was soaked and waiting. We were still high up in the Sierra Nevada, with soaring rock all around, our thin shells snapping in the wind. Water sluiced down the walls of our escape gully. The gray mountainside across the canyon was lost in white behind a curtain of falling flakes. We didn’t know where we were or how many rappels waited below. I ate from a tiny packet of trail mix before passing it to Clarke, who shivered so badly he spilled it all. I picked grains of granola out of the wet gravel at our feet.

That morning, we’d crossed a snowfield in the dark, on our way to climb Venusian Blind on Temple Crag in the Palisades group west of Big Pine, California, just shy of thirteen thousand feet. Though big and exposed, the route was easy for us—about 5.7 on the Yosemite difficulty scale. In climbing shape, we could have soloed it, but we