Belay Off
On asking for help: Lessons learned at 12,000 feet By Liz Reed, Wind River Wilderness ’99 and Summer Semester in the Rockies ‘02
I could barely lift up my boot to put one foot in front of the other. My pack was so heavy on my shoulders that with each step my legs quivered under its weight. Being around 12,000 feet above sea level made my lungs burn, and the sun reflecting off the snowfields was burning my skin. Many miles into a long day I was feeling tired and more than ready to be done. And then I saw her. She was up ahead of me coming across the snow. She was floating through the air, flitting about with the breeze in her wings with a smile on her face. She would reach into her small purple sack and sprinkle beautiful glitter all across the snowfields, causing the sun’s rays to dance in refraction. I remember thinking, “Wow, that is a beautiful, beautiful Glitter Fairy.” And then I vomited. Gross, I know, but true. Clearly, I was in trouble. I was backpacking through the mountains of Wyoming, and a combination of the elevation and dehydration was messing with my brain. It was July 3, and our Wind River Wilderness course was pushing hard to reach a plateau that would allow us to summit the highest peak in the state on July 4—cool way to celebrate, right? We were all so excited for it; we’d been looking forward to the climb and planning for it for days. And I was about to screw it all up. When I saw the Glitter Fairy, I still had enough of my wits about me to understand this was not normal. As I paused in the snow and one of our instructors came over to check in, I sheepishly admitted what I had seen, what I had thought. He expressed some concern but mostly hid it behind an encouraging smile. Most of our group was about 500 yards away, tucked behind some boulders to take a break and set up for our next push. For those 500 yards I had my instructor walking right next to me, making sure I was taking safe and steady Fall 2012 29