My last fall

My last fall



I’m sliding down hill on my back.  I lost my footing a nanosecond ago, my orphaned iceaxe standing upright where I last drove it into the snow, its pointy nose outlined against the winter sky.  The impact on the hard, icy and unforgiving surface primed my vocal cords to a high pitch sound wave my childhood music teacher would have been proud of.  The slope around me is moving very fast, but I feel as clumsy and slow as a drunk slug.  I can hear myself screaming, adrenalin rushing through my veins at warp speed, my body responding to millions of years of evolution, bracing itself for the pain to come.  The friction of my waterproofs on the surface creates a husky whistling noise which betrays my speed and the seriousness of my situation. 

I am trying to turn myself onto my belly so I can bring myself to a stop.  All those blunt hours spent practising self arrest seem as useless to me now as the sharp crampons at the end of my feet.  A small dip in the slope gives me the momentum I need to bring myself round.  Then, I hit a section of layered snow.  The top layer is softer, but distinctly lethal.  My knees are just digging into the surface when I feel the ground shaking around me with a loud crunch, as if somebody had just bitten into one of those long breadsticks that you get as nibbles at barbeques.  The gray and icy layers of the headwall appear to be moving backwards as I strain my neck to look upwards.  Now everything around me is moving, and I find myself in a sea of whiteness.  I see pieces of snow moving faster than me, rolling over my body, in a rush to please Gravity.  They are moving in a deafening roar.  The race is on, and I am the obvious loser. 

I bounce against a hard icy giant, a reminder from the last avalanche, and as I scream even harder with the agony of broken ribs, I am rolled onto my back.  Blue, white, blue, white.  Chunks of sky and snow alternate.  Hands over my head, scrunching myself up as small as possible, this is no time go swimming.

The threads of Gravity are fast tightening around my ankles, there’s urgency in their pull.  The meaning of up and down is lost as I roll randomly along the slope.  Never before has the sheer brutality of Gravity been so clearly displayed to me.  Gravity is harnessed through lack of speed, and here is the big G totally let loose, like an angry mythical monster seeking revenge.  I can only but please her.

I loose consciousness at some point, intoxicated by the excess of adrenalin, confused by the movement from all directions, deafened by my own fearful screams.  Death comes simply and easily after a long drop off the edge of the cliff and some final free air time.