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Outside Magazine November 2002
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The Hard Way
Unbroken Chain (Cont.)

THE NEXT MORNING, after another shivering bivouac, we made the 20-mile march out and Bryan told me about the time he was hit by lightning. He'd been in Colorado, on a wall 400 feet off the deck. He'd seen the small, dark cloud but didn't think much of it. All he remembers is an earsplitting detonation.

"At first I thought I'd gone to heaven," he said. "I was warm and there was so much light and I was very thankful that I had been killed and not simply maimed. But then a while later I realized I was hanging upside down, and I couldn't understand why I would be hanging upside down in heaven. At some point I understood what had happened, and it just destroyed me. My legs were paralyzed for several hours. A carabiner had been branded into my hip."

Bryan stopped on the trail and looked solemnly into my face. "God gives us each our own trials."

Hiking out, we talked about our ascent of the northwest buttress of Cloud Peak, trying to sound congratulatory. Yes, despite the rain, we'd finished it—multiple pitches of 5.10 and 5.11. We should have been proud. It was a first ascent. But for both of us, the climb seemed coated in a film of disappointment. We'd completed only three of the eight peaks we'd set out to summit.

Bryan had been painfully slow descending off Cloud Peak. When he arrived at the base, we quietly watched dusk paint the rocks and the sky with deepening shades of lavender.

"Bryan, you want to go home."

He stalled, then said something about how we could decide in the morning.

I shook my head. I finally had the guts to pull the plug. "In the morning we go down."




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