The Mountain Challenge Read online

  Lily was looking at the ground, but she nodded.

  “Then let’s go!”

  They set off together towards the ridge. Soon they reached a point where their path ahead was a ledge that was only three or four metres wide. On one side was a massive cliff face that towered above them. On the other was another sheer drop.

  “That’s where I came across,” Bear said. “How are you with heights, Lily?”

  The ledge was wide enough to walk along without going near the edge.

  “I guess I’m okay, as long as I don’t think I’m going to fall down one!” Lily said truthfully, looking at it.

  “Good girl! Let’s go then.”

  Lily followed behind Bear, feeling confident for the first time since this whole strange adventure began.

  But then a colossal creaking, groaning sound filled the air. Lily could feel the noise vibrating in the ground and in her stomach.

  “It’s going!” Bear shouted. “Get back, quick!”

  They dashed back the way they had come. The groaning grew louder. Ten metres ahead of them, a whole chunk of mountain, the size of a house, fell away.

  4

  HIGH SEAS

  A cloud of dust and stone rose up as the rock-face hit the floor of the valley with a mighty crash. Lily dared to peek over the edge.

  “Was that our fault?” Lily gasped. She was always prepared to own up to anything she had done wrong, but she didn’t want to think she had been responsible for destroying a whole mountain.

  Bear shook his head with a smile.

  “These mountains are millions of years old. It would have been some little crack that’s just got bigger and bigger over the centuries – until, today, it suddenly decided it couldn’t hold the weight any more.”

  “Phew!”

  That was a relief, but it was the only good news.

  Lily and Bear couldn’t go any further along the ledge. The chunk had taken a massive bite out of it.

  “So – um, Bear – are we stranded up here?”

  “There will be other ways down,” Bear promised. “I said that was the easiest way, not the only way. Now we just have to find the second easiest. But hey – look at this.”

  Several large rocks had dropped down at the same time as the chunk of mountain. Bear passed Lily a stone the size of her fist. There was a spiral pattern embedded in it, like a coiled-up shellfish.

  “Wow, a fossil!” Lily exclaimed.

  “This guy was once swimming around in a prehistoric ocean,” Bear agreed. “Then he died and sank to the bottom. He got up here because the sea bed has raised itself about a millimetre per year, for millions of years. That’s how old the mountains are.”

  “Cool.” Lily looked at it with wonder.

  “Keep it as a souvenir,” Bear suggested. “There’ll be plenty more.”

  “Thanks.” Lily slipped it into her pocket. “So, what’s the second easiest way down?”

  “This way,” Bear smiled, and they set off.

  Lily knew Bear had already explored the area, but she still felt nervous. The only way out was to go back to the slope where he had rescued her. What if she fell again?

  Lily tried to get the words out several times to ask Bear. Each time they just dried up in her mouth. She didn’t want Bear to think she was making a fuss.

  Lily was very relieved when they walked past the spot where she had met Bear, and kept going. She kept a careful side-eye on the steep, rocky slope, until it was out of sight.

  But they soon came to another slope. This one ran from the base of a tall cliff, down to an area of flatter ground below. In between, the surface was covered with thousands of small, fist-sized rocks.

  “All those rocks came off the cliff, I guess?” Lily asked.

  Bear nodded.

  “It’s called scree and it’s something else that happens over millions of years. It’s very loose and unstable – and unfortunately we have to get down it. The best way is to take it fast.”

  Lily thought again of the slippery slope where she’d first met Bear. Lily didn’t like the idea of going down anywhere fast. She took a deep breath and plucked up the courage to speak.

  “Um, Bear … wouldn’t it be safer to take it nice and slow?”

  Bear stopped and smiled. “It seems like that would be a good idea, doesn’t it?” Bear agreed. “But if we went slow, all those loose stones and rocks would come down beside us and we might get swept away with them. So we take big, confident steps and keep the weight on our heels we so that we don’t overbalance forwards.” He grinned at Lily, who carried on staring at the slope. “If you do begin to slip, try to turn sideways. That will help you balance, and not fall onto your back. But just keep going, Lily, and you’ll be fine!”

  Bear set off, taking long strides and holding his arms out for balance. The slope was so steep that he kicked his legs out into thin air with every step. Lily waited until she was sure she had the hang of it, and set off after him.

  It was tough going. Lily did her best to copy Bear, but all the loose rocks made it impossible to get a firm footing. Every step set off smaller slides of rocks. The slope was steep, but Lily didn’t stumble. She put her weight on her heels and planted every step firmly before she took the next one. It felt like no time at all before they both were down at the bottom. A few loose pebbles trickled down after them, but that was it.

  Lily smiled triumphantly at Bear, who smiled back.

  “Brilliant, Lily! You looked really confident as you came down. And we cut thirty metres off our descent,” said Bear. “Now, let’s see how to get down from here. I haven’t been here before so we’ll be exploring together.”

  Bear and Lily soon worked out the ways to get down. But it wasn’t great news. They had three options.

  Go back up the scree slope.

  Climb up a nearly vertical cliff, as high as several houses stacked on top of each other.

  Or get down the cliff on the other side.

  Bear and Lily stood side by side on the edge of the cliff, looking down.

  “See?” Bear said. “We can go down in a couple of stages. There’s a ridge down there, and another below that one. Then we can rejoin that spur we were heading for. This is definitely the way to go.”

  Lily peered down the drop. Was it really the easiest way?

  Lily knew she needed to speak up.

  If she didn’t say anything then Bear might think she was good at climbing.

  If she did say something then he might think she was being awkward.

  Help!

  5

  DOUBLE UP

  Bear had put his rucksack down on the ground, and was pulling out his rope. He noticed that Lily had gone very quiet.

  “What are you thinking about, Lily?” he asked.

  Lily’s mind whirled. It would be so easy to tell Bear she wasn’t worrying about anything, but she didn’t want to lie. So she did what she usually did and said nothing at all.

  Bear smiled gently.

  “You know, Lily, when you’re working together, everyone on a team needs to know exactly what everyone else can do. It can be a matter of survival for both of us. So, if you feel you can’t do something, don’t feel bad about telling me.”

  “Well …” she said, her voice shaky. “I haven’t really done this kind of climbing before.” Lily thought of the climbing wall at Camp. “Well, maybe just a little bit.”

  Bear nodded and pulled out something that looked like a lot of canvas loops all sewn together. Lily recognised it. It was good to see something familiar.

  “That’s a climbing harness, yeah?”

  “Got it in one. Can you put it on?” Bear asked.

  “Sure,” she said. Lily remembered enough from Camp to do that. She could feel her confidence growing a little.

  The big loop went around her waist, and her legs went through a couple of smaller loops that were tied to it. Meanwhile, Bear did his own harness up, and tightened his helmet. “Got to protect your head,” he said.
“It’s the only one you’ve got.” Lily made sure her helmet was fastened properly too.

  Next, Bear pulled out a steel metal loop. One side was hinged, so that it could snap open and shut. Lily recognised that too.

  “And that’s a … carabiner?”

  “Bingo!” said Bear. “You’ve got a really good memory, Lily.”

  Bear fixed the carabiner onto a buckle on the front of Lily’s harness. Then he took out a gadget that looked like a metal 8, with different sized loops. He snapped one of the loops onto the carabiner.

  “And do you know what this is?” he said. Lily half nodded, though she couldn’t quite remember the actual word. “It’s a descender – it’s what you use to control yourself as you go down. I’ll put an autoblock on the rope below it, and that’ll slow you down even more if you go too fast. All you need to remember is that your right hand is your guide hand and your left is the brake hand. Hold the rope above the descender with your guide hand, and you keep your brake hand on the autoblock. If you let go, the autoblock digs into the rope and stops you.”

  Lily nodded. It was a lot to take in, but she thought she could do it.

  “Right hand to guide, left hand to slow me down,” she said.

  “You’ve got it!” Bear smiled, and peered over the edge. “Now then, this is a fifty-metre rope, so it should be long enough if we do this in stages.”

  Bear whacked some metal pegs into the rock with a hammer, and attached a carabiner to each one. Then he ran the rope through both of the carabiners. He pulled on the ends of the rope until it was exactly halfway through the two. Last of all, he ran the two halves of the rope together through Lily’s descender.

  “We double it up,” he said. “So, once I’m down after you, I’ll just have to tug on one end, and it will all come down after us.”

  Lily’s jaw dropped and her heart thudded. Her confidence had been doing okay – until now. She tried to speak, but no words came. But she knew she had to say it …

  “Am I going to go first?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Bear said quietly. “Only one of us can go at a time, and I can only check you’re fastened on properly if I’m up here with you before you go. But you’re a lot braver than you think, Lily. I know you can do this.”

  Bear started to put the autoblock on, wrapping a red nylon cord around the rope. Lily was so nervous that she wanted to do something to take her mind off it.

  “I think I can remember how to do that,” Lily told Bear.

  And she could. She coiled the red cord around the rope four or five times, and remembered to make sure that none of the loops crossed over another.

  Bear smiled.

  “Absolutely perfect! You’re a natural, Lily!”

  Then it was time to go. Lily’s heart still pounded as she turned her back on the drop. She leaned herself back, and started to walk down the cliff.

  The rope ran easily through the descender. There was no knot to stop her falling. It was just friction that stopped her sliding straight down and hitting the ground at the speed of gravity.

  But it all went well. Lily just kept walking backwards down the cliff, and before long she was standing on the ledge below.

  A couple of minutes later, Bear was standing next to her.

  “You’re great at this!” he said cheerfully. He tugged on one end of the rope. The other end shot up back the way they had come and through the two carabiners in the rock above them. A moment later, the whole rope dropped down at their feet. Bear hammered some more pegs into the rock and fastened the rope to them again.

  The ledge sloped down before the next drop. Bear held onto the rope as he peered over the edge.

  “Hmm.”

  “Is there a problem?” Lily asked nervously.

  “Well, this is an overhang. The ledge sticks out from the mountain. You won’t be able to walk down the cliff, like you just did. You’ll be hanging in midair. But everything else works the same.”

  “That’s fine,” Lily said, suddenly feeling a lot more confident. The first time hadn’t been a problem, so she could do this too.

  Once again Lily found herself back out over a drop. Once she was past the overhang, the cliff face was a couple of metres in front of her. Lily hung vertically on the rope.

  But just like before, the rope glided smoothly through her descender. Soon she was standing on a new ledge. She felt great. She was getting the hang of this.

  Bear joined her again and looked down. Lily saw his face suddenly go thoughtful.

  “Okay,” he said. “This might not be so good.”

  Lily couldn’t see what the problem was. This ledge looked just the same as the last one. Flat bit of rock, cliff face, drop …

  Then she stood next to Bear and looked over the edge.

  “That’s a long way down,” Lily said. “It looks … um, I mean … is it more than fifty metres?”

  Bear nodded.

  “I’d say a hundred. I miscalculated. It’s too long for our fifty-metre rope, even if we don’t double it up.”

  “So …” Lily didn’t like what she was thinking. She looked up at the twenty-metre drop they had just come down. And the overhang at the top.

  Even if they could climb back up the cliff, they would have to hang upside down as they got over the overhang.

  “Are we going back up?” she whispered.

  6

  THIN AIR

  “No,” Bear replied, to Lily’s relief. “We’re done climbing up and down, for the moment.”

  He pointed along the ridge. “Now, we’re going to climb along. That way.”

  The ridge got narrower at the end, like the cliff face was sucking it back in. Eventually there wasn’t any more ridge at all, just cliff. It curved out of sight, so Lily couldn’t see the end of it, but Lily could see flat ground beyond the cliff.

  “So,” Lily said nervously, just to be sure she’d understood. “We’re going to climb around this cliff to get to that ground over there?”

  She couldn’t help noticing that the cliff was extremely vertical.

  Bear smiled. “That’s exactly what we’ll be doing.”

  Lily opened her mouth to say that she really wasn’t very comfortable with that idea.

  Then she closed it again, because it would just be easier to go along with what Bear said.

  But then she remembered what Bear had said about everyone in the team needing to know exactly what everyone else could do. Bear needed to know this. Telling the truth wasn’t making a fuss. In fact, not making a fuss would be like lying.

  “Um. I haven’t done any climbing like this before, Bear,” Lily said. “All my climbing on the wall was up and down.”

  “Well, that’s worth knowing, thank you,” Bear said seriously. “Fortunately we have two things that are really going to help us. First, the right equipment. We’ll still be attached to the rope, and the rope will be attached to the rock. Have a look at this.”

  Bear pulled a bundle of gadgets out of his rucksack. They looked like some strange martial arts toys. Each one had three or four jagged, curved bits of metal on the end of a metal rod. He pushed one into a crack in the cliff, and released a switch. Inside the crack, the blades all sprang apart with a snick.

  “This is a cam,” said Bear. “Try to pull it out.”

  Lily took it with both hands and pulled with all her strength. The cam stayed exactly where it was. Bear pressed the switch again and the blades retracted, and then Lily could pull it out easily.

  “Like you just saw, when it’s in a crack, the blades make sure it stays there,” Bear said.

  “And that’s what the rope will be attached to.”

  “That’s neat.” Lily handed the cam back. “What’s the other thing to have faith in?”

  Bear smiled.

  “The right people. People with the ability to keep their heads and do it properly. And I believe that’s you. You’re brilliant at keeping calm under pressure, Lily.”

  Lily felt herself blush a little. Cou
ld it be true? She kind of liked the idea of being seen that way.

  Bear carried on. “Here’s the plan. I’ll climb along the cliff to the level ground first. I’ll take one end of the rope with me and leave a row of these cams along the way, with the rope going through them. You’ll be fastened to the other end of the rope. When I’m across, you follow. If you slip then the rope will hold you. Every time you come to a cam, just release it and hang it on your harness. You’ll still be held by the rope and cams in front of you. And you keep going.”

  “Okay.” Lily was reassured by how the cam had just stayed stuck in the crack, even when she yanked on it really hard. And Bear’s confidence in her abilities gave her confidence in herself. “Let’s do this,” she said, smiling.

  Bear fastened one end of the rope to a carabiner on his harness, and the other end to a carabiner on hers. In between, the rope lay coiled on the ground. Then Bear jammed the first cam into the cliff, right at the edge, and clipped a carabiner hanging on the end of its handle onto his rope. He started to climb out. The rope uncoiled slowly from where it was lying on the rock. Lily kept a close on eye on where Bear was going as he picked out the footholds in the cliff. She was going to have to take the same route. She noticed Bear was following the same rule as when he guided her off that rocky slope, only moving one hand or foot at a time. She told herself that was what she would do.

  Every couple of metres, Bear put a new cam into the rock and clipped it onto the rope. Soon he was around the curve of the cliff and out of sight. But the rope kept paying out, and Lily heard the clicking of the cams.

  “Okay, I’m here!” Bear called eventually. “I’m going to take up the slack.”

  The coiled rope suddenly paid out a lot more quickly, as Bear pulled it in from his side. Then there was a gentle tug on Lily’s harness. The rope now went straight from her, through the row of cams, and round the cliff to Bear.