The crossing
Dawn on the Three Sisters. The wind has dropped, the snow set hard overnight, and the far side of the glacier is burning pink in the first light.
Between you and it lies a white field smooth enough to skate on. It isn’t. Under the crust, crevasses run deep and blue and silent, bridged by snow that will hold a raven but not a climber.
You carry a probe pole, a bundle of bamboo wands, and a rope team you would trust with your life. Today you may have to.
Drive the probe into the snow. Where it strikes solid ice, it gives a reading: how many hidden crevasses touch that spot, in any of the eight directions. Strike nothing at all, and open ground spreads out ahead of you.
Where you’re certain a crevasse waits, plant a wand so no one steps there. There is one wand for every crevasse. Don’t waste them.
When every crevasse beside a reading is wanded, call the rope team up: everything else around it is probed at once.
Clear every safe step on the glacier and the route is yours. Guess wrong, and you’ll learn how good your rope team really is.
The clock starts at GO. Rope up.