Climbing With The Guys: Trial By Fire and Ice

After 10 minutes I unstick the entire pick and muscle up two small overhangs. I try to pull my tired bones over the final ledge, while the boys giggle at my impersonation of a beached whale rolling in sand.

"Just doing my part to break stereotypes," I say.

The other climbers break through the ice with a touch of grace I lack. I watch Elliot fluidly swing his leg over a ledge and carefully push himself above the ice.

As I untie the rope from my harness, Jacob walks two feet away and goes to town on the glacier. As I look around, I notice three other fellow climbers are doing the same. All of a sudden my own bladder feels like an overstuffed backpack.

Jacob asks if I want some water.

I'm parched, but I cannot take aboard any more liquid.

Jacob points to a tiny hill about 200 feet and three crevasses away, and I decide to brave the long and dangerous trail to the so-called bathroom site. I walk as fast as I can in plastic boots and crampons along the edges of the crevasses. When I come to the last of the footprints, I can't believe the trail has ended. The hill slopes only about an inch out of the sightline of the rest of the group. I look around, but I am afraid to move farther down because everyone knows hidden crevasses can swallow whole helicopters. After 10 minutes of careful deliberation, I decide it is just not worth it. So I walk slowly back to the climbing area.

Jacob asks if I want to climb again, but I loosen my harness. All I want is a white porcelain bowl behind a door. Back at camp I find a large tree about a mile away that works fine.

By the time I get back to the campsite I am exhausted. I settle on a rock as Jacob feasts on cold tuna curry. I can't be bothered to unlace my plastic boot so I just pull until it comes loose, but somehow in the process I kick myself in the face.

Jacob cackles as I give him a bewildered stare. Then, "Oh my God, Cali. Did you break your tooth?"

I feel my face for blood but find only a chunk of dirt lodged in my front teeth.

Two days later, standing in the bathroom of my apartment, I had this horrid urge to blow-dry my hair and mascara my eyelashes.

Later, I met with the other ice climbers for our debriefing. I was all primped and polished, but all the boys looked the same as ever. At the end of the meeting, one of them asked, with brotherly affection, if I had noticed I was the only girl on the trip.

"I did and I didn't," I said, and headed for the gym to pump some iron.