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The morning was a cold one. Concerned about the weather already forming up glacier, we made a decision to rappel back to the ground. It's always a hard decision to bail, and I've made a career of bailing in big places, but it's especially difficult when the next pitch begins with a true 5.10 hand crack. I knew the climbing got much more difficult soon after, but as a devotee of the one-foot-in-front-of-the-other school of thought, I needed to at least try the next step. I stuffed my hands inside the icy crack and climbed. I soon couldn't feel anything below my wrists, but I could see the rough grain inside the crack cutting into my skin. Once the climbing started getting harder, I leaned back, took in the view, and down climbed.
We got snow at our camp on the valley floor that evening, and when Asan finally revealed itself after the storm, its faces were white. In the picture above, Asan is the shrouded thumb on the left side of the frame.