Led by guides Markus Needlemeyer, 34, a legendary New England woodsman and Vincentoli Blanteev, 28, a renowned Italian climber, the five man party moved out once again, with McAnus, as usual, bringing up the rear. The first formal stopping point out of camp was a postage stamp sized flat with trees blocking the wind. Of unknown history, Vincentoli dubbed it, "the spot were we couldn't see shit."

     But just a short hike up the trail was indeed a regal view. The north and south peaks of Bigelow first came into full view, and the Sunday River Ski Area with all them lame sunday skiers, could also be perceived in the far southern range. In the distant sky to the west, in a wash of light pink and orange, the dumbra- the color made by paper mill smoke stack effluence as the sun shines upon it. Plowing thru the snow here was increasingly difficult, as if huge blobs of cotton candy were oozing around your knees.

     Along the northeast ridge McAnus was hiking like he was a victim of the ole' rock in the pack trick, while Timur and Markus knew better than to get in the way of Blanteev. He high power chuffed heavy snow ever upwards. No sooner did the starting effort settle down a little than the first in a series of half assed time-wasters occurred. The plan, according to several HAE members, had been for Frodo to move out ahead, breaking trail and taking photos; critical for any guided climb, and especially critical to stumbling along behind him like white trash outside the trailer for the first time that year. Which up here in the great white north is always right after a new years eve party. Novasch indicated early on that he didn't want to have to find the trail himself, like he always normally did. According to one member of the team, the client now simply refused to chuff trail as had been previously discussed; instead he dropped his pack and fumbled for a smoke. Another team member, less certain, got the impression that no plan of any sort had been coordinated ahead of time. "I thought Frodo was there to take pictures, not try and keep up with you guys," said McAnuss' mom when she heard the tale. "I don't know why you guys ain't dead yet, you all just standing around. McAnus could you please find a phone and call me."

     Finally, after "they were hiking up in fucking Maine in the way-assed middle o' winter," festivities wore down, Needlemeyer undertook the job himself, by maneuvering his Tubbs wood snowshoes around Vincentoli and establishing a trail toward the top of Bigelow's North summit, about 1700 vertical feet away. In no particular order the crew shouldered up and shuffled on. McAnus, behind the pack somewhere, was supposed to be riding sag wagon. He would decide which climbers would go on and which, too far behind, would start whining. "I just figured he was back there doing his thing," Needlemeyer says, "I never thought 'bout it again." It was a role that McAnus failed to discern, for the client or himself, as he even passed by Frodo in a cloud of shoe chuffed snow. Some sort of backwoods buzz likely had struck him, compromising his decision making. Compounded by four, the result was the entire group was strung out along the trail, without effective leadership or direction.

     Various members of the group reached the timberline, about 500 vertical feet below the top, around lunch time, and before long a gaggle of hikers formed. Most by now were on booze bottle No. 3, which meant that they would have less than they planned for the descent and subsequent white trash night. The weather had taken quite a turn for the worse, with temperatures plummeting well below zero and a howling Canadian ice wind lashing down on the group. Here, Novasch was to figure out which way the trail went across the challenging shear rock face; the toughest part of the climb, up to the Bigelow Step, a nasty 20 foot cliff that marks the start of the final summit stretch. Once again, for reasons still unclear, that did not happen. Novasch's fellow hiker, Markus, who been to the summit during the '87 Georgia-to-Maine thru hike, ducked down in the shelter of a large boulder, and they started to eat lunch. Markus apparently had not acclimatized well, perhaps for a reason: The stuff that Vincentoli said was his whiskey for hiking was in actuality later discovered to be the 151 Rum, to be used only in hot toddies or in a pinch, as spare fuel for the stove. On days when he might have been acclimatizing with his own sipping bourbon, Markus had instead been borrowing Vincentoli's stuff, and was now paying the price.

     Along with Vincentoli, Markus, Novasch and Bruce McAnus guide, Frodo decided to accept responsibility for finding the trail. "I took it upon myself to finally say, 'Well fuck, I'm freezing my ass off. What's the problem? Who knows which way the trail goes?' " Frodo reported later. The group finished munching whatever they had at the time and started for the summit.

     The trail was anything but visible, however. As soon as they left the shelter of the timber line they faced a dangerous ice and snow coated rock ridge with cornices. Visibility dropped to zero as the storm continued unabated. Vincentoli recalls, "That was when a feeling of panic started to grip my soul." The climbers slowed and grappled for solid footing. Snowshoes were needed for sporadic deep blown drifts, but then the hikers would come out on ice, followed by bare rock, back to deep snow, ice, then rock, and so on. Switching from 'shoes to ice crampons was a brutally slow affair with bare hands exposed to the life threatening elements, and leaving ice crampons on for even a short stretch of rock would quickly dull them into useless hunks of scrap metal. But even more deadly was the opposite, taking a step onto shear ice without properly functioning crampons was very dangerous proposition indeed. By now, some were becoming a little hypnotic; soon, smart people would start acting stupid and would be unable to smarten up, and dumb people were still acting dumb, as if nothing was happening. Climbers 20 feet apart existed in different worlds. As massive as Bigelow is, this close to the top the individual climbers universe is small, claustrophobic, up close and personal, with all thoughts centered on summiting and getting out alive.

     "I remember standing there...feeling utter panic, my stash is going to run out," says a guide. "But at the same time we were there, and there weren't sufficient impediments to stop us or turn us back. Nor was there a deadline to either summit or turn back. There were no cutoff times. We never actually discussed cutoff times."

     "You don't want to get wasted for even an hour up that high," says Neirmeyer, "But there was no talk of turning around. And we never saw McAnus all day."

     Blanteev, a veteran of numerous winter ascents and attempts, pushed on toward the summit, followed by Novasch, Needlemeyer, and Frodo. Frodo attempts to take a photo of any kind was thwarted by the conditions. McAnus finally clambered up much later, so by then more precious time had been lost. By now the ominous frozen ice clouds that whipped the summit were pulling body heat right out of the hikers at an alarming rate. Up there at 4150 feet, at the top of Maine, the men maneuvered around desperately looking for the trail out. Had conditions been different, they could of seen from Canada to NH, with full view of numerous White Mountain peaks, and across the Massachusetts plains, but now it was a struggle to seen even the ground they were standing on.

     The weather seemed to be holding, but none of the group leaders was there to judge; only Blanteev remembers the full extent of anxiety about the possibility that the weather could deteriorate even further. This was true HICE summit fever time. Faced with no obvious threats to the hikers itinerary, like a "Park Closed at Sunset-Go Home" sign, it would be hard for the guides to turn back anybody who was so close- and who had paid so much money for equipment at REI. If a 4 p.m. cutoff for happy hour had applied, as it sometimes did on commercial HAE expeditions, probably the whole crew would have turned around long ago and avoided the desperate attempt. As it was, Novasch, Needlemeyer, Frodo (a Novasch client), Blanteev and then later McAnus had now all summited within ten to 20 minutes minutes of each other.

     Where was McAnus? Needlemeyer, on the summit for an indeterminable amount of time, began to pace. Because the ascent above the timberline had slowed to a survival crawl, the consumption situation was getting tight. No one had been able to catch a buzz or have even have a swig, and the rising panic in the crews voices echoed the tension.

     "Lets get the mother fuck outa here!," Blanteev screamed as soon as McAnus showed up. "I was on three, like my last bottle," Frodo recalls, "And too frozen to drink it, which was the way everyone was." Most didn't realize it, other than maybe Vincentoli, but they were now close to the zero-tolerance point, any further delays or mistakes could prove fatal. Twist an ankle here, get blown off the trail there, and it's later...dude.

     Heading down the northern ridge, opposite of their approach and deeper into the Maine wilderness, without so much as minute for McAnus to catch his breath at the summit, the group was soon strung out again, with various members passing others as individuals resolve and strength ebbed and flowed. Needlemeyer passed McAnus, he was moving slowly and looked tired, but not frightfully so. With him was Frodo. Waves and a few words were exchanged. "I just assumed he (McAnus) would be along, and even before I got down to Bigelow Col I expected him to be right behind me, with all of us going down as a group," says Needlemeyer. "It just never happened that way."

     Blanteev also encountered McAnus on the way down and saw no reason for concern, but never had in these situations. "McAnus has great natural ability. He is very strong and has righteously stubborn powerhouse determination like the Scotsman that he is." Blanteev says, "one has to know McAnus. Everything was always slow with him, but he never failed to come through." Vincintoli and McAnus agreed that the Italian would descend quickly and be ready to bring booze back up to the other climbers who might be running out, effectively leaving Neirmeyer and Novasch to guide Frodo down the mountain on his own.

     The ragged group slowly trickled toward Bigelow Col, internally coated with sweat and externally coated with ice and snow. Tired to the bone, the wet inside, ice outside combination is a recipe for trouble. A stiff wind swept the shallow notch hidden between the North and South Peaks, and frozen clouds covered the vast faces of Bigelow. More clouds accumulated below, in the Carrabassett Valley cut by Rt. 27. Members of the State Police, over coffee and doughnuts in the trooper barracks were reading about how a major storm and cold snap was moving in from Canada. Whether that information was ever relayed by radio to any of the HAE team is uncertain. Vincentoli's radio required a significant amount of time and effort for antenna setup, and in any case, he was the only one who understood Morse code. From up on top, it was tough to tell if the storm was picking up or dissipating.

     Of the group, only Markus and Novasch had been this high on the mountain before; everyone was weary and increasingly hypnotic. McAnus, who didn't want to be left behind, called for shot of JD. They were all carrying, in various containers, a prepared kit of booze and good smoke, material that acts like adrenaline and 'ludes at the same time, to counteract the effects of backwoods panic, or BWP. "If things get bad up there," Novasch had said, "just fire up a spiff. It's like a breath of fresh air." A haebar was fired up and when Vincentoli passed it to Frodo, he perked right up. Needlemeyer then ordered McAnus, who booze bottle was nearly full when it was finally found buried deep in his pack, to switch with Blanteev, who had only a quarter of one left. The laborious trek continued, directly in the teeth of the storm - and into half-assed chaos.

     It was now well past dusk, around 6:30 PM, the disappearing sun reducing earlier grey colors to pitch black. The wind picked up even more, and dry snow was blowing all around. Several inches had fallen down in the valley, but it was impossible to tell if it was snowing or blowing, high up in the Col. To avoid the horrifying prospect of getting lost in the dark, and getting eyes poked out by hidden tree branches, the group would have to set up a camp here as quickly as possible. A stormy night on Bigelow is survivable, but it's a desperate gamble.

     "Coming down into the Col, I was totally beat. I looked back up the Northeast ridge and could barely discern the silhouettes of Frodo and McAnus as they shuffled down the section I had just painstakingly traversed," says Vincentoli. "I could see that these guys were also dog tired. They would take a step or two, maybe slip on some ice and wrench a back muscle staying up, then rest, then take a few more steps... It's not necessarily only gomers who become exhausted and die up in the northern wood." Now HAE guides and their client were worn down, and facing a nasty bivouac less than 200 vertcial feet down from the summit.

    Bigelow Col did have a lean-to, a three sided structure arranged in classic Appalachian Trail fashion, built by the Maine AT Club out of six inch diameter logs. Sturdy constructed and always inhabited by "shelter mice" these structures were most useful during summer rain storms. But they are little more than a wind tunnel under winter conditions. The open face is impossible to close off with anything a backpacker carries, and as usual, any burnable wood within a half mile of a shelter had long since been used up by summer hikers. "You are much better off in some dense wooded area where you can shut down all air flow with a nylon tarp and snow piled up around the perimeter," say Vincentoli, who prefers to avoid AT shelters. None the less the decision, made under desperate circumstances, was to have a go at the lean-to, and Blanteev was too tired to protest effectively.

     Instead he went after what wood he could find. In the late eighties Blanteev still relied on wood fires for cooking, and McAnus required the heat to get his leather boots moving in the morning. With saw and machete, he went on a wilderness stripping rampage that netted quite a pile of wood. Borrowing Novasch's Wishitwouldlite stove and placing it under the wood pile, Vincentoli waited 20 minutes for the gas flames to start a blaze, to no avail. Finally Novasch pulled the stove to cook his dinner. "I can't fucking believe it!" screamed Vincintoli, "I put a gas stove under this wood and it still won't light!" In fact up at this altitude, things are continually wet so any dead wood that looks dry is really little more than some cellulose wrapped around a core of ice.

     The situation had degraded to the point that Blanteev was in a delirious rampage, stumbling around drinking like a drunk, coughing up huge green hawkers from smoking haebars in subzero conditions: symptoms indicating an advanced case of High Impact Camping Edema, or HICE. A mysterious, potentially lethal illness, typically brought on by climbing too high, or too slow, following which a half-assed bivouac is then undertaken in the dark at a location where the wood will not burn and you are too cold and miserable to enjoy happy hour properly. The only real cure for HICE is rapid descent into dry hardwood forest, if the victim remains at high altitude very long, total boredom and stress is the most likely outcome. Worse yet, if the victim happens to be a gomer, death is inevitable.

     Neirmeyer looked at his watch: 9 p.m. The stronger climbers built a half-assed camp by putting up Timur 's tarp across the left half of the lean-to, so that it did little more than howl like a 747 in the raging wind. Frodo was acting strange at camp, sort of hypoxic and wierd. He seemed sort of desperate, his face was frosted and beard frozen. "And clearly he just wanted to get into his sleeping bag to survive," Blanteev reported later. "He was in trouble. He just sat on his butt shivering and tried to cook a hot meal, but his squeeze margarine was frozen solid." Eventually Novasch and Markus got some hot fluids into Frodo and after eating whatever else the others could give him he pulled out his bag and foam pad and crawled in, shivering and babbling incessantly in a crazed manner.

     So the storm, now lacerating snow in horizontal planks, wore on thru the night. Across the lean-to it was Frodo at the far left side, then Blanteev, McAnus, Needlemeyer, with Novasch on the far right. The only one who had protection from the wind was Blanteev, he managed to rig up his survival tent inside the lean-to.

     In the middle of the night Frodo had to get up to take a piss, his agony as the elements mercilessly bore down on him woke the others but they dared not move, and could little more than shout some words of encouragement over the wind snapped tarp. Frodo was thermally shocked so badly by this 30 second venture outside his bag that shivering no longer kept off the cold. "I was completely frozen solid. The cold was just finishing me off," says Frodo, who could hear others shouting at him but couldn't see anyone in the pitch black. "I crawled back in my bag and tried as hard as I could to die. I'd done some great Appalachian Trail hiking. No regrets. I knew that even if I survived the night I would not have the strength to handle the brutal two day hike out. My body was shaking uncontrollably while my limbs felt frozen solid. I constantly fought and adjusted my sleeping bag, trying to get more warmth out if it." Frodo hacked and coughed incessantly.

     Unless done properly, moving around in your sleeping system is a losing proposition, HAE guides will tell you. Lying perfectly still, not even batting an eyelash is critical in sub-zero temperatures. "Let's say you want to err...scratch your scrotum," Blanteev lectures. "Well as you scratch down, cold air rushes in to fill the void where your fingers just were. Then as you scratch up, your fingers push warm air out of the bag." Over the years HAE climbers have developed techniques to deal with airflow problems, including double and even triple baffle systems that slow down and warm up air as it enters the bag, and the proper deployment of Gortex to eliminate excess moisture within the bag without losing heat. "It's kind of like skin diving," Vincentoli continues, "You take in a big gulp of ice cold air and then seal off the vent while you move around inside like crazy, doing what ever you have to do, say, changing socks. As you are about to turn blue you stop moving around and open the vent to breath. Then as you settle in, a down vest or whatever is used to baffle the vent, because it is impossible to stay warm breathing -40 below air." It takes a lot of practice to get it right, and dealing with water, food, flashlights and other gear means the camper must move with patience and skill to avoid "blowing out" a sleeping bag system.

    Before retiring for the night, Novasch scratched out a last entry in the trail register book, found at every AT shelter:

storm still going, no let up, supplies low.
we lost Jones in a crevasse
don't know how much longer we can hold out
the dogs are fighting again
couldn't start the Cuisine Art....
-HAE Jan 2, 1989"

     As the night progressed, bone snapping cold air was in constant motion around the campers. Blanteev stayed awake all night in an attempt to keep warm. Novasch and Needlemeyer slept somewhat better. Somehow McAnus managed to doze and snore for quite a while. Frodo slipped off into advanced stages of hypothermia.

     Dawn slowly arose, stone cold and steel grey. The tarp, quieted by an early morning lull, was starting to make more noise again. With bones stiff from cold and lack of movement, there was no mad rush to go. When several of the guides managed to get out of their bags, their knees buckled and they tumbled back in like broken dolls. But opening a sleeping bag in this cold blows it right out, since the quiescent state of the camper in early morning is not sufficient to warm a bag back up. Eventually three started moving outside their bags, with Frodo and McAnus unmoving.

     The slim hope that early morning mobilization sparked faded when, after an hour both McAnus and Frodo were still in their bags. "Aw come on you guys it ain't that cold out," Novasch said checking his thermometer. "Let's see...humm... it's only -20 below out ya know." After a pause, "WHAT...IT"S FUCKING MINUS 20 BELOW OUT!!," he now shrieked in surprise and started doing a high speed tap dance that looked like Curly getting ready to smack Moe. Blanteev instantly felt colder. "Why ya have to say that you bonehead," he groused at Novasch, and Markus wasn't looking pleased about the announcement either. It was now 10 a.m., and the wind was back as fierce as ever. Blown snow and ice shards filled the lean-to.

     The full extent of their desperation was slowly being comprehended by Vincintoli and Needlemeyer. Frodo was looking deathly bad, a shocked look frozen on his face, and McAnus was totally incapacitated. Vincintoli's boots were so cold that he knew he would have difficulty making it down the jagged decent solo, never mind with two people in tow. Blanteev stiffly bent down and picked up a near empty bottle of booze. Opening it by cracking the top hard on a nearby rock, he bottomed up and waited for the sweet liquid. Nothing. Now tipping it way back and looking in with one eye, he watched in amazement as the whiskey barely inched toward the opening, like a lava flow slowly advancing over some island's village on the Nature Channel. Vincintoli hadn't seen booze that thick since '82, when he and Novasch survived a night of minus 60 below weather on the side of Mt. Monadnock in NH. Perpelexed, he went over and checked the thermometer, an inexpensive key-ring type from REI. After studying it for a moment, he decided that the discrepancy was attributable to the thermometer. Minus 20 below was the lowest graticule on that cheap piece of shit.

     The three huddled and talked options. None seemed to exist. This is going to get real ugly, Vincentoli thought to himself. They could go for help but it was two days of tough hiking to get out, by the time they got back the only thing needed would be body bags, and ice picks to chip out the cadavers. Vincentoli thought that they could dump all equipment but saws and axes, short rope, drag or bounce Frodo and McAnus down, then burn wood while someone went back up for backpacks. No way though, the descent featured lots of radically steep sections, and the only rope available was some clothesline of Vincentoli's. They stood around and smoked while the situation continued to deteriorate.

     Somehow in the middle of all this Timur and Markus started talking about a cabin, pointing down the trail toward the South Peak. "I thought these guys were nuts, totally half-assed and hallucinating they way they were talking," Blanteev recalls.

     Needlemeyer made a fateful decision. He would strike out in the chosen direction, hopefully to locate the shack both he and Novasch vaguely recollected from their '87 Georgia-to-Maine AT hike. It was out there somewhere, waiting. "I suppose it has a fucking nice wood stove too," Vincentoli said sarcastically. "I'm telling ya," was Novasch's only reply.

     Needlemeyer set off, with Vincentoli in tow, walking the AT toward the Southern Peak. "It was implied that these guys would go and get help, though nothing was ever said about succeeding," McAnus says. "Nothing needed to be said." It was survival time, HAE style.

     McAnus tried to crawl after Neirmeyer's party, faltered at the edge of the lean-to, dragged himself back and started to hallucinate. A brew pub stood on the ice a few feet away, he was sure of it, and a bikini clad babe was serving him a pint and chips while the ball game was on. "Don't give up," Blanteev yelled back as he was leaving. "You got to get back and redesign that fucking stupid-assed thermometer!"

     Needlemeyer estimates that they covered the quarter mile in about 15 minutes, but he can only guess, because he was so hung over by then. Was that the cabin? Or was it just another hallucination. No it was an AT latrine, sealed shut with deep snow piled all around. Moving around slowly down past a Douglas Fir stand, an opening in the dense softwoods appeared. They moved closer. Barely standing now in the blasting wind and cold, they peered ahead. A cabin! Neirmeyer could hardly talk. He rasped to Vincentoli who was looking the other way to avoid the wind. Before long they scouted the place and turned back, frozen to the core from the short trek. Back at the lean-to Blanteev and Neirmeyer fell into the shelter and tried to drink some coca made with snow melt, but ended up spilling most of it, so frozen and shaky were their hands.

     "You found it!" Novasch exclaimed. Indeed they had, it was a small shack used by the Forest Service in summer, in conjunction with a fire tower up located on South Peak. But Markus reported that the windows were securely boarded up. The only other feature was a solid wood door with two big flat metal bars locked across it. What about the hinges Timur asked. "Two of them," Vincentoli replied. "Big assed ones with eight wood screws each. No way you're gonna' break that," he finished dejectedly. Novasch stopped jumping up and down to keep warm and looked at them funny. He went over to his backpack and slowly pulled something out. Whatever it was it had a clean metal finish, and Timur talked to it under his breath as he removed it from it's protective cloth.

     There, glowing softly in all it's majestical power and mythical might, forged by the ageless strength of industrial power US Pat Pend in Portland far away, was Novasch's Leatherman Pocket Tool. Vincentoli's jaw dropped. Markus stared, feeling it's power draw him in. He wanted to try it, he wanted it in his hand. "Yesss my precious they are our friends yesss," Timur hissed as his eyes widened and glowed with light reflected off the polished, deeply engraved surface. Clouds raced overhead, yet howling winds stopped, and all of the mountain shuttered to think that such presence could appear deep in the interior lands of the great ancestors. Canada Jay, king of the Northern Birds, dropped the trail mix McAnus had left out and flew away in fear. Frodo turned uneasily in a hypnotic sleep, now disturbed by dark visions of death as ice cold blood cursed his veins.

     "Gimme that fucking thing will ya," Vincentoli said, realizing that it was going to be up to Markus and him to get the job done. They now had a chance. A Leatherman is a powerful tool that has never failed HAE in breaking and entering, and Markus and Vincentoli were determined to make good with it. At the cabin however, it soon became apparent that it was going to be a slow, agonizing process. Gloves were useless. A screw could be backed out maybe one turn, two at the most, before stopping to warm up frost bit bare hands. Taking turns, they worked non-stop for several hours in the bitter cold. "That was the toughest break-in I've ever done," Markus says, "usually you just pop a lock or bust some glass, but not up there." Several screw heads were stripped, but steel Leatherman pliers jaws snapped them out until finally the last one was gone. On the count of three they both heaved hard, sliding the door upward maybe 16 inches before it jammed between the door frame and the two flat iron bars. It was just enough to crawl thru, and they were inside in a jiffy, casing the place like a couple of ex-cons. "We did it, we fucking did it!" Vincentoli yelled. "And it has a stove too," Markus said.

     News travels fast up in the northern wood, so it wasn't long before Frodo, still wrapped in his sleeping bag was helped over by Timur and Vincentoli, and plunked right down next to the stove. Timur found a stash of wood under a table, and soon the stove had the place warmed up above zero, maybe to the mid 20's. Smoke glowed and booze flowed, the celebration party was on, except for Frodo. Totally shocked from his ordeal, and remembering last nights sojourn to relieve himself, he wouldn't touch any liquid after 3 p.m. By now the storm had swept thru, leaving a brilliantly clear, cold and windy New England afternoon. Outside the cabin, Sunday River Ski Area could now been seen way across the other side of the Carrabassett valley. Except for a couple trips back to pick up equipment, the team stayed holed up inside, with backpacks blocking the door gap.

     The party didn't last. First of all the wood started to run out. Timur and Vincentoli raided a dilapidated old storage shed out behind the cabin, taking anything they could pry or cut lose, including some fallen down pieces of the shed itself. Secondly, everyone was totally bone tired from the survival effort, and knew that the descent was not going to be easy. And third, Frodo, although out of danger, was not improving much beyond that. "I know the feeling," Blanteev said remembering his earlier years, "when you get hypothermic and frost bit up that bad it takes months to recover your thermal balance, even the slightest breeze will make you shutter and shake." Frodo sat by the stove and did his best to look perky and chipper, eating dinner, laughing with the gang, and drinking, at least until late afternoon, some hot coca. But the scared and haunted, glassy eyed look of a man who had been pulled from a frozen death came back across his face when nobody was looking. It told the true story. Frodo would never be the same again.

     Morning, January 3, 1989. The team arises and the last of the wood is burned. The key-ring thermometer still reads -20. "Look McAnus," Vincentoli says, knowing that as a principal engineer for large, Seattle based, equipment supplier, McAnus was responsible for designing outdoor equipment used by millions throughout the world. "Can't you design one of these things so it will read down to -60?" McAnus reminded Vincentoli that if he wasn't such a cheap bastard, he would have purchased a real thermometer, and instead hassled Vincentoli to pass him the smoke. Camp is packed up. Twenty bucks and an apologetic sounding note is left in the cabin log, a flimsy attempt to compensate for the destruction and trash left behind. The hike is on.

     The descent started out well enough, at least for the first couple of dozen steps. Then the steep pitch slowed the hikers to a crawl. Knarly ice covered rock cliffs, frozen waterfalls, blowdown, and the occasional deep snow drift made hiking a torturously hard, anxiety ridden process. "It was crazy," Markus said, " Guys were in trouble all over the place. They would just sit on their snowshoes and slide down ice, which is nuts....you snag a crampon point, compound fracture." Novasch was first down the trail and after a particularly nasty 30 foot section he turned to watch Vincentoli negotiate the trail, while furiously digging out his camera. Vincentoli caught a snowshoe and went flying down to faceplant directly in front of the camera wielding Novasch. "Man that was great Vincentoli...I got it on film!" Novasch roared and was so taken back with laughter that he slid down into a Douglas Fir tree, which promptly dumped snow all over him. Blanteev was visably shaken up by the incident, but not enough to prevent him from digging out his camera in hopes of catching one of the other guys flying snowshoe act. But two guys nonchalantly standing around, totally covered with snow and holding cameras, was a sure tip off, and the rest of the pack skirted the section without mishap.

A classic face plant by Vincentoli

     Arriving at about 2000 feet by late afternoon, the group is physically and mentally fatigued from the days hiking, and the past weeks ordeal. Here the mountain finally lets up a little, they are in a wonderful open mixed hardwood and birch forest with flowing water. Camp is made next to a stream. It's a classic Half Ass camp, with Blanteev, in a typical pre-happy hour panic, screaming at McAnus as they put up shelter. "Man you are fucking crazy," McAnus said in response to Vincentoli's tirade. Vincentoli wanted the tent guyed down quickly, and McAnus was moving too slow. "McAnus was off stool thumping or somethin' and it was getting dark," Vincentoli recalled, "I knew we had to get the tent up right away, before dark, so that firewood could be collected. Otherwise Frodo would freeze his ass off." All HAE members feared cutting down firewood in the dark, a dangerous endeavor that could result in a log smash or eye poke-out by unseen tree branches, while freezing your butt off away from the campfire. As the sun sets the crew, lead by Vincentoli, wholesale clear cuts a huge tract of forest. The subsequent fire is plenty big enough to keep Frodo from freezing, and also be tracked by satellite.

     It's last night on the mountain, affectionately called "white trash night" by the guys, but there ain't much to party with. Most of the stuff was hammered back up in the cabin. Fed and hydrated, the crew crashes out.

     Vincentoli Blanteev stays up late, tending to the fire that is keeping Frodo alive. It's now late in the moon filled night, and with the adventure winding down, he is finally at peace with himself. A tree booms in the distance. Standing, slowly, he breaths in sub-zero air. He opens his jacket and wool shirt, letting wilderness blend with his core. The cold is not felt. The roaring wind is not heard. Blanteev feels the essence of the great northern wood flow within him, his awe and respect for it's power, his confidance to tame it for his purposes flows in his veins. He is the lone figure. A survivor, a gladiator standing in the arena, awaiting the next challenge. He will be back. He will defy it's power again. Nostrils flare. His eyes wide, reflecting the light of burning embers, look upward toward the summit. Raising his arm and shaking his pointed fist he yells; "You're mine.....you hear that?....YOU ARE FUCKING MINE!!" He lets out a long howl toward the shimmering moon. For a fleeting moment, he is one with the wild.

     In the morning they will pack up, and after a long, hard hike arrive at the parking lot.

     Windburned, hoarse, and 10 pounds lighter, Markus Needlemeyer, is just out of the HAE expedition vehicle at a Burger King on the Maine Turnpike, enjoying a Whopper with Cheese. The previous few hours had been spent digging the van out of the AT parking lot and loading up gear, and haggling with Maine officials over Timur Novasch's garbage removal citation. At a State Highway rest area, Novasch had deposited a huge bag of household garbage in a can that was labeled "No Household Garbage." The bureaucrats didn't see any reason not to fine the person driving, even though he was not a member of Novasch's immediate family.

     A weathered pile a gear sits unpacked in the van. The phones inside the rest area are overloading as the expedition members call home to mom, family and friends throughout Massachusetts. Glad to have her son back alive, Mrs. McAnus says she doesn't mind the collect call late at night. Neirmeyer makes calls and spends hours getting his story out, defending decisions questioned by backpackers around the county, fending off arguments made in hindsight. It's not haebars on the mountian that's making him hoarse now.

     "We made some mistakes, some little mistakes, along the way, but did we blunder and half-ass things? No I don't think so," Bruce McAnus says. The record speaks for itself, if not for Novasch's management skills, then of Needlemeyer's skills as a guide and Blanteev's hardiness. Five summited, and all of them made it back home. Timur 's idea to bring Frodo along was really independent of our actions," Needlemeyer says. "His actions may have affected us, but our actions did not affect him."

     John Layne did not fare as well, of course, despite the meticulous approach of HAE. No one knows why he elected to join HAE, instead of not risking life and limb by staying home. The trash and destruction wrought by them under the duress of the moment stays on the mountain. Vincentoli lost a pair of gloves and some rope, McAnus lost stove equipment, and Frodo's favorite water bottle melted by the last night's fire.

     And now the future of HAE expeditions is under intense discussion. The primary point of contention has been whether or not guided clients even belong on high-altitude HAE trips, whether their presence endangers the entire crew. When, on April 1, told reporters, after an HAE pizza and beer dinner function, that Frodo would not have nade it if I hadn't used the other HAE guides to insure the client's survival, angered members were quick to respond.

     "Weak people are weeded out by the mountain early," insisted McAnus, "while the rest are early out of weed. If you expect somebody to take care of you, the mountains knows that and you will get into trouble straight away- and not get very far before you die. Climbing Northern New England mountains in the middle of the winter is self-regulating."

     Friends of Novasch also got their two cents in. "People die up in the White Mountains all the time," says Novasch's girlfriend. She made it clear that she does not think that guiding is the issue. "The good hikers, they are all fucking nuts. Just because people are being guided doesn't mean that they ain't fucking nuts too. That's why those guys go do that half-assed stuff."

     John Layne continues: "Bruce McAnus, he wasn't baby-sitting me on the summit. And Neirmeyer and Vincentoli sacrificed to save my frozen ass. The rest of the guys took care of themselves. Everybody had their own odyssey going."

     Took care of themselves. Their own odyssey.

     In retrospect, it makes sense to question whether clients should ever be on their own in such potentially dangerous situations, whether a HAE guide should ever let a client go on a storm ridden, winter mountaineering trip that could potentially cost him his life. Arguably, a guide-to-client ratio of 4-to-1 wasn't, and ain't enough on Northern New England winter peaks such as Bigelow. When trouble hit, McAnus was a non-factor, and Novasch wasn't paying attention, leaving only Needlemeyer and Blanteev to go for help. "Future expedition guidelines may specify at least 6 HAE guides for every client," Blanteev muses.

     Historically, the prime directive of HAE has been to "Walk away from it all." But up in the death zone, the very concept of walking away from it all changes so radically that nobody really wants to try it. Though a client on a HAE expedition might not have realized it, everyone that high must be prepared to save an extra haebar for themselves. "Be prepared," is the Boy Scout slogan, and even during the thrill of summiting there can be no illusions about that. No guide, at any price, can revive mind and body frozen by the great northern wilderness.

     On a practical level, there are undoubtedly tactics that future HAE expeditions may consider. They may have more concrete plans for smoking dope. They may arrange for more booze to be carried up. And their determination to avoid bad gas at podunk service stations and fast food joints may be heightened to the point that they arrive at the launch point on time.

     "I don't think you need to be the world's best climber to survive the White Mountains in the winter," says an HAE member. "You just have to be one hell of a good sub-zero weather backpacker." Many experienced mountaineers, though, argue that hard-and-fast rules- including ones like 5 p.m. happy hour- cannot be imposed on the White Mountains, that the history of HAE trips is built around improvisation and flexibility.

     But now matter how it is approached, the Bigelow trip has shown that HAE is not the routine adventure being advertised by the State of Maine tourist commission. "Part of summiting in the winter is taking chances," points out Blanteev. "You have to throw the Blisters Dice a little bit. If you have bad luck, karmic burn, or mistakes are made, you will be returning in a body bag. I probably shouldn't point this out, but that's the wonderful thing about it all."

     "Because the great white north will always have the last word...eh?"