Dean jogged up the hill to ice park, hoping to find Penny and Mick, and perhaps Donald Ryland, before confronting Jerome Shipton. From what he could see from the roadway bridge the upper path was empty. Up the gorge, there were no climbers tacked to the icy walls. He hesitated, wondering if they had chosen a lower climbing spot, below the bridge that spanned the gorge. No, he guessed. The others might be below, but Shipton would attempt the same climb where he had fallen two weeks before. The spot was out of sight from where Dean stood. The day was overcast and absent the warming glow of the sun, felt colder than usual. Dean wished he'd taken time to dress more warmly as he hurried down the penstock path toward where Shipton's severed line had been tethered. He moved up the steel trestle by the ice climbing area designated The Schoolroom. As he hurried down the narrow plank catwalk atop the penstock, he caught sight of a woman stumbling toward him. She clung to the metal railing as if her life depended on it, stumbling toward him, blocking his progress.
The woman, a buxom blonde about forty, Dean guessed, was clothed in a fashion magazine outfit, designed for après snow bunny activity, not actually doing anything in the great outdoors. She was furious. Dean pegged her to be Jerome Shipton's companion.
"If he thinks I'm going put those stupid things on my feet and swing down there like some mountain goat, he's crazier than I am for coming out here in the first place." She talked to Dean as if any fool out here in the wilderness should be fully versed in everyone else's activity. "God, I must have been drunker than I thought I was! Guys are so incredibly stupid!"
"Where is he?" Dean asked as he tried to move around the irate woman on the narrow walkway. She motioned over her shoulder.
"All I was supposed to do was take his damned picture, just because some jerk didn't believe he'd been up here and done it! He didn't say I had to climb down on some rope and hang by my thumbs! And he has the nerve to call this shit exciting and romantic! He promised to take me to Telluride, not some God forsaken place out in the effing woods where I could kill myself!" She wiped a hand across her tear stained face, smudging an abundance of makeup. "So, I'm a chicken. Big deal! Like I'm going to lose sleep over that one! Better a live chicken than a dead rooster. Tell him I clucked my way back to the motel and the fireplace-if you see the bastard before he kills himself!" She shoved a camera at Dean, an expensive looking Nikon, freeing her other hand to more securely grasp the rail. "Here, you take his stupid picture." She swung by him, oblivious that she was rubbing her ample chest against him in the passing. She moved down the catwalk, swinging her designer-encased butt.