While Dean had no desire to participate in the new and perilous sport of ice climbing, he didn't share Cynthia total perplexity at why a sane human being would even consider subjecting himself or herself to such uncomfortable danger. When her son Randy, visiting Bird Song over his Christmas college break, had expressed an interest in the sport, she had a fit. It made her dizzy just to see the magazine pictures of the climbers, she'd said.
Bird Song was now officially at full capacity and would remain so for the next few days. The three north-side second floor rooms contained Fred, Gladys Turnbull and a pretty female climber named Penny. Across the hall were Effie and Claire, with Edith and her son in the rear bedroom. The three third floor rooms contained six ice climbers while Donald Ryland remained in the small first floor quarters.
Dean introduced himself to the large gathering in the parlor, trying without success to remember names. The sole name he retained was Mick, the jolly outgoing spokesman for the group, who seemed to know all of the others.
The room was a-chatter with foreign conversation, the words having nothing to do with national roots but the fanatic avocation of the gathered guests. These mountaineering folk talked a different language. Bergschrunds, couloirs, moats and seracs peppered conversations-animated tales of past ascents of both ice and stone. These incredibly tuned climbers were as at home on rock-face cliffs as frozen water falls, the steeper and higher the better, and by the sound of it, the world was getting a whole lot smaller. They were a well-traveled group for their uniformly young ages. At least Dean had heard of Quebec, the Alps, and France, but locations and climbs like Cerro Torre in Patagonia (the place, not the clothing), Frankenjura, Orizaba and Cayambe were places he never knew existed.
"God," he said at one point, "I used to think I was in pretty good shape when I was biking a lot. When I rode the Ride the Rockies bike tour, I was proud as punch when I finished it. You guys talk about spending overnights, hanging from a hammock sling, half way up some cliff on the other side of the world! I can't imagine trying to sleep with just a couple of little steel pegs hammered into the rock the only thing holding me from a couple of thousand foot drop!"
"Pitons," Don Ryland corrected him with a smile, as he entered the room and joined the group. "Not 'little steel pegs.'"
"At least they're embedded in rock. Ice seems a whole lot less permanent."