Finding Jim describes Susan Oakey-Baker’s struggle to confront the realities of life after the death of her husband, renowned mountain guide Jim Haberl, the first Canadian to summit the most difficult mountain in the world: K2. For fifteen years they had spent time adventuring together around the world: skiing the Himalaya, rafting in Nepal and mountaineering in North America. In time, they got married, solidified a home for themselves in Whistler, British Columbia, and planned on starting a family. But the future Susan had imagined was not meant to be, and when Jim was killed in an avalanche in the University Range of Wrangell - St. Elias National Park in Alaska, she was faced with a loss greater than anything she ever could have expected.
Susan Oakey-Baker will be appearing and singing books at the Banff Mountain Book and Film Festival on Friday, November 1, 2013, at 2:00 p.m. in the Max Bell Auditorium. Tickets are $15.
Day One
Friday, April 30, 1999
I jolt awake at the sudden resonating chime of the doorbell. I lie still, listening. The piercing sound hits me again. I am not dreaming. I glance at the alarm clock: 1:30 a.m. Violent pounding on the front door rattles the window glass. I sweep aside the covers. My feet thud onto the carpet, and within seconds I am in the bathroom. My toes curl on the cold slate tiles. I wrestle with the floppy sleeve of my bathrobe.
Maybe the tenant forgot her key.
I grasp the handrail and thump down the first flight of carpeted stairs. My feet slap across the hardwood of the main floor and onto the next set of stairs. I cling tightly to the railing and swing my body around the final corner, flick on the light and freeze on the landing.
I see Jim’s younger brother Kevin and Jim’s best friend Eric pressed close to the glass. Kevin’s blue eyes seem magnified. Eric’s broad, strong, Norwegian face is set in worry. It’s 1:30 in the morning and they live an hour’s drive from Whistler. I search frantically for a less obvious reason why they would be here. I focus on Kevin’s childlike face for the truth. Our eyes connect. His are open wide, wet. Mine plead for him to prove me wrong. He holds my gaze for a second and then slowly lowers his head.
“No,” I gasp.
I stumble down the last few stairs before my knees buckle. Fear rushes into my lungs faster than I can breathe, as if I have been kicked in the stomach. I am on my hands and knees, head hung low, fingers braced against the cold slate.
Banging. Door rattling. I turn my head to Eric’s worried face, reach up to swipe at the lock. There is a rush of cold air and a battery of panicked footsteps.
Eric crouches to encircle my shoulders with one hard muscular arm, clutches my forearm with his other callused hand, “I’m so sorry, Sue.”
Kevin cups my elbow with one stubby hand, circles my waist with his other arm and coaxes me to my feet. I feel the dampness of my fear under his grip. As I stumble upstairs, I swallow my tears long enough to ask the question: “Is he dead?”
Kevin lowers his gaze and whispers, “Yes.” I lurch forward, my mouth falls open but no sound comes out. Fear snakes around my neck and squeezes my throat. I gag. It slides into my stomach and grips my guts. Slowly it climbs its way into my thoughts.
I search for an escape. Ripped from my anchor, I tumble until I am sick and dizzy. I do not recognize myself.
I slump into the bay window seat and wipe my nose with my sleeve. Eric holds a bunch of toilet paper in front of me. Within minutes, it is a soggy wad in my hand. Kevin pats my arm and rocks back and forth on the edge of the wooden kitchen chair. “Terri and Susan will be here soon,” he says. They are on their way from Vancouver.
My insides churn. I mutter, “I’ve got to see Jim.” Kevin extends his hand to me as I stumble to the rolltop desk to pull out the wedding album. Yes, I need to see him. Where is he? The book splays open in my lap, and I let out a sigh as Jim’s face smiles back at me. Crying, I trace his glossy smooth features with my fingers, the strong turn of his square jaw, the thin line of his lips. I ache to feel the soft warm give of his flesh. Oh, my sweetie.
I wonder if Jim would still have considered himself lucky if he had known he was going to be killed less than two years after our wedding?
I don’t feel lucky now. I feel scared.
I hear soft voices downstairs. Someone kneels in front of me, hands on my thighs. “Oh, Susie, I’m so sorry.”
I raise my gaze to Terri’s big brown, glistening eyes, pull apart the wet tissue in my hand and wordlessly plead to her for help, like a wild animal caught in a leghold trap.
Kevin paces, “I wonder why I’m not crying…” His eyebrows arch. “Maybe it’s because I was the closest to Jim and so have already accepted his death.” I tilt my wet, gaping face to him but say nothing. Stuck. A radio on the wrong frequency.
Should I call family and friends to tell them?
Kevin has broken the news to the Haberl family so thinks I should not wake anyone else up given that it will not change anything. Wide-eyed, he recounts how the news of Jim’s death spread. It was 8 p.m. when Graeme called Kevin. Vicki, Kevin’s wife, was away so he gathered his two children to break the news without her. Seven-year-old Jaslyn burst into tears. Five-year-old Connor’s face went still. Turning his gaze away thoughtfully, grief creasing his brow, he said softly, “Auntie Sue must be so sad.”
When Kevin called his mom to tell her, he first asked whether his dad was there. She replied that he would be home any minute from his meeting. Kevin decided to tell her that Jim had been killed but learned later that his dad had not come home for another hour.
For me, time passes in a void. Finally, at 5 a.m., I call my parents in Vancouver. Eric squeezes my hand as the phone rings.
“Hullo?”
As soon as I hear Dad’s deep, sleepy, suspicious voice, my throat constricts.
“Dad, it’s Sue.” I dig my nails into Eric’s palm.
“Oh, hullo, Sue.”
I take a few gulps of air, hold my breath for a moment, then, “Dad … Jim was killed.” I do not recognize the voice echoing in my ears. I sit up still and straight, shocked at what I have said.
“Oh dear, oh Sue.”
I hear my stepmom, Glenda, say groggily in the background, “What happened?”
“Jim was killed.”
Again I hear those words.
“Oh, no. We’ll be right there.”
There are more calls to make.
“Hi, Marla, it’s me, Sue.” I rest my forehead on my hand.
“Oh hi, Sue,” she says.
“Um, I have some bad news.” I gnaw at my thumbnail.
“What?” she barks.
“Jim was killed.” I close my eyes.
“What? No! No!” she yells.
“Yes, he was.” I trace her name on the paper in front of me and put a check mark beside it.
Ken’s voice in the background: “What happened?”
Marla tells him Jim was killed.
I keep hearing those words, “Jim was killed.” First from Kevin, then from my own mouth, then from family and friends. Jim was killed.
It is like learning to speak a foreign language. I repeat the words but am unclear on their meaning; the conversation is going too quickly. I keep hearing the same words for weeks.
It is light outside. Incredibly, the sun has risen.
Susan leads me upstairs to shower. As I pull the flannel nightgown over my head, the reek of fear stings my nostrils. The hot water pelts my body, but I shiver. I caress my belly and plead, “Please, oh, please let me be pregnant.”
Downstairs, Eric takes phone messages.
“Condolences.” “All my love to Sue.” The news of Jim’s death spreads through word of mouth and over CBC Radio. One friend calls to say she and her fiancé were driving when the announcement aired: “A well-known Canadian mountaineer has been killed in Alaska.” They pulled over to the side of the road and held their breath. The announcer continued: “Jim Haberl, the first Canadian to summit K2, was killed in an avalanche at approximately 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, April 29, in the Wrangell–St. Elias mountain range of Alaska.” They burst into tears.
Where was I at 10:30 a.m.? I was giving a student some extra help in English during recess. I felt relaxed and content. No lightning bolt hit me at 10:30 a.m. I did not collapse into tears. There was no indication that the man I loved, the man around whom I had moulded my future, was dead. No sense that the heart that had beat next to mine for the past seven years as we slept was still. Nothing.
Flowers arrive. A colleague of Jim’s brings pizza. A friend sits on the couch beside me holding my hand. More friends bring food.
Dad and Glenda arrive to take me to Vancouver, to Jim’s parents and the rest of the family. I shift the bouquets of flowers before manoeuvring stiffly into their car. Balanced on the edge of the leather seat, I crane my neck to keep sight of our modest brown and green home, as we turn left out of the cul-de-sac and right out of the subdivision. Then it is gone. Jim and Sue’s place. I pull my gaze away. It’s like raw flesh ripping from the bone.
I shift forward and back, to the right and to the left, like a caged animal. I open my mouth to speak and shut it without saying a word. My father is there in the car, driving, but I feel separated from him by an entire universe. I am being kidnapped.
When we arrive at Mom and Dad Haberl’s three-level retirement townhouse on the west side of Vancouver, the front door is open. I hesitate on the threshold and remember the last time I was here, exactly one week earlier, before Jim left for Alaska. The last time I would ever see him.
Two months before our second wedding anniversary, Jim prepared for a trip to Alaska to climb University Peak with fellow Whistler guides Keith and Graeme. He printed off the usual equipment list from his computer and organized his sleeping bag, tent, fuel, stove, rope, crampons, ice axes, skis, two-way radio, warm outdoor clothing and two weeks of individually packaged dried meals into an 80-litre backpack.
Their flight left early from Seattle on Saturday, April 24, so Jim and I decided, uncharacteristically, to drive down to Vancouver the day before and stay with Jim’s parents so we could connect with friends and family. Since building our home in Whistler – a two-hour drive from Vancouver – we had been coveting time with loved ones.
We chatted with Mom and Dad Haberl that Friday night before Jim headed to Alaska, and as we said good night, his dad dropped his chin, shook Jim’s hand and, with a twinkle in his bright blue eyes, barked, “You know the rules, son.”
Jim nodded his head once and said, “Yup.”
“Good man,” his dad grunted.
I knew Jim’s rules by heart:
The summit is optional, descent is not.
You don’t conquer mountains: they let you climb them or they don’t.
Take care of your climbing partners.
Know when to turn back.
Be precise, be prepared, hone your skills and minimize the risk.
His mom hugged Jim and said, “See you in the morning.”
I raised my eyebrows and asked Jim if she was going to get up to see him off at 3 a.m. “Yup, she’s a good one,” replied Jim. Jim and I curled up together and fell asleep.
Just before he left, Jim bent down over the bed in the dark and kissed me gently on the cheek. I wrapped my arms around his neck, kissed him on the mouth and mumbled, “Be careful. I love you.”
After a four-hour drive to Seattle, a four-hour flight to Anchorage and a four-hour drive in a rental car to Chitina, on the boundary of Wrangell–St. Elias National Park, Jim called that evening from a payphone. My heart raced when I heard his voice, “Hey, sweetie, it’s me.”
It was too windy for the bush plane to fly them in to the Ultima Thule Lodge, so they would bunk down in the tool shed. I pictured the three-by-three-metre weather-beaten shelter on the west bank of the Copper River, remembering it from our trip there the previous year, in May 1998. I smelled the oil and gas that stained the wooden floorboards, and shivered at the memory of the wind filtering through the cracks. I pictured Jim pulling his jacket tightly around him as he walked the grey, windy, deserted streets to the payphone.
Jim chattered on about the spectacular flight to Anchorage. “The Chugatch Mountains look incredible. We should do a ski tour there.”
I laughed because I had suggested that trip the year before but Jim had preferred a bigger objective, and we’d gone to Mount Bona instead. I knew we’d do it now that Jim was ready. I teased him, “Why does it always have to be your idea?”
There was a pause. “I dunno. I sure wish you were here so that we could snuggle in our sleeping bags,” Jim mused.
“Me too,” I sighed. “I love you.”
“Me too.”
Those were our last words.
Excerpt from Finding Jim [1] by Susan Oakey-Baker, Published by Rocky Mountain Books, 368 pages, hardcover. $25.
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