The switchbacks of the Devil’s Stairs were cut directly into the sheer face of the Mount Sunder limestone. He rose three hundred arm-lengths above the floor of the upper gorge at an unbending pitch of twenty-two degrees. Here, the rock cried frozen waterfalls of blue ice that choked the inner ditch. Then it turned the road into a convex, glass-slick ramp sloping toward the void.
Tomas Reed stood at the base of the first switchback, his knees locked against the grade. The heat had plunged past twenty degrees below freezing. The moisture from his breath had formed a rigid white crescent of rime along the collar of his sheepskin vest. In his left hand he held an iron star-drill. In his right, a four-pound steel striking hammer.
“Ten paces ahead!” Kael shouted above the wind, his breath tearing away in ragged white puffs. “Look for the gray granite seam! Don’t drill into the shale. Shale splits under shock like rotten firewood!”
Tomas stepped onto the blue ice. His boots were fitted with forged iron crampons—four spikes under the sole, two under the heel—lashed over the leather with greased harness straps. Each step produced a sharp, ringing crunch as the hardened points bit three-eighths of an inch into the frozen surface.
