CHAPTER 20As Matt stood up to his waist in the water, he held to the bottom rung of the ladder and looked downstream along the wall, hoping to see Spotty or Kurt. He saw only the formidable black shine of the rock. He called out; but no answer came back.
The fear returned for a moment, until he thought of Spotty down there somewhere without glasses. He thought of the Grotto’s ten commandments and kept going. He didn’t risk being dragged away by the current, but began a traverse along the vertical wall—the same technique a lone mountain climber uses crossing a high rock face. He hung on to the ladder with his left hand, leaned far downstream, and drove a piton into the wall with his right hand. He clipped a karabiner into the piton eye, pushed an end of the rope through the karabiner’s gat
