Yosemite Accident Report: backcountry climbing accident leaves two dead, I thought, the words flitting through my mind with the cold daze of shock. I looked down at my bleeding palm, noting without emotion that I could see the tendons of my hand and that I was missing the meat between my thumb and forefinger. I looked over at the one hex nut I swung on, then down at the cloud of dust hovering over the heap of broken granite that entombed my supplies and my boyfriend. Then up the cliff, at the jagged, loose stone and the angled slope above it.

I didn't want to die. Oh, God, I didn't want to die.

I forced myself to put the terror away, focusing on the broken rock above me as if it was merely another climbing route, nothing special. It had a nice incline without any overhangs, the sort of cliff you can lean against as you go up it to take a little of your weight.

Almost like slab climbing, I told myself, staring at the ascent. People can climb slab with one hand. If you're good and it's not too tough of a route, you can climb slab without any hands at all.

My body was shaking. I told it to stop. It didn't.

It didn't matter. I was bleeding and I knew I had to be in shock. I had no supplies and I was in the backcountry. Nobody expected me home for another six days, and my emergency GPS beacon was both three hundred feet below me and buried under a hundred tons of rock. I could hang here on this one little nut and die slowly of thirst and exposure, or I could unhook and climb.

If I fell to my death, at least it would be fast.

I got myself onto the rock face and got my feet into secure positions, then dug my fingers into a solid hold above me. With my bleeding, torn hand, I unclipped myself from the gear, crying out from the pain. I didn't bother trying to take it with me. I didn't have the hands necessary to do it without falling.

Grimly and with wide eyes, I started hauling myself upwards across the granite. My right hand throbbed with pain, and I could barely get my fingers to work. My legs did most of the work getting me up to the broken stone, and though I trembled from pain and adrenaline, I didn't stop to rest. When you're free climbing, every moment you're on the wall is work. You can't rest without a ledge or a rope, and I had neither.