pulled the rope and assessed the cave where I would spend the night. It offered slightly more room than a coffin. The cave sloped upward and narrowed toward the back. I pulled out the bivy gear and arranged things to minimize sliding toward the cave opening. Drizzle began falling as I climbed inside the bivy sack and it increased to a cold, driving rain. Neither the cave nor the bivy sack offered complete protection. After several hours of hard rain, the lower foot of my sleeping bag was soaked with standing water. Waves of panic swept over me as I began to shiver. I curled into a ball to stay warm. A thousand feet up the North Face of Mount Terror, alone with the severed pieces of a climbing rope, I tried to convince myself that I wasn’t trapped there.