Grafton on ascent in Mineral King valley. (AP Photo/Scott Mattoon)

Park on a slope in Mineral King valley near the treacherous spot. (AP Photo/Scott Mattoon)

Fingers make lousy brakes when you're hurtling down a sheet of ice toward the edge of a cliff and an unknowable void beyond. Same goes for elbows, knees, and even the steel teeth of snowshoes.

So I stabbed my ski pole into the heart of the Sierra Nevada, desperately trying to halt my slide. Three inches of metal pole aren't particularly effective, either, I learned.

Somewhere in the snows of the Sierra Nevada, close to 11,000 feet above sea level, a trail of blood and bits of shredded flesh mark the spot where my recklessness could have killed me. All that stood between me and that cliff was a ski pole, never meant to be used as an emergency brake. Would it snap under the pressure of all my weight, sending me plunging over that cliff?

For most folks, Memorial Day weekend opens the beach season, summons gardeners to their flower beds or conjures dreams of lazy afternoons in the hammock. For me and my buddies, the mountains called.

These were supposed to be days of hard backcountry climbing and euphoric skiing on a bounty of snow, bonus vestige of an epic winter. Deep blue skies. Untouched sugar bowls like you only see in ski movies.

Terror wasn't part of the plan, but that's what the mountains throw at you sometimes.

From a mile off, the route across this expanse looked steep enough that climbing straight up wasn't an option. We would have to traverse it -- a tough slog, probably frustrating, given the angle. But not dangerous-looking. After all, it was early afternoon, that glorious time of day when ice lets down its guard and melts into slush, making for easy footing.

I was in a groove, so I took the lead, tramping hard and fast with my three friends behind me. Matthew called from behind to suggest we take a lower line, for the sake of making the march easier. It's sketchy up here, yes. But like a politician trying to project resolve, I stayed the course.

Along the way, "sketchy" became scary. I kept commanding myself not to look down at the cliffs a couple hundred feet below, but I kept looking down anyway. I was picking my steps with extreme care, kicking my snowshoes deep into the snow and ice, thrusting my poles in hard to steady myself.

Finally, a fear factor kicked in as the slope I was crossing grew so steep that one misstep was certain to send me tumbling. Gravity threatened to overpower the bite of my snowshoes; what was supposed to be soft snow was maddeningly hard. I made a decision: It would be safer to climb straight upward to the rim of the Mineral King valley.

I didn't get two steps before I lost my footing. Suddenly, my friends were receding, watching in horror as I fell toward the cliff band.

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I grasped at the ice with my fingers. Nothing.

Mike shouted, "Use your elbows! Use your elbows!" At least, that's what he recounted later. I never heard him over the scraping sounds of skin on ice.

I WAS clawing at the snow with my elbows, to no avail. The cleats on my snowshoes were pawing uselessly at the slick surface, and I picked up speed. My breathable pants and short-sleeved shirt were my enemies now, their slippery fabric a lubricant between my body and the smooth ice.

The four of us had brought two ice axes along. With long blades custom-made for biting into ice, they are designed for climbing vertically on hard pack, or for just such an emergency fall as this. The technique is called the "self-arrest," and it's simple: Throw the blade into the ice, lean on it, and you're almost guaranteed to stop. An emergency parachute of sorts.

Unfortunately, I wasn't one of the two people carrying an ice ax.

I had an avalanche beacon, which transmits an emergency signal in case I were buried. I had an avalanche probe, for finding a body -- preferably alive -- under the snow. I had a shovel for digging the body out. But no ice ax.

As the traverse had become more treacherous, and as my sense of vulnerability grew, I had played this scene out in my head. I would take my pole and heave it into the snow, safely and swiftly halting my descent. It was the self-arrest technique of last resort, and I never thought I would actually have to try it.

This pole was engineered to steady the hiker and steer the skier, not as a lifesaving lever for 200 pounds of man and gear. It was a telescoping ski pole, the type whose lower shaft slides into its upper to make it more compact for traveling.

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This was the stuff of nightmares, akin to the sickening feeling of an airplane's violent drop in turbulence.

I brought the pole over my head and plunged it into the snow like I was trying to slay a vampire. But in the parlance of mountaineering, it gave me no purchase. I only gained momentum, and somewhere beneath me lay that cliff. Below that -- who knew? A 20-foot drop? A hundred? I had never bothered to take note of that cliff when we were climbing up toward it. Now, the emptiness below threatened to swallow me.

At terminal velocity, I leaned harder on the pole. As hard as I could.

Not particularly strong, I thought, looking at the midpoint where one half of aluminum met the other. It was flexing against the strain of my weight. There's an excellent chance it will break like a twig, I figured. And if it does, I might as well just relax and enjoy the ride over that cliff.

Where was that cliff, anyway? I expected to feel granite any moment -- the warning track before my fall.

The pole groaned and warped, but held. And slowly I began to decelerate.

I came to a stop about halfway down to the cliff, and lay panting as blood trickled from my hand and elbows into the snow. Above me, debris that had fallen from my pack left a trail atop a long, grotesque snow angel where I had flailed against gravity, ice and snow.

My friends were silent. Finally, one spoke up: "Wow, that was scary." And then he proceeded to critique my self-arrest technique, correcting the way I had grasped the pole. We actually argued about it as the blood stain grew.

I hoisted myself back onto my snowshoes and began climbing back up to the "trail," collecting scattered bits of gear along the way. And then I hustled across the remaining 200 feet of the traverse, all adrenaline, trying not to look down.

No one will ever see my blood in the mountains. The snowpack is melting fast in the Sierras; it's probably in a creek somewhere, drifting toward the foothills and the Pacific Ocean.

But I have another reminder in the back of my car. It's the slight bend in my ski pole -- the one that says, "Buy an ice ax."

I wrote the manufacturer of that pole, LEKI USA -- always capitalized, because it's an acronym -- a thank-you note a couple days later, thanking them for making a strong pole. The note made its way around LEKI's office, and the first response I got was very cool, polite and professional.

"As you know, this is not what our poles are used for," a company official wrote, a line that made me chuckle at its "Duh!" subtext. "But, I am glad to know your quick thinking and the security of our product helped you."

A second note from another company official made me laugh out loud.

"I doubt you will ever forget your ice ax again with or without the reminder of a bent section," she wrote. "Oh, and throw away the pants you were wearing; nothing gets that out."

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asap contributor Scott Lindlaw is a reporter in the AP's San Francisco bureau.

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