91ÑÇÉ«´«Ã½

We barreled down the unplowed, frozen road at dawn. Ivory white—no one had been down it since a storm had dropped a blanket of snow just a couple of days before.

I pulled the car into the parking area at the trailhead and turned off the engine. We sat inside in the quiet. It was the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, and my brother and I were making our first winter ascent of a 4,000-foot peak in the mountains of western Maine.