About this time two youngsters, following in our tracks, the whippersnappers, soloed past us. I was about five minutes into building a bomber belay in the hardest ice known to man. Rather than take the flow on, however, they simply skirted to the right, over some briefly loose snow-covered rock, and continued upward. I thought out loud, "Them boys look kinda smart. S-M-R-T." I was thinking that we should follow suit, only to save time, but I didn't verbalize this thought too clearly... until it was sort of too late.

Brian came up, started up, drilled a piece, nearly took off my nose with a crampon, I muttered some stuff I regret, and, pretty darn quickly, Brian downclimbed and sprinted up the right side. Either way would have been fine and within either of our abilities, but... the time. And the ill-timed. Brian, now possessed, called out in no more than a couple of minutes that he was off.