Well, we finally made it into the Ghost- it only took us four hours. Most of it had to do the heavy bag of sand our friend sent us with (aka poor directions) but eventually, after getting stuck on a wrong turn and driving in a few circles, we emptied the sand and flew over snow drifts to the Ghost River. Emily sure knows how to drive- I was gripping the seat pretty much the whole way- mostly because when driving conditions get bad, Emily steps on it. But it works.
We decided that time had run out for the Sorcerer that day, so we headed towards Valley of the Birds instead. While we walked, she began talking me out of a funk, and suddenly the day started to look like fun. It was a gorgeous and sunny with no wind (little did we know how rare of a treat that is). We passed The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, a fat piece of ice crag- and kept walking. As we neared our canyon, we realized that there was no easy crossing of the river to get to the ice- we would have to commit to wet feat, or to crossing barefoot- and we had spent all our burliness digging out the bat-mobile (Em’s rig). We decided to hit The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly for a little fix instead.
The next day, armed with the determination, we found our way in super quick. We tromped for two hours through the forest, winding through dense trees, post-holing through a thick snow crust until finally we saw the beautiful ice.
The wind was howling- at times gusting strong enough to knock us over- but we kept moving towards the ice hoping that it would relent.
When we took off our packs, we worried that the gusts would pick them up and drop them somewhere else- so we buried them in a hole and headed up. Emily took the first two pitches winding us up some brittle ice. We looked up on the second pitch and commented that the top pitches looked funky.
But we like it a little funky. I couldn’t figure out which way to begin the third pitch. The middle was just a thin smear of detached ice, the right side would be unprotected mixed climbing, and the left was a thin pillar topped with overhanging ice. Sometimes you wish that ice was just the stuff you kept in your freezer to water down the scotch. First try- I chose wrong. The thin smear up the middle was no fun at all. No pro- and when I swung my tool into it it sounded like wind chimes. A bit too thin. So, I spared Emily a crampon in the head, and moved out left. 
With my left foot on a micro crack in the rock and my right foot gingerly standing on a chandelier, I reached up and over the bulging mushroom to some rotten snice (thats snow thats supposed to be ice). Should I commit? I looked down at my last ice screw- that was in at least fifty percent air- and then I looked up to see that I would have to commit heavily to that pick placement to make the next move. Maybe I’ll just swing that tool a little harder. Finally, without the strength to swing again, the tool vibrates with the sound of “solid” and I move quickly up and over the bulge. Only now, I realize that my entire weight is committed to these overhanging blobs of ice. Ewww. But magically (as one expects from a sorcerer) it worked. It was perfectly climb-able. Blobland.
I must say that as wonderful as ice climbing is. All of this dark magic wind and ghost and sorcerer stuff was starting to give me the creeps. Not to mention, I was starving. I ate a bit at the belay and headed up for the fourth and final “crux” pitch. It was steep and sustained, but nothing compared to pitch three.
Emily and I made it back into the trees when we succumbed to yet another magic: darkness.
But we came prepared with headlamps and some good conversation- before we knew it, we were eating steak and laughing at the wild magic of the Ghost.
