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One false move and we were dead. Below us was 1,000 feet of tilting mountainside and empty air. Above us, a 1,000-foot step ladder of ice.

"You crazy fool," I said to myself. "You've brought your wife up here on her first wedding anniversary, only to kill her and yourself."

It had been my idea to climb Mount Whitney that spring. Standing 14,494 feet, Whitney is the highest mountain in the Sierras and in the contiguous United States. I had tried climbing it with a college friend once before, but a snowstorm and altitude sickness had stopped us three-quarters of the way up at Mirror Lake. Somehow I had convinced my bride that this was the way to celebrate our first anniversary.

"We won't get sick if we take three days to climb it," I said. Hardly a ringing endorsement.

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" Jenny asked numbly.

"Nothing to it. We'll carry ice axes. You'll see." I was a rank amateur, trying to sound like Sir Edmund Hillary.

"Wouldn't you rather stay at a bed and breakfast up the coast?" Jenny asked. "Or just go out to a nice restaurant?"

"No," I said. "Anybody can go to a restaurant. That doesn't take any imagination."

Cutting words, but Jenny hardly batted an eye.

That was pretty typical of our first year together. We spent a lot of time sniping. We argued and forgave and argued again. We were as different as night and day. I was extroverted; she was introverted. I was a night owl; she was a morning person. I liked the classics; she liked pop culture. My politics were liberal; hers conservative. Even the smallest details of married life, from how to chop a cucumber to how to fold a T-shirt, were flash points for us.

To be truthful, we were pretty discouraged as our first anniversary approached. All we had ever heard from friends—and fairy tales—was that this was supposed to be our honeymoon year. Three hundred sixty-five days of happy-ever-aftering.

We knew that we should have been praying more—and growing deeper spiritually—but we had a hard time taking our eyes off of each others' faults. We believed that a happy marriage should come easily for two people in love. I wonder how many couples doubt their marriages after a difficult first year. We sure did. After all, if our first year had been so rocky, what could the future hold?

Back on the mountain, I wasn't so sure we had a future at all. From the second campsite at 12,000 feet, the ice-buried trail twisted steeply back and forth 96 times to the ridge—a gain in elevation of 2,000 feet. We were forced to carve our own stair steps with our axes and boots.

After an hour of cutting steps straight up, I felt spent. Grim thoughts kept stealing into my brain. What if our feet slip? What if we get swept away by an avalanche? What if the snow collapses under our weight? Neither of us was wearing spiked crampons on our boots. Though we didn't know it at the time, another Whitney climber had plunged to his death only the week before.

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