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Chapter 3: Burial

Quicker than thought I was breathless, beaten down, cold snow swirling over my head and down the back of my parka, the avalanche pack dragging back on my shoulders as the snow pounded it.

I tumbled, tossed up and under. My poles disappeared, then my skis. I tried to swim but rushing snow, like heavy surf, beat me down. The snow began to thicken to cement, and I threw my arms in front of my face, scratching and clawing to clear an airspace before it packed in solidly . . .

Stillness. I could feel the adrenaline as a swelling deep in the chest. Panic rose with it. I pushed the panic down, and pushed out against the snow, sweating, swearing. No movement. Sealed in airless black, I pushed and wriggled, and was held immobile, powerless, furiously straining, like a living fossil against the rigid rock.

On a climb, on a rescue, at the edge of control at speed, fear always focused my concentration, cleaned my mind of the extraneous, made me calm. In those moments fear helped me to sharpen my control. Here there was no control, only darkness and terror. I concentrated on where I was, what I knew, how I could survive -- the same bones of thought on which I'd hang action in the open air.

I lay in a more-or-less fetal position, with my left leg stretched out awkwardly behind me. I couldn't move -- the snow was too dense. I couldn't move my arms, but I could clench and unclench my fists. When I did, little bits of the snow flaked from between the fingers of my gloves and fell onto my face. So I was lying on my back and shoulders, head down, face up. I knew that victims get packed in solidly and can't rescue themselves. I was surprised at the darkness -- I had expected light to filter in blue through the snow, as it does in a snowcave or crevasse. Did the darkness mean I was buried deep?

But I had done the right thing, and my arms, crossed before my face, had opened an airspace. If I were calm, if I could control my breathing, I might have air for forty minutes, an hour -- a few buried skiers have lived that long. I wondered how deep I was, and wondered how long it would take Marco to find me.

The thought of Marco calmed me immediately: he was the best skier I had ever seen, with more high-mountain and avalanche experience than all the rest of us combined. I thought of Marco calmly watching me slide, concentrating to remember where I had disappeared. Thumbing his radio to call for help. Skiing out onto the debris left by the slide. Pulling his Skadi out of his shirt. Twisting out of his skis, easily, and pushing them tail-first into the snow. Walking downslope with the Skadi plug in one ear, holding the radio near the snow surface. Fanning it right to left, taking another step downhill, fanning right and left, stepping downhill. I thought that I would hear him when he came near. Rescued skiers have told me they could hear searchers talking and walking above, but for some reason their own shouts were muffled by the snow and inaudible at the surface. The idea that Marco could walk right over me, that I would know it but that he couldn't hear my screams, almost sent me back into panic. "Calm, calm, be calm."

How long had I been buried, and how long would it take him? I started to count, keeping cadence with my shallow breathing, as much to breathe easily, slowly and steadily as anything else. "One. Two. Three. Four." Anna Conrad spent five days buried under the Alpine Meadows slide. Of course, she had plenty of air, since she was protected by the building that collapsed around her. There was that Finn up in Canada, the carpenter who was buried over ten days, tough old bird, and lived to be killed by a bus. I'd never been buried, except up to the waist in a couple of small sloughs, and those experiences had been scary the way a near-fall on a modest rock climb is scary. Exciting scary, as part of the experience, part of the reason you do it. This wasn't like that. Five days of this would drive me nuts. Of course I wouldn't live that long.

What had I done wrong? I could think of no mistake to account for this burial. Every avalanche is a surprise; snow is very complex, and we don't understand it well. Nearly any slope can avalanche, given the right circumstances. A sudden drop in temperature, followed by fresh snow, could create a hidden layer of hoar frost, a weak layer in the snowpack. Or heavy snow over soft, wet, unfrozen ground. Even the phases of the moon seemed to have some influence, because snow responds to tidal forces just as unfrozen water does. I had simply disturbed a heavy layer of new snow lying over a slick, glazed older surface. And perhaps I'd drown here.

I counted. "Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty." About a minute. "Twenty-one. Twenty-two." Something tugged at my right foot. The snow creaked and moved.

"Sam, I've got you. Are you hurt?"

Marco was right above me, his voice loud and clear. I breathed out heavily. My heart slowed, and I could feel my shoulder muscles relax.

"No, I'm fine. Just dig me out!" I yelled. A few seconds later, digging gingerly down along my leg with the aluminum shovel, Marco had reached my chest. I pushed my arms into the light and looked up into blue sky and Marco's tanned, grinning face.

"This job would be easy if every avalanche victim left a ski boot sticking out of the snow," he said. Marco didn't even have his Skadi out. "Can you get up?" He offered me a hand.

"My other leg's still caught. I can't budge it. I think I'll just lie here for now and maybe you can find it for me."

"Right." He stepped out of sight and I could feel the snow moving as he dug to free my left leg. Now that I could relax, it was very comfortable and soothing to lie cradled head down in a snowy bed molded to fit. I unbuckled the straps that held me to my avvy pack. I thought about the things I loved best in life -- powder skiing, bright sunshine, warm granite at Yosemite, sparkling water rushing against a hull, getting regular breaths from a goner, making slow tender love to Carole with the morning sun golden through the window, Koechel 451, cold beer.

Pretty soon Marco was tugging at my left foot and then I settled a bit more firmly on my head as the foot came free from the snow. Carefully I rolled, grasped a proffered hand, and emerged from my sitzmark. My right ski was gone, but my left ski was still clamped to my boot -- or the front end of it, anyway. Usually the broken end of a ski flaps loose, held by the steel edges and unsevered glass fibers. This ski had sheared off clean at the back of the heel binding, the tail gone for good.

"Any sign of my other ski?"

"No. Nothing. You'll have to ski out on one of mine."

I stood in the sunshine, swung my arms, and surveyed the bowl.

"Holy shit."

"Inverosimile, no? I thought you might be crushed."

The whole northern shoulder of Bell had slid. The crown line ran all the way across the crest from the trees out onto the Face. The mouth of Copper Bowl, above Grand Junction, was filled with detritus. It was the biggest, scariest-looking slide I'd ever seen on this mountain, and it could very easily have made me into Rucksack Tartare.

I scraped the snow off my radio. "One-one-two to PHQ," I said.

"Come in, Rucksack."

"Uh, we got a ten-one hundred here but no injuries, repeat, no injuries. Could you send someone out to close off Copper Cut-off? And we'll need a cat to roll out the bottom of Copper Bowl."

"You guys need help?"

"No, I just lost my skis in a slide over here in Copper. We're okay and we're heading down now. But close Copper. It's not skiable."

"Ten-four, Rucksack."

"One-one-two out." Marco had hiked back up a few yards to grab his skis. I dragged my avvy pack out of the hole and we picked our way over the jumbled deposition toward the trees on the left. The light fresh snow from last night had piled into the bottom of the bowl and set up solid as concrete. It lay about in big solid boulders of rock-hard snow, jumbled into the most treacherous footing imaginable. It was like walking on a huge pile of jagged bowling balls. In the trees near the bottom of the Face the snow was still smooth, unmarked, unmoved.

Marco handed me one of his Spalding skis and I stepped into it. We both wear size 9 Langes, and swapping skis is no problem, except that I always have to ski very gently on his gear because he sets his bindings so light. Since I still had half a ski for my left foot, I took the lead, breaking trail through the powder. We traversed through the trees because the avalanche made the bottom of the bowl unskiable, and it was heavy going without poles. Marco skateboarded along behind, poling gamely, his extra foot resting on his heel binding. Two minutes of hard work took us out onto open intermediate terrain in Spar Gulch, where the going was easier, and we just scooted along the rolled and packed snow out of Grand Junction.

It was 8:30, and when we came around Kleenex Corner at the bottom of Spar, half the town stood in line to get on Little Nell and One A. On a sunny powder day in Aspen, everybody wants first tracks. Marco couldn't resist showing off for the crowd. He cut a beautiful series of one-ski slalom turns down Lower Magnifico. I kicked out of my broken ski, shoved it down between my pack and my back, and figure-eighted his tracks. No reason to act humble just because you ain't dead.

In the first-aid room, Fred Bloom and Al Hotchner were waiting, after having skied Little Annie with no dramatics. Pete Meahan and Harry Seitz were there, too.

"You fellas meet with an adventure?" asked Harry.

"Jack Craven called down a minute ago," said Fred. "He wants you to go back and replace your divot."

"What happened?" asked Al.

"It was the new snow over the moguls on Bell, right under the lift," Marco said. He didn't have to add that everyone in town would see the slide as they rode up Five that morning. I was going to be famous.

But Bloom graciously pointed it out. "Rucksack," he said, "by the powers vested in me as mayor of Bell Mountain, I hereby award you the Aspen Mountain Ski Patrol Crash Badge." And he pinned it on my chest. The crash badge was a blue ribbon from some county-fair hog judging. Jerry Mendoza would be glad to be rid of it; I'd have to wear it until some other patroller crashed spectacularly, preferably under the public eye.

No one had anything to add to that. Marco beckoned, and I followed him into the locker room. "If you don't have any other skis here, you can use my Heads," he said. From his locker he pulled out a beautiful pair of Head XR1s, 210cm long. Head made only about a thousand pairs of XR1s, ten or twelve years ago when they first began fooling around with fiberglass. Each ski was built up from four hollow fiberglass tubes, making them light and springy, like a vaulting pole. The skis were made by hand and were the ticket to ride in their time. "Just be careful and don't lose these."

"Right. Thanks, Marco. I didn't even know you had these. You never ski on them."

"I picked them up a couple of months ago, just because of their reputation, you know? I really like the Squadra Corses better so I don't use the Heads."

I grabbed a pair of mismatched poles from the lost and found and we headed back up the mountain, cutting the lift line at One A. When we had settled on the chair and organized our packs and poles, Marco waved a hand in that way some Europeans indicate appalled astonishment: fingers fanned inward, and wiggled vertically from the wrist. "You were very lucky up there," he said. "I've seen people killed in avalanches like that -- crushed. You should set your bindings lighter. If you had gotten rid of your left ski I think you wouldn't have tumbled so much. Maybe you wouldn't have been dragged upside-down, maybe kept your head near the surface. If it had been me -- poof! and I'm out of my bindings."

"Marco, have you ever been buried like that?"

"Twice. Once my arm was broken. Have you been to Pompeii? Both times I kept thinking of the casts they have in the museum there, of the people who died in Pompeii and Herculaneum. Some of them are clawing at the ash, and some just lie there with their arms over their heads. There's even a dog, twisting and snapping at the ash. I kept thinking I would suffocate like them. The first time I dug out someone who had suffocated it made me very ill. The snow had melted and frozen on his face, so he had a mask of clear ice from his throat up to his hair. As the freezing water expanded it had propped his eyes and mouth partway open."

We were quiet until we got on Five and began the long ride over Bell. We looked at the wrecked snow below us in awe.

"Afterwards, when I was rescued, both times I felt more alive than ever," Marco said. "I think the body stores the adrenaline for a little while and you have a high. I thought about making love for a couple of days."

"Yeah," I said. "While you were digging me out I thought of Carole for the first time since she left. I've been pushing her out of my thoughts. It's funny, I came to Aspen to simplify my life, but I brought Carole along and it turned out she was the most complicated thing in the universe. Or we were."

"Carole wasn't meant to be a small-town lady."

"Well, Aspen ain't exactly a hick town. But it wasn't that. We lived at different rates. She had to do things carefully and with style. She took her time. I was always rushing ahead, getting on with it, making the next step right away. I was always a couple of jumps ahead, looking at the goal, and she was always tidying up details, not much interested in the future. We were always yelling at each other. She thought I was thoughtless and impetuous and unfeeling, and I thought she was undisciplined and unable to concentrate on a task. But goddamn, I loved her. She really made it possible for me to come out here, just drop out of a doctoral program and come here knowing that I'd have someone challenging to share things with, someone who wasn't just an Aspen drughead like the rest of you dopes."

Marco, possessor of a degree in economics from the University of Milan, a man who spoke four languages flawlessly, laughed. We worked well as room-mates because we could talk about things other than skiing. To some of the patrol, that made us faggots, or snobs. He filled part of the void Carole left. Cocaine or no, I had come to depend on him a lot.

At the Sundeck, we stashed our avvy packs. Tim had word from the boss. "Craven's down on the race course," said Tim. "You guys are supposed to pick up some snowfencing and go down there. He wants to talk to you, Rucksack."

"Yo," I said, and we spent the rest of the morning helping to clear snow off the course on Ruthie's Run, shovelling, sweeping, footpacking the steep section on Aztec, and sideslipping. The whole Aspen Ski Club was out helping to harden the course for the afternoon's practice, despite the certainty that it would snow again in the night. But there's no more cheerful crowd in the world than a bunch of rich people doing hard physical labor in a good cause.

By mid-morning word of our avalanche had gotten around, and we had to endure more ribbing of the divot variety. Marco astonished one Yalie by knowing all about Resurrection Men.

The way course work goes is you start at the top, sideslipping to bulldoze loose snow into a firmer surface, and gradually work your way down to the bottom, where you get on the lift and go back up to do it again. If a hundred people do this four or five times each, a fresh fall of snow may begin to resemble a racecourse, though it won't fool the racers.

Marco and I fell into the procession about 180 degrees out of phase with Jack Craven -- he was at the top when we were at the bottom, and vice versa, so except for waving at him as we passed over on the lift we didn't have a chance to talk.

We did talk to a couple of the racers. Rusty Hillman and Jerry Hotchner were sideslipping the course with their coach, Dick Bester. Bester used to be a fine downhiller himself, then sold skis for Head, then was a coach for the U.S. ski team, and now, back home in Aspen, coached the ski club kids. Inspecting the course, they moved faster than the worker ants. Rusty and Jerry were already suited up in skins and helmets, and all three rode 220cm downhill skis. Marco and I were footpacking opposite sides of Aztec, the steepest part of the course, when the trio paused at the top of the pitch a few yards above us. Jerry looked worried, and I couldn't blame him.

"Hey Rucksack! Can't you pound this down harder?" he called. "I don't want it sliding on me!"

"Nosepicker," I said, then shouted to Marco: "That's slick enough, Marco. We got it down to knee-deep. These hot-shots ought to be able to cruise through it now."

Rusty hopped around and slid down to stop next to me, grinning. "You lose something this morning?"

"My virginity."

"I believe it. Are you okay?"

"Just pissed at all the bad jokes. I was scared bad."

"I bet. Where'd the Heads come from?"

"Lost my Stratos in the slide. These are Marco's."

"Bester's got a whole bunch of those antiques in his basement. How are they?"

"They pack snow real good. I haven't skied on them yet."

Bester slid down. "Hiya, Rucksack. Rusty, let's concentrate on the course."

"Yeah, boss. See you, Rucksack." He skied off.

"That's a good kid," I told Bester. "How's he going to do here?"

"He should win it. He's skied this course more often than anyone, and he's skied it in soft snow, too. He knows where all the potholes are. Most of the other guys are going to have to dog it. Rusty can tear it up."

"How are you waxing for this stuff?"

"Isn't this a mess? I've got a wax-testing course set up at the bottom of Corkscrew and we're trying to figure it out. If tonight's storm is just like last night's, maybe we'll be okay. Hey, are those your skis?"

"Marco's. Rusty says you've got a bunch."

"I helped design them when I was at Head. Got a serial number on those?"

I lifted a foot and craned around to look at the sidewall of the ski. "Nope."

"What you've got there is a pair of lab skis. I think we made about fifty pairs of those and gave them mostly to racers. Some were good and some were bad. How do you like them?"

"Don't know yet."

"I'd like to look at them later."

"Sure thing."

Bester winked -- he was famous for an avuncular wink, and every kid in town could imitate it -- then followed after Rusty and Jerry. After they skied away, Marco traversed over.

"What did Bester say?" he asked.

"Rusty could win it."

"Did he notice your skis?"

"Yeah. Says he helped design them."

Marco looked down the course, pressing his lower lip between his teeth.

"Said he'd like to see them later," I added.

Marco shook his head, grinned, shrugged and skied back to his side of the course. "Pazzo," I yelled after him, and resumed sideslipping.

By lunch time we were pretty tired. Half the patrol eats early, at about 11:00, before the rush, and half the patrol eats late, at about 1:30. Since we'd made the milk run, we had early eats and headed for the patrol table at the Sundeck.

The patrol has a reserved table, near the door and equipped with a phone, and we're on call while we eat. The table is a great social gathering point, like the life guard's chair at the beach. There are a few patrol groupies in the world, though in a place like Aspen it takes a peculiarly low level of ambition to set one's sights on a powder pig.

The wiseacres were waiting. "Rucksack ate it all this morning."

"Taste good, Rucksack?"

"Alka-Seltzer, Rucksack?"

"Jeez, if Rucksack ever washed his feet, he'd be dead now."

"Good work, Marco, you good dog, you."

"Regular mole-hound."

"Italian mole-hound. Hey Marco, how do you say mole in Italian?"

"It's talpa. It also means dumkopf."

"True," I said. "I augered in this morning. If you need to be reminded that Mother Nature is a bitch, go over and check out the Ridge of Bell."

"I would have said it should take an unusually large charge to make a mogul field slide," said Fred Bloom. "Marco, what'd you cook last night?"

Conversation continued on about that plane while we ate our hamburgers, until the phone rang. It was Jack Craven, and he wanted to talk to me.

Marco thought it was simply because, on paper, I was better-qualified, medically, than anyone else on the patrol, Craven included; I thought it was because Craven simply disliked wiseass Easterners. For whatever reason, Jack Craven, our patrol director, disliked me intensely. In three years on the patrol, credentials notwithstanding, I had never been promoted from Merit One, the lowest pay scale. And he always had something to rag me about. I took the phone from Bloom.

"Hi, Jack."

"Sam, I guess you made a mess of Copper this morning. They tell me it's unskiable."

"Yeah, well I wouldn't send any tourists in there."

"Well, Sam, you know it's race weekend and we just can't spare any snowcats to repair the damage. I really wish you hadn't cut loose like that."

"Jesus, Jack, it wasn't my idea to fill the whole damn bowl." Craven hates that kind of language. "The weather had something to do with it. We could have just left the Ridge of Bell alone and you could be explaining to the Forest Service why we buried half a dozen paying customers this morning."

"Well, Sam, it's a judgment call, and maybe you should have just looked it over and closed it."

"Well maybe I should have, and maybe just no one would have believed that Bell could slide all the way into Copper."

"Okay, Sam, we'll talk about it later. I want you in the office after sweep to talk about first aid class and I want to know just what happened."

"Want Marco there, too?"

"Sounds to me, Sam, like you're the one who screwed up. I guess Marco got you out of a real jam. You're the only one I need to see. After sweep."