Intrawest Corp.

Books by Seth

Ski tuning video

Equipment advice

Snowdeath, the novel

Contact us!

Search Now:

Chapter 5: Storm

The heavy snow whirling out of the darkness at once softened and
reflected the streetlamps and storefronts of Aspen. Light suffused the
air, but little was visible. A foghorn night. Night and fog.

Inside the Little Nell bar the air was warm and moist and noisy, the
light scattered warmly golden off wood and brass, beer glasses, blonde heads and bare arms. Fred Bloom leaned back against the bar in his usual spot, next to the corner where the waitresses picked up their drink orders, where he could abuse them happily through the early evening. Al, Jerry and Doug, the
rest of the avalanchero squadron, occupied succeeding barstools, line
astern. Bloom blinked at me as I walked over.

"Marco never checked in," I said.

Fred blinked again. "Did you check the -- "

"I've already phoned around. He's not at the Jerome or Cooper Street,
and the hospital hasn't heard from him. No luck with the cops or the
sheriff's office, and none of the cat drivers has seen him."

"What about Craven?" asked Al.

"I haven't told Craven yet."

Jerry and Doug had already put down their beers and started to untangle
their parkas, heaped thickly over the back of a booth.

"Time for a huddle," Fred said. "Back to the shack, rescue rangers."

I asked Kutch, the barkeep, to watch out for Marco, and led the parade
back to the locker room. It took a couple of minutes to get Tim Belden
on the line.

"Yo," he said.

"It's Sam. What's it doing now?"

"As predicted. Blowing twenty, gusting thirty. Five degrees and falling.
Barometer still going down. It could be ugly by midnight. If you guys
want to come back up, you'd better do it soon. Sure as hell you're not
gonna see any tracks in this stuff."

"Okay, Tim. Maybe one of you'd better get out and stand by to start
things up. I'll call Craven."

A mountain search and rescue in the best of circumstances requires a lot
of manpower, and there's always some risk to the searchers. A night
search, in a midwinter storm, is a genuinely hazardous undertaking. The
cost and danger involved are the reasons it's illegal in Colorado, and in
most states, to ski out-of- bounds. Ski patrolmen shouldn't have to risk
their lives looking for lost skiers. Looking for a lost friend is something else. Everyone would pitch in.

Nonetheless, certain formalities were to be observed. The search would
have to be authorized by the patrol leader. The Forest Service, in the
person of the local ranger, would be notified. So would the local
volunteer mountain search and rescue team, the guys who pulled out
injured hikers and climbers in the summer months. The sheriff's
department and the town cops would keep track of what we were doing, and they'd check the bars and restaurants in Aspen and Basalt to make sure
Marco hadn't just slipped by us.

Craven wasn't happy about tackling any of it. "Sam, are you sure you
didn't misunderstand Marco's intentions this evening?" he said, in that
annoying quiet flat voice. "You had some reason to be upset toward the
end of the day."

"Marco is a responsible guy," I said, trying to sound reasonable. "He's
never failed to check out before. His gear isn't in his locker. No one's
seen him. His girlfriend was flying in today -- Jesus Christ, I'll have
to call her -- so I'm pretty certain he's not off romancing some floozy.
He's hurt or something, and I guarantee he's still on the mountain,
Jack."

"Yes. Well. I guess we'd better find him."

"Do you mind if some of us head up right away?"

"Go ahead, but don't start the lifts."

"Okay, Jack. Thanks."

"Keep me posted, Sam."

"Will do."

I called home. Hildy answered.

"Hi, Rucksack. You guys working late?"

"Yeah, Hildy. We got hung up here because the new snow has the
racecourse all screwed up. We'll be real late."

"Can you put Marco on?"

"He's still out there shoveling snow or he'd have called you himself. I
just came in to get us some coffee. Listen, make yourself some eats and
we'll call you again a little later."

"Okay, Rucksack. Tell Marco to hurry home. I've only got the weekend."

So Marco wasn't at the trailer and Hildy wasn't alarmed yet.

The five of us climbed back into our boots, rounded up our skis, radios,
and packs, plus a headlamp and a couple of flares each. Fred got on the
horn to the cat crew and in a few minutes we climbed over the tracks and
into the bed of a big Thiokol.

The machine ground steadily upward along the race course. As the lights
of town sank below us, the night closed in. The snowcat's headlights
couldn't penetrate the swirling snow. As we stood behind the cab, on top
of our piled skis, our universe flashed on and off in the orange brilliance of
the warning beacon on the cab roof. It wasn't good for night vision,
staring briefly for detail in the storm before the blank night closed
down again, second by second by second. Each of us ended up studying the
darkness at trailside, shutting our eyes rhythmically to seal out the
pounding glare.

Above Aztec, where Ruthie's leveled out, the trees offered less
protection from the west wind. The wind spilled over the treetops in
torrents, cascading white out of the darkness. There was nothing to see
at trailside. At the point where I had last seen Marco, I banged on the
cab roof, and the Thiokol halted. We piled out on the lee side, and
groped to step into our bindings. The headlamps showed mostly swirling
snow.

"I'm gonna search along the area boundary!" I shouted against the wind.
"Al, I want you to search the right side of Ruthie's. Watch for tracks
leading into the woods. Fred, take Jerry and Doug and cover the
adjoining trails. Hit Roch, Kreuzeck, and Corkscrew, and take a look in
Corkscrew Gulley just in case he managed to slide under the netting
there. Al, ski slowly and look sharp. Stop in Spring Pitch and wait for
me. Let's go."

The guys disappeared. I skated into the wind to the edge of the woods,
and skied slowly toward Aztec. The new snow lay deep and creamy in the
shelter of the trees. The wind would rapidly erase any tracks leading
off the trail here. Beyond the area boundary the terrain drops away,
falling 3000 feet through Keno Gulch to Castle Creek. It's avalanche
country, deep snow slumping off short cliffs, laced with deadfall. An
expert can ski it when conditions are right; we'd even lost a twelve
year old kid down there once, and found him unhurt in the morning,
sitting scared but healthy in a snow cave he'd dug near the creek bank.
Marco would have had no reason to head out that way. Even if he'd gone
there, his tracks would be covered by now.

If he'd lost it at the top of Aztec, though, he might have cartwheeled
over the race-course netting and into the woods, and Harry might not
have seen him. I could imagine Marco tucking into Aztec, trying, with no
one to watch, to build a 50mph head of steam for the roll that would
launch him over the steepest part of the course. If one of those fragile
knees exploded on landing, he might have tumbled into the forest. I
walked down the steep edge of Aztec, ski-tips pointed into the woods. I
leaned forward, wishing the beam from my headlamp deeper into the blind
maelstrom. I searched for depressions in the drifts, screaming Marco's
name into the wind.

Nothing.

Where Spring Pitch runs into Dago Cut Road, Al stood in the shelter of
the bank, visible only by the thin glow of his headlamp.

"Any luck, Rucksack?" he shouted.

"Nothing. Check out the right side of Strawpile, will you? I'm going to
run the road." Once more I followed the edge of the forest, skiing
slowly along the gentle slope of the work road at the area boundary.
Here, well below the ridgeline, the trail was protected from the main
force of the wind. Visibility improved, but still I saw nothing
promising. The new snow lay unbroken and untracked along the trail's
edge. A switchback turned me west, into the wind, and snowflakes flew up
the beam of my headlamp like oncoming fireflies. As the trail turned
east I found the wind at my back. Now the flakes rushed away from me,
fleeing down the beam as if frightened at my approach. I followed, and
the panicked snowflakes brought me shortly onto Norway Slope, the bottom
of the race course.

Another Thiokol idled by the brightly lighted clinic door. Inside,
Craven directed a modest bustle: half a dozen more patrollers, recalled
from their homes, were suiting up. The avvy guys stamped about,
windblown snow iced into their hair and mustaches, dripping on the
concrete floor.

"Not a goddamn thing," Fred Bloom reported.

"What did you check?" Craven wanted to know.

"Kreuzeck, Roch, Ruthie's, Aztec, Dago, Super 8, Corkscrew, Strawpile
and the Gulley. Everything below Zig-Zaugg."

"You only had five guys. You only checked one side of each trail."

"Right."

"Okay, we go back up with twice the horses. We double up and check both
sides of every trail."

"Sure. But we're not gonna see much."

"Maybe we'll see something."

This time twelve of us climbed onto the cat. It was tight, even with
four guys sitting on top of the cab and Craven up front with the driver.
Once again we lurched up the race course and unloaded in the wind, now
roaring harder than ever. We split off in pairs to beat the bushes; Al
and I went down Aztec again, and this time I zig-zagged across the hill,
looking for any sign Marco might have left on the race course or its
fencing. I stuck my pole deep into unfamiliar drifts, but in the night
wind, by the feeble glow of my headlamp, every drift was strange.

By nine o'clock we were down again, cold, hungry and discouraged. The
wind seemed to have slackened, but that just meant the heavy snowfall
would lie thick, even and undisturbed. The team had crisscrossed the
stands of trees between Ruthie's and Silver Queen, between Super 8 and
Corkscrew.

"I don't think he's inside the area," said Craven. "If he's up there,
we're not going to find him tonight. You'd all better go home. He may
still crawl out on his own. The sheriff's department will keep an eye on
the Castle Creek road."

"What about searching Keno Gulch, Jack?" I asked.

"Not at night," he said. "It's out of the question."

There was some grumbling. I grunted.

"How many avalanches do you normally take in any 24-hour period?" Craven asked me. "Okay, okay. I'm sorry. I'll let a couple of people go down Keno after dawn. I can spare one avvy guy and a couple of alternates.
There's more race course practice tomorrow, and more snowshovelling, and
more control work. Everybody go home. Be here early."

Craven was right. We weren't going to find anything else in that
weather, and pushing on would only get someone else hurt. If he was
going to roll out of the woods down at Castle Creek, three hours should
have been plenty. Marco was hurt too badly to move, and I could only
hope he was able to dig himself a cave and wait for help.

As I swept snow off the Saab I realized that finding a badly hurt man
hidden in a snow cave was going to be impossible, unless he had his
Skadi transmitting. If not, we might not ever find him.

Marco could be dead by morning.

I stood still, thinking about that, staring into the submarine light
cast the streetlamps in the falling snow. And for the first time in that
long, ugly day I felt the cold. It came up from the ground, through the
soles of my boots, and from the steel roof of the car, encrusted with rime, through the palms of my gloves. It came up the nerves and veins of my legs and arms, softening the muscles, and it filled my groin and chest. The cold
settled around my heart, damp and heavy. This was what Art Conover's
limp white face had warned me: Marco could die. Carole could die. Maggy
could die. Rucksack could die.

I sat in the car, by habit reaching under my seat to feel the .32. Then
I held tight to the steering wheel, remembering Cora Wonder, remembering
the cabby knifed on Lenox Avenue, the kid thrown off the roof on 155th
St. I could remember a hundred or so deaths in New York, twenty or so in
Aspen.

In New York I came to know some of the homicide cops. When the
paramedic crew got to a death too late, sometimes the cops were already
there, roping off the scene, organizing the crowd. But when we got there
to carry off a breathing bleeding body, DOA or gone later, the homicide
guys always turned up wanting to know if the victim said anything in the
back of the van.

I didn't have to do this. I could go back to Columbia Presbyterian, back
to slicing up cats, tracing their dyed axons through the ganglia. I
could scramble for another $8,000 NSF grant to do another year's work
and finish my dissertation. I could be the only ski patrolman in
Colorado with a doctorate in the physiology of the brain. I could go to
work in any state hospital and have any number of depressives and
psychotics to look at, any variety of shrinks and pushers to consult
with. I could live in hospital corridors under fluorescent lights, have
a nice apartment at the end of a long airless hall on the fourteenth
floor of a fortress built to hold off a depraved neighborhood.

Or I could go on skiing, just feeling the rush underfoot, the rise and
fall of the terrain, the clear sweet wind. Just handling the simple
fractures, the clean bleeders, the disoriented social drinkers felled by
the thin air. This was better by far.

Unlike Marco, I wasn't born to the mountains. Aspen wasn't a return to
my own element. The mountains were my choice, my escape from a horror. I
felt now that I had steeped too long in that horror, that it permeated
me like the dye shot through the ganglia. Where I went, it went; you can
run, but you can't hide.

I started the car. It died. I started it again, and it gasped, hunting
for its idle. I gasped too, as suddenly the tears came, and I rolled my
forehead against the steering wheel.

After a minute I was able to put the car in gear and drive home.

Hildy came bouncing out the front door of the trailer as I shut off the
ignition and climbed out of the car. Her dark hair glowed, backlit by
the porch light. She started down the steps, then, when she saw that I
was alone, stopped.

"Where's Marco?" she asked.

"Come on inside. I'll explain."

"Is something wrong?"

"Come inside."

In the light, I peeled out of my old parka, dropped it on the floor, and
sprawled in a hard kitchen chair. I hadn't realized how weary I was, how
hungry and wet. I drank orange juice from the quart carton.

"Where's Marco?" Hildy repeated. She sat opposite me, elbows on the
table, leaning forward for an answer.

"Marco's missing. He didn't come down after sweep."

"What do you mean, missing?"

"No one knows where he is. The last time anyone saw him was halfway
through sweep, up on Ruthie's. He could be anywhere in the woods up
there."

"He could be hurt?"

"Yeah."

"Did you look for him?" Hildy's voice rose, and she stood up, a hand on
her cheek as if it hurt there.

"Yes, we looked. We looked hard. We'll look again as soon as it's
light."

"God, Sam, what if he's hurt bad?"

"Marco knows how to survive in the mountains, Hildy. He'll come down in
the morning. You'll see. In the morning."