Chapter Five
Scott hadn’t asked if Lily herself had ridden in a helicopter before. She hadn’t thought it mattered, but now that they were inside the noisy beast, rising straight into the air while her stomach stayed on the ground, she was having second thoughts about volunteering for this mission.
She gritted her teeth and focused on not losing her breakfast. Shelby lay between Lily’s feet, head up and ears back, but obedient to the command Lily had given her to stay.
Next to them, between Scott’s feet, Hunter let out a high-pitched whine. “It’s okay, boy.” Scott patted the dog. He glanced at Lily. “He’s never liked flying.”
“Have the two of you flown a lot?” she asked.
“A few times.”
“For avalanche rescue work?”
“Yeah. Nothing inbounds, but we’ve responded to several backcountry slides.”
“Has Hunter found people who were buried?” She and Shelby had spent hours training with people who volunteered to be buried in snow caves and “rescued” by the dogs, but she had yet to participate in a real rescue effort.
“He has. He made his first find less than five minutes into his very first search.”
She almost smiled at the pride in his voice. She got it. Seeing your dog succeed was every bit as satisfying as achieving something yourself.
Scott glanced at her, his expression more sober now. “None of them were alive,” he said. “The people he found, I mean. Even though we got to them within half an hour in one case, we were still too late.”
“They tell us that in the training,” she said. Most searches are body searches, she remembered her first instructor saying.
“That’s just the reality of what we do,” he said.
“Dogs do make live finds sometimes,” she said. “There was a handler who spoke to us at my last Wbr training class.”
“Was it Ed Hayes?” he asked.
“Yes. And his dog.”
“Xena. Yeah, I know him. Everybody knows Ed and Xena. Because he’s the only person most of us have ever met who did have a live find. Or at least one that wasn’t made immediately after the avalanche. Most of the time our dogs aren’t on scene that quickly.”
“Do you ever think about that?” she asked. “I mean, why we’re even doing this if the chances are so minuscule that we’ll save someone?”
“I think about it all the time,” he said. “Especially every time I have to justify requesting more money for people who think they’re just paying for patrollers to have an excuse to bring their dog to work each day.”
“What do you tell them?”
He looked down at Hunter, who was silent now and lying at Scott’s feet.
“I point out that dogs are great PR. Customers love dogs. They love seeing them on the slopes. Then I tell them if there’s a chance to save even one life we should take it.
And I tell them that every single person who has ever lost a loved one due to an avalanche would say the same. ”
She looked away, voice rendered useless by the tears that clogged her throat.
But she would choke to death before she cried in front of Scott.
So she dug her fingernails into her palms and looked straight ahead, staring at the back of the pilot’s head and wondering how deep the snow would be where they were going.
SCOTT THOUGHT ABOUT Clark on days like today, all blue sky and deep powder. His best friend’s idea of heaven was first tracks on snow as light as feathers. Clark whooped and hollered as he skimmed over the surface with all the speed and agility of a cheetah.
He was doing just that the last time Scott saw him, leaving lines in the snow like a swooping signature on clean white paper.
One moment Scott was admiring the way Clark made it look so easy and listening to his friend’s shouts echoing off the surrounding mountains, and the next he was watching in horror as the whole top of a mountain fell down on him, like a building toppling.
Clark was wearing an avalanche beacon, but Scott couldn’t find the signal. Much later, they would discover the beacon had been torn from his body by the force of the avalanche. It was two days before they found him, after hundreds of hours of probing by dozens of volunteers.
A dog could have found him sooner. Maybe not soon enough to save his life, but it would have saved his family and friends two days of agony. Even that was worth something, wasn’t it?
“Look down there!” the pilot shouted over the roar of the engines and rotors and pointed to their right.
Scott leaned forward and craned to see out the right side of the aircraft.
There, as if a giant had dragged two fingers through cake frosting, was the clear outline of ski tracks, leading from the woods that marked the ski area border, across a clearing and into the national forest.
The chopper rose and circled back, then arced down to hover low to the far left of the tracks. “I can’t land in this snow!” the pilot shouted. “You’re going to have to throw out your gear and jump out after it.”
Lily stared at him, wide-eyed. Scott picked up his skis and tossed them out the door.
His pack followed, then her skis and pack.
When he reached for Shelby, Lily finally sprang to action.
“You’re not throwing her anywhere,” she said.
Before he could say anything, she hoisted the dog into her arms, moved to the door, and jumped.
THE SNOW WAS deep and soft as a featherbed, but it still made for an awkward landing.
Lily landed on her back, with Shelby sprawled across her.
The dog scrambled away, and she sat up just in time to see Scott, with Hunter in his arms, make his exit.
As soon as he hit the ground, the chopper rose again.
She got up and started collecting their gear. She had to dig for one ski, but they recovered everything, and within a few minutes she was upright and ready to go. She stomped her feet, making an even place to stand on her skis.
Scott skied up beside her. “I wasn’t going to throw your dog,” he said. “I wouldn’t do that.”
She nodded. One thing she did know about him was that he took care of his dog. “It got me out of the chopper in a hurry, anyway,” she said. She looked around them. “Where are the tracks?” Except for the spot where they had landed, the landscape appeared to be a smooth expanse of white.
“This way.” Scott started to follow the tree line east. In a few minutes he stopped and pointed one pole at the line of ski tracks.
Lily was startled at how faint they were.
“Later in the day, they’ll be invisible in the sun,” he said.
“It’s only the way the light is slanting right now that helps them stand out. ”
They decided to flank the tracks, the better to keep them in sight, and set out.
There was enough of a downhill slant to the terrain to help them navigate without much problem on skis, but the dogs had to fight the snow, porpoising through the deepest stashes.
“They’re going to wear themselves out,” Lily said.
“Ski behind me,” Scott said. “The dogs can follow in our tracks.”
She fell in behind him, and they commanded the dogs to do the same.
The canines still struggled at times, but the going was a little easier.
The tracks they had been following led into another thick stand of trees.
Scott slid in between two trunks, and Lily followed.
They wound their way in and out, stopping from time to time to reorient and make sure they were still following the faint track.
“We’re almost out of the trees,” Scott said when they had been skiing about fifteen minutes.
Five minutes later, they emerged, then stopped and stared. Two sets of tracks extended across the snow in front of them.
“Is that the track we were following?” She pointed with one ski pole to the smaller, fainter lines on the left.
“I think so,” Scott said.
“Then who is that?” She indicated the second set of tracks—longer skis and deeper indentations, laid out scarcely a foot from the smaller, fainter tracks.
Scott looked back over his shoulder. “I don’t know. But I didn’t see any other tracks back there.”
“Neither did I,” she said. “Do we keep following them?”
“Let’s backtrack and see if we can figure out where these came from.”
They skied along the edge of the clearing and found the place where the second tracks emerged.
Then they followed the trail back into the woods.
The tracks wound in and out among the trees, sometimes crossing the boy’s tracks, sometimes taking a different path.
Lily was following Scott and almost collided with his back when he stopped suddenly.
She lurched to one side to avoid running over his skis.
“What is it?” she asked.
“It’s a campsite.” He moved forward, and she was able to see around him.
The snow was beaten down, and someone had built a lean-to covered with pine boughs, snow thick on top of the boughs.
Directly in front of the lean-to was the remains of a campfire, a thin tendril of smoke rising from the ashes.
“They must have been here last night,” she said.
Scott leaned over and fished something bright yellow from the snow. A candy wrapper. He walked to the lean-to and looked inside. “Looks like a couple of people spent the night here,” he said. “There are depressions in the snow.”
He took out his radio and attempted to transmit, but all they could hear was static. “Let’s get out from under these trees,” he said, and skied past her.
She followed him away from the campsite. By the time she reached his side, he was talking on the radio. “I’m sure someone spent the night here. Two people. And the two sets of ski tracks look like a kid and an adult.”
“We can try to get some other searchers into the area.” Lily thought she recognized the voice of the sheriff. “But there’s another storm cell headed this way. Forecasters are saying it could drop another three to five inches of snow.”
“Let us follow the tracks a little farther,” Scott said. “They can’t have left the camp very long ago. The ashes of the fire are still warm.”
They set out once more. The two ski tracks traveled in an almost straight line across the snow, on a slope that grew progressively steeper. If not for the seriousness of their mission, Lily might have enjoyed the almost unblemished powder and the crisp air.
The two humans might have skied for hours, but they had to stop to water the dogs and give them something to eat.
She and Scott drank from their water bottles and ate gorp and beef jerky.
“Where do you think they’re going?” she asked.
“I mean, besides farther into the woods? Are there any roads out here?”
“I’d have to check on a map to be sure, but I think this is all designated wilderness.
No roads. The only town is the ghost town of Pandora.
I think there are some summer homes there, and a general store that operates in the summer months.
But I’m pretty sure you have to cross two ridges to get there from here.
Not an easy trip to make any time of year, but especially in winter. ”
“Jackson isn’t strong enough to ski all day in this terrain,” she said. “He’s just a kid. And he’s not especially big for his age.”
“At least we know as long as he’s moving, he’s alive, and the exercise will keep him warmer.” He stowed his water bottle and adjusted his pack. “Come on. You’re right about a kid not being able to ski all day. And he’ll ski slower. That should give us a chance to catch up with them.”
“If someone found Jackson and decided to spend the night rather than try to make it back to the resort in the snowstorm, why didn’t they turn around this morning and head for the resort?” she asked. “Why move farther away?”
“I don’t know,” Scott said. “Maybe they got confused? We’ll have to ask them when we find them.”
“What are we going to do if we see them?” Lily asked.
“I don’t know,” Scott said. “I guess that depends on how they act.”
They hadn’t gone much farther before it began to snow again—big flakes, drifting gently down at first, but gradually getting heavier and heavier, until it was like standing in a swirl of feathers. “Hurry,” Scott said. “The snow is going to fill in the tracks.”
Lily tried to hurry, but she was exhausted, and the snow clung to her goggles, so that she had to pause every few feet to wipe them clear. At last, Scott stopped. “I can’t see the tracks anymore,” he said.
“We have to stop, for the dogs’ sake, if not our own,” she said. Both dogs lagged behind now, tongues hanging out, fur coats caked with snow.
“You’re right.” He pulled out a water dish and filled it for the pups.
Lily looked around them. She had no idea where they were. Scott’s radio popped and crackled. “Scott, are you there?”
“I’m here,” Scott answered.
“Were you able to follow the tracks?” the sheriff asked.
“We were, until it started snowing hard. We can scarcely make out anything now.”
“The storm came in faster than we expected,” the sheriff said.
“I don’t think there’s anything more we can do out here right now,” Scott said.
“Can they pick us up?” Lily asked. Now that she was standing still, she was shivering, and fatigue dragged at her, as if she were hauling a sled full of bricks behind her.
“The helicopter is grounded until the weather clears,” the sheriff said.
Scott looked at her. “I heard,” she said. “What are we going to do?”
“You can try to ski out,” the sheriff said.
They both looked back the way they had come—the route was rough, and the last half of the journey would be uphill. “I can’t do it,” Lily said. “And I don’t think the dogs can, either.”
“We’ve got emergency supplies,” Scott said. “We’ll make camp and spend the night. In the morning we can decide on our next steps.”
“Roger that. We’ll be in touch.”
Scott hooked the radio back onto his pack. Silence closed in around them. Snow had gathered on their shoulders and the tops of their helmets. “Come on,” Scott said. “Let’s ski back into the woods. We’ll have more shelter there.”
The woods were farther away than Lily remembered. “Tell me again why we didn’t come out here on snowmobile,” she said.
“It’s a wilderness area,” he said. “No motorized vehicle traffic allowed.”
“Not even in an emergency?” she asked, her voice rising sharply on the last word.
“Maybe there wasn’t time to get permission,” Scott said.
She fell silent. There was no sense debating what they might have done. They needed to focus on getting through the night.
At last, they entered the trees. Immediately the brunt of the storm lessened. By silent consensus they avoided the camp where they believed Jackson and his companion had spent the night. Scott led them to a small clearing and stopped. “This looks good,” he said.
They stood still for a moment, not speaking. The silence of the snowy woods closed around them, making her feel a million miles away from anyone else. If the loneliness of this place spooked her, what would it feel like to a little boy, so far from everyone he knew and loved?