Chapter 15
Clouds darkened distant on the midmorning horizon as Jon, Steve, and Bram stood in the newly dug avalanche pit, examining the snow’s layers.
With optimistic eagerness Jon noted there had been no collapsing crust or cracks in the snowpack as they climbed or as they dug.
Steve frowned, poking at the base of the pit’s wall.
Bram shooed Zach away to sit with the rest of the group on the sheltered side of Mount Mariah’s rocky summit. They ate the sandwiches Steve had made that morning and pretended they weren’t listening in, eyes sliding covetously down the cup of Mariah Bowl.
Steve stood and laid the blade of his shovel flat on a pillar of snow he’d isolated in the pit, handle facing his chest. Thwap, thwap, thwap.
He hit the shovel almost gently with his hand, first swinging from only his wrist before hinging at the elbow, all while counting aloud.
When he hit fourteen, the column of snow peeled toward him, slid forward, and collapsed.
Zach’s chest tightened. A year ago the mothers had gotten a similar result, hadn’t they? He tried to remember how quickly the column had failed during their test, their discussion after, but the memory of his own disappointment drowned out everything else.
Steve knit his brows and shook his head, staring at the floor of the pit.
“I mean—that’s pretty great,” Jon said. “No way we’ll trigger anything with the loose stuff buried so far down. Look how deep it split off! And it didn’t propagate all the way across.”
Steve muttered low as if he didn’t want the rest of the group to hear. Zach made out something about depth hoar, dry slab.
“Come on,” Shane said. “It’s fine.”
Jon nodded. “Up here is gonna be the most windswept, exposed like it is, you know? So maybe it’s slightly iffy here, but it’ll only get safer the lower we go. And yesterday the Bowl was skied out—packed solid. Makes for a great base.”
Again Steve squatted down, running a gloved finger horizontally along the snow near the pit’s bottom where the column had fractured.
Crystals shot out around his hand. “I don’t know, guys.
” He stirred a handful of the loose snow.
“I gotta say I don’t like the way the split propagated, you see here?
How it carried off some of the column? The avalanche report this morning said we’re looking at level two conditions.
Which is to be expected after a big snow, but—it’s not nothing.
Means that maybe an avy won’t happen on its own.
But human triggered—more likely. And we’ve got Zach and Russ. Something to consider.”
Bram crossed his arms, eyes gone to glassy Underself at facing anything other than immediate compliance. “What we need here is a game plan. This can’t be the first time you’re seeing similar conditions. I mean—it’s your job to figure this out.”
“Exactly,” Shane said.
“I hear you.” Steve’s voice shifted to a lower register. “But maybe the boys should go down a different way.”
Bram rubbed heavily at his chin. “What I want to know is what’s a safe way down the Bowl. In these conditions.”
“Russ can handle it,” Dave chimed in.
“Right,” Bram said. “If that’s what you’re worried about—my kid can manage the skiing fine.”
Zach’s insides went alight. His father believed in him.
Maybe Zach should just ask why Bram hadn’t used his name in so long.
Maybe that was the point of Bram avoiding it, a kind of test. And maybe, similar to the column test Steve had just done, it was to see if he held together by speaking up. Or if he broke apart.
“It’s just—there’s—or there should be—a different risk calculation when there’s kids involved.
Want to make sure I put that out there. That we’re still in the green, but not as green as I’d like.
And I need to make sure we’re all on the same page about that.
” Steve paused, leaving space for either father to speak.
Bram and Dave stayed silent. “Right,” Steve said.
“If we’re going to do this,” he pointed, “we ski down over that way, and we stop in those trees halfway down. I’ve skied Mariah enough to know where to find a more forgiving degree.
But down below and over here on skier’s left it’s far steeper.
Not saying it’s a hundred percent safe if we do that. But it’s safest.”
“Nothing in life’s a hundred percent safe,” Bram said.
Across Jon’s face stretched a strained smile. “Look, I don’t think that’s necessary. But yeah, that area’s less steep. It’s gotta be under thirty degrees, even. So there’s, like, not enough steepness to have a slide, basically.”
Zach watched his father reevaluate Jon in real time, sweeping away his judgment over the younger man’s dreadlocks, his casual entitlement, his vaping, his worn clothes. Jon grew the special shine of a man of action who was smart and reasonable. Which for Bram meant agreeing with Bram.
But hadn’t this same conversation happened before?
The mothers had said things were right at the edge, but tipped too far into unsafe.
What had made the difference between then and now?
Zach’s hands itched, gripping his poles tight as if he might set them up for the triangle test to verify Steve’s and Jon’s assessment the way his mother had taught him.
He tried to imagine rising and instructing the group, and felt his voice stopped up in his throat behind a kind of brittle mesh slowly, painstakingly installed there to prevent defiance.
No. It was impossible to even picture. And anyway, they were the adults.
Steve and Jon were both experts. Even if Bram didn’t know things about the backcountry, they did.
What Zach could see easily, what did feel simple, natural, was imagining the powder opening beneath his skis, the speed and joy of it.
Fantasy after fantasy jumped up unbidden.
Bram patting him on the back after the run, impressed.
Zach telling his classmates he’d bagged Mariah Bowl, their faces finally shifting from fear and pity to respect, even jealousy.
“We can regroup in those trees for extra protection to wait before we hike back up.” Steve pointed again at a large group of mature pines downhill and to the right. “That’ll make the hike up safer, too, hiking through the trees.”
Jon shrugged. “I don’t think cutting the run short’s necessary.”
“We’ve all worked hard to get up here. Wouldn’t want to overcorrect,” Bram said.
Steve flinched. “I wouldn’t say it’s an ‘overcorrection.’ Again, personally, I’d rather the boys skip it altogether.
And that section we’re talking about skiing is close to the line, safety-wise.
Meaning it’s safe enough I won’t say it’s a no-go.
But it’s a different risk calculation with the boys here. For me.”
“Whatever.” Shane shrugged. “If Jon’s good to go, so am I.”
“I wouldn’t’ve brought my kid up here if he couldn’t handle it.” Bram forced a smile, but his eyes were hard fire as he focused on Steve. “I know you’re not implying Dave and I would do anything like that, are you?”
“Oh, no, I mean,” Steve stammered, skin going red. “You’re his father and all, just. No, that’s not what—”
“Good,” Bram cut him off coolly. “So are we agreed on the game plan?”
Jon gave a double thumbs-up. “Absolutely!”
“Sure,” Pike said. “I’ll defer to the experts. So I’m in.”
“What do you think, Russ?” Dave asked. “You up for it, tough guy?”
“I’m not, like, going to be the only one who doesn’t go,” Russ grumbled.
Bram gave Russ an approving punch to the shoulder. “Way to man up.”
“It’s colder than hell.” Pike rubbed his gloved hands together grimly. “Are we ready or what?”
“Yep.” Dave agreed, smile brimming with impatience. “What’s the verdict? We all in?”
Zach said nothing, waiting for Bram to ask his choice. Then Zach would say he’d ski the Bowl, too, of course he would, and then maybe his dad would turn a warm, approving light on him.
Bram glowered at the guide. “Well?”
“Yeah,” Steve said. “So long as we do that route, okay. As long as you’re—they’re—the boys—are okay with the risk. And we all understand.”
He looked pointedly at Zach, who looked to his father.
“Great, we’re in! So. You’re the expert, Jon.” Bram slapped a palm on Jon’s back, ignoring the way Steve twitched at his tacit dismissal. “Want to lay out the plan?”
Zach squared his shoulders, physically fighting off his disappointment. Once again his father had spoken for him, decided for him, as if Zach weren’t even there to speak for himself.
The group peered downhill as Jon pointed out the key landmarks of the agreed route. “We’ll drop in over there on skier’s right, where it’s a gentler slope, then we’ll go down until we hit those trees there. See? About a third of the way?” Everyone assented. “We’ll rally there.”
Zach felt an electric rush of anticipation, a contagious confidence at the men’s certainty that the mountain was on their side.
Yes, it was good he hadn’t cast a shadow on this. The Bowl, the sky, the horizon, it was all so beautiful, and he’d ski beautifully, too, and Bram would be proud.
“What order’ll we go in?” Russ asked.
“Why, bud, wanna go first?” Jon teased.
“No way,” Russ flushed and shook his head vehemently. “I guarantee I am like, the worst skier here.”
“You’re going to do great.” Dave shoved his son lightly with an elbow in a way that made Zach swallow down a barbed envy.
Russ side-eyed his father. “Whatever.”
Bram clapped his hands to rally them. “How about this? We want to be sure we protect the boys. So Shane, you head down first. Then Jon. Then the boys. That way between the guide and Jon, we’ve got one expert up here, and one down there keeping an eye out.
And Dave—you go next, then Pike, then me.
And the guide’ll take up the rear. Any issues with that? ”
Zach immediately understood this hierarchy.