Chapter 22
As the group paced the debris, Zach tried to remind himself that the results of the rescue so far were a twisted kind of miracle.
Two avalanches, everyone except Dave caught—and yet his father, Pike, and Russ only inches down, even Shane, though fatally swept away, had been hardly covered.
Which meant, and Zach felt a pang of guilt at the thought, they’d wasted minimal time uncovering Shane.
All had had something visible above the debris.
Zach himself had been trapped only to his knees.
Russ seemed to be the only member of the group injured enough that he might not be able to hike out of the Bowl under his own steam.
Yet Zach’s optimism faded each time he scanned the mottled snow without any sight of cloth or hair or boot, and all their beacons stubbornly quiet.
In his mind, that faraway satellite spun farther into the void, ever more unreachable.
The group’s paths began to overlap as each hit the edges of their search areas, and at last Bram gathered them together in a small circle. Eyes lowered, he said, “I don’t think we’re going to find anyone. I think it’s too late even if we do.”
Dave cleared his throat. “I hit a timer on my watch after Zach and I found Pike. It’s been”—he consulted his watch—“an hour and sixteen minutes since then.”
They took this in. Registered the afternoon tilt of the sun. Then nodded and stared elsewhere, unable to meet one another’s eyes.
“We need to get to Russ. Then get him the hell out of here before dark,” Dave said.
“Shouldn’t we wait?” Pike asked. “Mountain Rescue might be here any minute.”
“I think we should assume no one’s coming and try to get back to the hut on our own,” Bram said. “Russ is in no shape to be waiting around. We need to think about Russ now.”
Zach’s face burned. Now they were thinking of Russ.
Now? When at the top of the mountain both fathers had used that quiet look of theirs, that stare, to ask Zach and Russ, “Are you one of us, or are you something else? Are you going to embarrass yourself, embarrass me, and stay behind, or are you going to obey and receive my benediction?”
Dave teared up. “Yes. Let’s get Russ. Let’s get out of here.”
Pike nodded, silently concurring. Zach swallowed deep, trying to accept this new reality in which Steve and Jon were dead. In which they were about to leave Shane’s body abandoned on the snow.
Bram directed a shuffling of equipment while Dave radioed Russ, who assured his dad that he was all right, that he was keeping warm.
Dave kept his own skis. Pike had one of his own skis and one of Bram’s they’d found while searching, the top third broken off.
This left Bram with the final ski they’d pulled from the snow, his other foot loose.
Bram and Pike each received a pair of ski poles.
Dave and Zach each were allotted one pole, but created makeshift ski poles to substitute by folding their avalanche probes and wrapping ski straps at the bottom to prevent the probes plunging deep and useless into the snow.
No one protested, nodding stoically at their lot and dutifully applying skins to the bottom of their ski or skis for the trip uphill.
Discovering that the binding on the ski he’d assigned himself didn’t match any of their boots, Bram used two more of Steve’s promotional ski straps to hold his boot in place. All agreed they’d shift gear as needed.
Zach again recognized the hierarchy his father imposed.
Bram was still trying to eke out some success.
He gave the best things to Dave as the wealthiest living investor present and gave himself the worst, likely hoping Pike and Dave would appreciate his actions under pressure rather than blame him for his choices, their choices, on the mountaintop.
Grateful his own skis were too small to be of use to the adults, Zach ate snow to slake his thirst and looked at the slopes above as he waited for the men to be ready.
How would this work? Because always, in every scenario he’d learned, the way to evacuate after an avalanche was downhill. But to get to the hut, they had to go uphill.
“What’s the safest way?”
“What was that, kiddo?” Dave asked.
Zach hadn’t realized he’d spoken aloud. “Oh, just—I’m not sure—is it safer to go up in the avalanche path? Or safer out of it?”
The men, bewildered, seemed to see their still-precarious position anew.
“Shit,” Pike muttered.
Bram scowled, eyes darting between Pike and Dave, calculating, Zach guessed, not the risk of the options for ascent, but the risk of not being first to speak, and the risks of speaking.
“It’s gotta be safest in the avalanche path,” Bram said. “Not like it can slide again.”
This was obviously false. The broken cornice loomed hundreds of feet above them like a wave frozen at its crest, still laden with enough snow to do damage.
“I mean heading where it’s cleared would be easier.” Pike tapped his broken ski, shooting a resentful look around the group. “Especially using less than great equipment. But”—he pointed up at the cornices—“I don’t like the look of those.”
“Dave, any thoughts?”
“Honestly? I think there’s no safe way to get out of here.”
Zach nodded. There was plenty more snow that could funnel down the areas that had already slid. But the open snow had twice proven unstable.
No good choices. No good options.
“Are we absolutely sure Mountain Rescue isn’t on the way? How long does it take them to respond?” Pike asked, clearly rattled by Dave’s cold assessment of the danger.
Dave shouldered his pack. “Who cares? We have to get to Russ, I’m not waiting around here.”
Zach eyed Bram, who said nothing. How could Bram not know, with all his mother’s stories about her days in Mountain Rescue?
“My mom—my mom said the timing varies a lot.” Seeing Dave’s and Pike’s blank looks, Zach added, “She worked for Mountain Rescue. Before I was born. They have to get a team. A helicopter. But with the weather today? It might take awhile. Sometimes it’s days before they can even try for a rescue.”
Dave squared his shoulders. “We need to help Russ now. We need to move now. With the storm last night, and again today? The kid’s right.
They probably won’t be able to get here even if they’re trying.
We need to get to Russ. And get out of”—he spun a finger to indicate the vast, ominous slopes above—“this whole area.”
“Agreed.” Bram pointed to the second, larger, avalanche path. “Let’s go up that way. Should be easiest.”
“I don’t like it,” Pike said, again eyeing the heavy cornices.
“What’s your idea then, Pike?” Dave asked sharply. “Because every other option looks a hell of a lot worse to me.”
Pike’s eyes narrowed. “Fine. But I’m not carrying your kid back to the hut.”
Dave shot Pike a withering look before beginning to trek uphill. Over a shoulder he shouted, “Stay here and wait then if you’re so scared.”
But Pike joined, taking up the rear of their line behind Dave, fastest because of his superior equipment, because he hadn’t been bashed, bruised, buried.
In motion Zach felt himself thaw a little.
His fingertips had been going numb, a thing he realized only now that he felt the pain of them coming alive.
He’d have to keep moving or risk the cold burrowing into his bones before he was aware of the danger.
He tried not to think about the break above, the way the cornices were still pillowed heavy with snow that could spill over, could—
“I’ve got something here!” Dave yelled from uphill. He stood already assembling his shovel next to a jagged accumulation of displaced ice at the avalanche path’s edge, his backpack thrown aside. The group pressed forward, surrounded him.
A silver ski boot protruded from between two large chunks of snow.
Zach blinked, trying to orient space, time, facts. It didn’t make sense. Jon had been caught in the first avalanche. Steve had been searching for him. Neither could be uphill, lodged in the path of the second slide.
Maybe he didn’t understand because the avalanche had softened his skull. Maybe the cold had already trickled so deep in his brain things had gone funny there.
Dave lanced his avalanche probe around the ski boot to try to pinpoint the orientation of the hidden body. “I think—I hit something. I did. But far down. Like four feet down? Maybe the head or chest? Given where the foot is?”
Bram shot his own probe down. “Right. I’m hitting it, too. How about you and me dig here, Dave, my kid digs around the foot there, and Pike between us?”
Zach unshouldered his pack and assembled his shovel.
“Do we—really need to get him out?” Pike’s skin was waxen and his voice thin.
“What?” Dave spat.
“Just, another body—I don’t know if I can. There’s no chance, you said? That someone could be alive?”
“We’re digging him out.” Dave’s voice was commanding, his eyes alight.
His obvious disgust at Pike’s squeamishness embarrassed Zach, because he didn’t want to see another body, either.
Was already dreading the eyes, the brokenness, the color of the skin, the face.
But Dave was right. There were stories of air pockets made with hands or by airbags, of people who happened to get stuck beneath boulders that allowed for more oxygen, or under a slab that created space to breathe.
Of people being pulled out alive after forty minutes, after an hour.
It was possible. Or at least not impossible.
“We want a sat phone,” Bram hissed low and quiet.
Zach’s eyes darted to Dave. Had he understood Bram only cared about the phone? Had they seen his father’s carefully applied mask go askew again?
But Dave was already digging. If he’d heard, if he’d noticed something wrong, he ignored it. Or maybe Dave’s silence was a kind of agreement.