Avalanche Pass

by John Flanagan

  “You can manage it,” he said quietly. “Just remember your basics… and take it a little easy.”

  Jesse nodded several times, his eyes fixed on the steep wall of snow below them. His eyes darted from side to side, looking for the trees that framed the narrow, steep run, the rocks that he knew must lie hidden in the soft, inviting snow, just as they had that last time. He felt an electric thrill of pain jangle in his shin—a reminder of the agony that had been his constant companion throughout the previous summer. He licked his lips, noticing that the instructor was studying him intently.

  “Problem?” Larry asked. He watched as Jesse hesitated, then shook his head.

  “No,” he replied quietly. “Everything’s fine.”

  Larry called, “Follow me,” and dropped off the edge of The Wall.

  It was virtually sheer for the first twenty feet or so. Larry plummeted down, then gracefully poled and thrust into his first turn as the gradient lessened, almost imperceptibly, and he felt the first hint of resistance under his skis. He let go a rebel yell of delight and began a series of short, high-speed turns, sending immense clouds of the light, air-filled powder snow exploding from his skis with each one. For a few moments, he forgot the client waiting at the top of The Wall, watching him disappear down the mountain. For just a brief period, he was free and filled with the swooping, indescribable joy of movement and speed that was as near to flying free as anything he’d ever felt in his life.

  Then, reluctantly, a hundred yards down the slope, he broadsided to a halt and looked back up to the crest. The blue-clad figure was still there, stark against the brilliance of the sky behind him. Larry waved one pole above his head in an unmistakable signal.

  There was a moment’s hesitation—a moment that spoke volumes. Then Jesse dropped off The Wall, following as close to the instructor’s pattern of turns as he could. Larry watched, eyes slitted against the glare, nodding to himself.

  Not bad. A little tension there, but he’d kind of expected that. The frown returned momentarily as Jesse poled for his turn, slamming the stock into the light snow as if he had a grudge against the mountain.

  “Too hard, boy,” Larry muttered aloud. Then he nodded approval again as he noted the correct knee action—the high, springing turn that brought both skis clear of the snow so they could rotate easily in free air. But the violence behind that pole plant had him worried. Too often, people used anger as a crutch against fear when skiing. It might work with a beginner but for someone of Jesse’s ability it was a retrograde step.

  On his fourth turn, Jesse felt himself come down slightly out of balance. The wall of snow behind him seemed to brush his shoulder as he turned. His heart leapt into his mouth as he remembered the last time—the sudden loss of equilibrium and grace as the concealed rock bit into the soft base of his ski, stopping him as effectively as a trip rope would have. Then came the fall, the snow smothering him as he tumbled uncontrollably, then the blinding shock of agony in his leg as he slammed into the young pine. The memories were all there in a rush—not sequentially, but all crowding for his attention at the same time. And, irresistibly, he leaned back—just for a fraction of a second.

  On that steep, unforgiving slope, it was enough. The skis slid out from under him, losing their grip on the thin, powdery snow and he was over, rolling helplessly onto his right shoulder, tumbling in the sudden frigid cold.

  He felt the icy shock of the snow close over his face as he tumbled uncontrollably. Then he was in the clear again, sailing through the air for a few moments before he came facedown into the snow again. Rolling, falling, rolling: going with it as he felt himself gradually losing momentum. Praying that this time there would be no tree. Telling himself that there was no point in trying to force it. He would slide and roll to a stop when the mountain felt it was ready to let him.

  Finally, sensing that the slope was beginning to lessen, he rolled his legs under him, getting his skis downhill until they finally dragged the last few yards of speed off and left him flat on his back, staring up from the hole he’d punched in the snow at Larry’s grinning face.

  “Well, that’s one way to get down.”

  Jesse lay for a few moments, letting his breathing settle into a normal rhythm.

  “I guess I zigged when I should have zagged,” he said finally, taking Larry’s proffered hand and dragging himself upright.

  He was covered head to toe in the light, dry, clinging powder snow. He slapped at it, feeling the inevitable handful slide down the collar of his ski suit and melt instantly into freezing water.

  “Anyone can fall on this steep and deep,” Larry said. “Don’t worry ’bout that. But there’s a technique problem. You’re attacking it too much and you can’t do that in this light stuff.”

  Jesse removed his sunglasses and ran one gloved finger around the inside of the lenses to clear away the packed snow there as Larry continued. “Be a little subtle. You slam that pole into this stuff and it’s going to go all the way in. There’s hardly any resistance there to stop it. So straightaway, you’re putting yourself off balance.” He hesitated, not sure whether he should say what was coming next. Then he shrugged, mentally, and went ahead anyway.

  “But someone who skis like you, you should know that.”

  He waited. And figured now that whatever problems Jesse had with his skiing, whatever it was that he was hoping Larry could fix, they weren’t physical. They had to do with fear. And the first step toward solving them might well be to get Jesse to admit to them.

  But Jesse refused the overture, replacing the Bolles over his eyes, shutting out the piercing glare of the sun off the snow once more.

  Larry gave a small shrug. He’d tried. All he could do now was discuss the mechanical side of things. He demonstrated Jesse’s mistake, slamming a pole into the deep, soft snow.

  “Now, you do this on all that ice and boilerplate shit they got back east and you’ll maybe get away with it. But here, on Wasatch powder, you got to be subtle, okay?”

  Jesse nodded.

  “Otherwise,” the instructor continued, “this mountain’s going to say to you, ‘Sorry, my friend, but you ain’t going anywhere whiles you’re pounding those big holes in me.’ And then you’re gonna end up flat on your ass every time. Understand?”

  He grinned easily but there was no response. The dark glasses successfully hid Jesse’s eyes, and his thoughts. He simply nodded that yes, he understood. Larry felt a small twinge of frustration. Of course he understood. He was teaching this boy to suck eggs here.

  “Okay,” he said finally, falling back on the professional good humor that every good ski instructor has to have, “now let’s get”— he broke off and put a hand on Jesse’s arm—“Hold it a moment,” he said.

  “What’s the pr—” Jesse began, but then his words were swallowed by a sudden, explosive whoomph from a point in the trees fifty yards below them. There was a momentary bright flash and Jesse threw up one arm in front of his face.

  “Sorry ’bout that,” Larry drawled. “I didn’t know they were firing just yet.”

  He pointed across the valley to the steep, snow-covered cliff face opposite.

  “Keep your eye on that spot to the right of the cornice,” he said and, almost as he spoke, a white puff flew from the snow to be smothered instantly in a larger explosion of flame, smoke and more snow. The muffled thud of the explosion rolled across the valley to them a few seconds later, repeating and echoing as it rolled and bounced from the walls of the valley around them.

  “What the hell was that?” Jesse demanded. Larry kept his eyes riveted on the spot they’d been watching.

  “Just keep looking,” he said. “Don’t see this every day.”

  Jesse looked back. For a few seconds, there was nothing except the smoke and snow drifting slowly in the light breeze above the cornice. Then he noticed it. A faint stirring in the slope opposite, as if the cliff face itself had trembled. Then a black split appeared suddenly in the hitherto perfect white of the
snow and a huge slab of fresh fallen snow slid lazily away from the cliff face and toppled into the valley—perhaps a few hundred tons of it in all.

  In a few seconds, it had lost its cohesion as a single slab and become a tumbling, roiling, formless mass that rolled with ever-increasing power down the slope. A deep rumble accompanied it as those few hundred tons rapidly became thousands.

  “Jesus,” he said softly.

  “Avalanche control,” the instructor told him briefly and Jesse raised one disbelieving eyebrow.

  “You call that control? Didn’t look like anyone was controlling that from where I’m standing,” he said.

  Larry shrugged, acknowledging the point. “True enough,” he admitted, “but this way the ski patrol makes it avalanche where and when they want it to. Better to do it now when the area is clear than risk having it come down when there are people under it. Besides, this way, it can’t keep building up into a really unstable mass.”

  Jesse nodded his understanding. He’d done his share of avalanche control with the ski patrol back in Routt County. But there it consisted of placing small satchel charges in the snow and roping off suspect areas to keep skiers away. They didn’t have these massive, sheer walls of airy, almost insubstantial powder snow on Mount Werner.

  “So what was that they fired at it?” he asked. “Sounded like some kind of mortar?”

  “Sort of,” Larry told him. “Actually, a 75-millimeter recoilless rifle. It’s kind of like an overgrown bazooka, I guess.”

  Jesse gave a short bark of laughter. “It sure did the job,” he said, still looking at the ravaged mountain face across the valley. In the valley, shrouded in white clouds, the massive avalanche was slowly boiling to a stop.

  He looked across the slope to the timber platform where the small artillery piece was sited. Two members of the Snow Eagles Ski Patrol, their task completed, were already fastening a canvas weather cover over the gun.

  “We’ve got maybe a dozen of ’em around the mountain,” his instructor continued. “Fire ’em on fixed bearings to bring down the bits that are awkward to get at. In other parts, the patrol plants fixed charges and sets ’em off. The whole area is a high-risk avalanche zone, you know.”

  Jesse nodded thoughtfully as he watched the patrollers skiing away from the site. In the past three days, he had been conscious of the continual dull thumps of explosions echoing around the resort.

  “I’d heard that,” he replied. “So why build a resort here in the first place? You’d have to have a pretty good reason.”

  Larry grinned and swept an arm around the entire valley. “Best reason in the world. And it’s the same thing that makes this such a high-risk zone in the first place: the best and deepest powder snow in the world. It’s great to ski in. Pity is, it’s also highly unstable and avalanches if you look too hard at it.

  “But don’t let it bother you too much,” he added. “In the twenty-five years the resort’s been here, we’ve only had one fatality caused by avalanche.”

  Jesse frowned, remembering a half-buried detail in his mind. “Didn’t I read somewhere that you had a major avalanche here ten years back?” he asked, then, as more details came to mind, “Buried the Canyon Lodge, didn’t it?”

  Larry nodded. “That happened sure enough. The western wall of the valley—behind the hotel building—came down in the spring of 1989. But the resort had closed by then and there was nobody here. The snow was wet and melting and really unstable.”

  “What set it off?” Jesse asked and Larry gestured skyward.

  “Some hotshot air force jet jockey flying too low and too fast. A National Guard F-4 created a sonic boom right over the valley and that set it off. Buried the lower three or four floors of the hotel. Let me tell you, that took a lot of expensive digging out—which the air force paid for.”

  Jesse nodded. “Fair enough, I guess,” he said. Then he swept his ski pole to point back up the way they had just come.

  “Any more like that on the way down?” he asked.

  “That’s the worst of it,” Larry said. His tone was easy and light but he was watching the other man, trying to pierce behind those dark sunglasses and see some kind of reaction. He thought he saw a slight lift in the shoulders, a small sign of relief, maybe.

  “Well, let’s get going,” Jesse said.

  TWO

  STEAMBOAT SPRINGS

  COLORADO

  THE PREVIOUS WEEK

  It was one of those clear-skied, freezing cold days on Mount Werner. There was no sign of a cloud and the early morning sun flooded the mountain with its eye-searing glare. It was all light energy, however, with no perceptible heat. The air temperature was five below freezing.

  Jesse and Lee came off the Storm Peak chair and swung left, heading away from the unloading area. The snow under their skis was firm and dry here in the groomed area. It squeaked slightly as the crystals rubbed together, crushed under their skis.

  Lee stopped a few yards from the unloading area, pushed up her goggles, threw her head back and laughed, shaking her hair out in the cold air. She wasn’t wearing a hat. She was used to below-freezing temperatures and loved the burning sensation of the frigid air around her ears and cheeks—a sensation that she knew would intensify to the point of pain when she gathered speed traveling downhill.

  Jesse stopped beside her, hunched over, leaning his elbows on his stocks.

  “What’s the joke?” he asked. She grinned at him. She put him in mind of a teenager, with that familiar look of devilment in her clear gray eyes.

  “It’s a perfect day,” she said happily. “And it’s all the better because I’m playing truant and shouldn’t be here.”

  “That’s always a big part of it,” he agreed.

  There had been a fall of fresh powder the night before, at least a foot of new snow over the existing base. And, even though the skies had cleared just after dawn, there wasn’t enough heat from the sun yet to settle it down into a thick heavy mass. Once they got off the groomed slopes, she knew the snow would be thick and light—blowing away from her ski tips in vast clouds that would hang in the still air behind her, before gradually drifting back to the ground again.

  Jesse had arrived in the ski patrol office around eight a.m. There was a pile of paperwork waiting to be done. These days, he thought gloomily, there always was. Although the way things were, he had plenty of time to attend to it.

  The phone on his desk shrilled, breaking him out of this dismal train of thought. The bell was set to an excessively loud ringtone, as members of the patrol were often outside and they needed to be able to hear it over the sound of wind and weather. He made a mental note to turn it down when he was in the office. It was the third time that week he’d made the same mental note.

  “Ski patrol, Jesse Parker,” he said.

  “It’s a powder day,” a familiar voice told him. “Tell the boss you’re calling in sick.”

  He smiled to himself. Lee had always been able to cheer him up when he was feeling down. He glanced around the utilitarian little office.

  “I am the boss,” he said. “Seth’s away at a safety conference in Vail.”

  “All the better. Tell yourself and save the company a phone call. Let’s go skiing.”

  He hesitated, glancing outside. The snow did look to be perfect and the weather was clear. But still…

  “Come on, Jess,” she said. “We haven’t skied together in forever.”

  Still he didn’t commit himself. “I don’t know, Lee. I’ve got a whole bunch of rosters to work out here. I’m up to my elbows in paperwork.”

  “Paperwork!” she said scornfully. “It’s time to be up to your elbows in fresh powder!”

  At the other end of the line, she frowned, sensing his reluctance. It was true, they hadn’t skied together recently. As locals, they didn’t feel the need to rush out onto the slopes every possible chance. They tended to wait for perfect conditions. Even so, now that she thought about it, she couldn’t remember when they’d l
ast skied together this season, if at all. But today, conditions were as perfect as they got.

  “Where are you?” he asked. He was stalling for time. He could hear background noise on the line and he knew she wasn’t in her office.

  “I’m at the gondola terminal. I can be up there in three minutes. So throw that paper in the trash and come skiing. If the sheriff can take a day off, so can the ski patrol commander—particularly the temporary patrol commander.”

  Again, there was a brief silence on the line. Then he came to a decision.

  “Oh hell, why not?” he said.

  “Way to make a girl feel special, Jess,” she said, but he could hear the grin in her voice. “I’ll meet you at the bottom of Storm Peak Chair.”

  Then she broke the connection before he could change his mind.

  The chairs all started running at eight thirty. Most tourists weren’t out that early so they should have a clear mountain. Perfect snow and an uncrowded, untracked mountain. What could be better?

  Now, as they paused at the top of Storm Peak, she could see she had been right. There were only a few skiers out on the mountain. Suddenly she was impatient to be moving.

  “Let’s go,” she said, poling and skating to get a little speed up and heading toward the chutes. She’d gone maybe twenty yards or so when she glanced over her shoulder to see if Jesse was following. She frowned and stopped, swinging around as she realized he’d turned left and was heading downhill on Buddy’s Run—a broad, easy blue run that had been groomed after the snowfall. He was already fifty yards down the run, carving a series of smooth, perfect S turns in the snow.

  “What the hell?” she muttered to herself. She jump-turned and went after him, disdaining to turn, simply throwing in a slight check every so often to control her speed.