I leaned against my skis and stood that way for a while. The two older women who I had dusted along the way chugged up and gave each other high-fives, their smiling faces etched with the weathered lines of long-time locals. They asked me to take a picture of them standing in front of the solitary lift chair set beneath a canopy of colorful prayer flags. Before I could recuse myself, one had handed me her cell phone. And then the other. Despite being owned by physical and mental pain, I somehow found the wherewithal to accommodate them, and took two smiling pictures.
‘We have the same birthday and we hike the bowl every year on our birthdays,’ said the one in purple, sharing more information than I cared to hear. ‘I’m Donna,’ she said.
‘I’m Barb,’ said the orange.
‘Greta,’ I mumbled begrudgingly. They took their phones back and were critiquing the pictures when I decided to get out of there before they asked for redos. I snapped on my skis, lowered my goggles and set my sweaty body on a downward course towards the G-zones and the steep glades of the North Woods.
While the entirety of the bowl is a skier’s Promised Land, with its varying terrain and degrees of steepness, the North Woods is my particular manna. It’s the part of the mountain where the snow stays best the longest. North facing and protected from the sun, the snow never gets set-up or cruddy. It’s the place where powder stashes can be found weeks after the last snowfall, where the perfectly spaced trees seem to be part of some master plan as if Gaia had created the bowl for the pleasure of skiing gods.
I cut across the slopes horizontally until I reached the glade that was my personal favorite. The sun that managed to breach the tall trees illuminated the sugar-like snow, turning the surface into hundreds of millions of universes, like miniature stars sparkling upon the mountain. The air was so perfectly calm that the snow parted before my skis like butter to a warm knife. There was no bottom to the snow, no rocks to throw you off course, no stumps to bring you down. The snow, any moisture sucked out of it in the subzero temperatures of the night, was so light it earned the name champagne powder.
I was floating, my legs and feet in unison over the skis like the tail of a mermaid as they conquered the gravity, drawing me downhill. They stretched out to find no bottom, only the marshmallow pillows that propped me above the surface. Streams of snow hitting my face were love taps and my arms reached out, alternately flicking my poles to embrace my downhill course. My mind was cleansed of all things negative, dialed into the mountain and nature, to the elements and beauty, to my own physicality and my body’s response to the challenge of each turn or circumnavigating the trees like a race car driver around cones. There was nothing other than the skiing. I was unstoppable, invincible, one with nature, a creature unique in this world, reveling in my solitary existence, all troubles reduced by the purity of the snow.
Having skied without stopping for fifteen elated minutes and seen no other skiers, my legs and lungs were burning, but in a good way. I had segued further to skier’s right and one of the heaviest gladed areas when I stopped to take a breather. Glad to be the sole person present, I raised my goggles to wipe the sweat off my forehead and in that one movement couldn’t help but notice a flash of blue peeping out from the well of a nearby tree. My nervous system responded, sending an alarm system of arpeggios along my spine.
Being a ski patroller, aside from an avid nature enthusiast, it wasn’t difficult to ascertain this was not a color found in nature. A lost glove or an abandoned article of clothing? Perhaps. But my gut told me otherwise.
THIRTY-TWO
The tree well was uphill and to skier’s right, so I sidestepped until I was level with it and then slid on over. I swore aloud upon looking down and seeing the blue jacket of a snowboarder headfirst in the tree well. During seasons such as this one, with an abundance of snow, the trees create huge snowless sections around their trunks, creating danger for any skier or boarder who ventures too close. Tree wells were the quicksand of skiing and once in one it was close to impossible to get out of it on your own.
From what I could tell, the boarder was a young male. He was lucky that his jacket was blue, because his pants were black and his board army green – colors that don’t easily stand out amid the spruce in the glades. Then again, maybe he wasn’t lucky, because he wasn’t moving.
I skied as close to him as possible, anchoring myself by using my skis as a secure platform. I reached down and tried to pull him out by the back of his jacket, but only managed to move him enough to get his face out of the snow. The smooth skin beneath the snow-filled goggles told me he wasn’t even a teenager. I kept tugging on his jacket, but was unable to do much more than jiggle him, he was so near to the tree. My skis were impeding me from getting closer, so I took them off and dropped into the less deep snow near the base.
He wasn’t particularly large, but he sure wasn’t small, and with my legs post-holing every inch of the way, hauling him up and out was going to be a challenge. I’m strong for a woman, but there are situations when the strength of one woman or man is not enough. And this was one of those situations. Had I been on duty instead of suspended, I would have had tools, such as a rope, to help me in extracting dead weight from below me. But as things stood, it was me and my hands and we weren’t getting the job done alone.
I continued trying to pull him out, relentlessly fighting against time and oxygen deprivation with no idea how much time had passed since he’d fallen into the well. Like a mother lifting a car off her child, I found strength I never knew I had but every time I got him halfway up the tree well, his dead weight fell against me and I lost him. I had no radio and knew if I left him to find help, he would undoubtedly be dead before we returned. If he wasn’t already.
And then from above I caught sight of movement in the trees, two skiers making slow, strong turns, one in orange and one in purple. It was as if God had sent two angels from heaven. I took off my gloves, shoved both pointers into my mouth and let out a piercing whistle.
The two skiers stopped and looked for the source of the whistle. When they saw me they skied in my direction. As they drew closer I recognized that they were the two older women I had passed on my way up, the two locals who climbed the bowl every birthday, the two who had asked me to take their picture.
The moment they saw the boarder in the tree well, they needed no explanation of what needed to be done. Without losing a beat they clicked out of their skis and knelt in the snow to either side of me. The three of us grabbed the back of the boarder’s jacket. I could only hope they were as strong as women who spend their lives outdoors usually are.
‘On three,’ I commanded. ‘One, two …’
I counted three and we pulled together with all of our might. What had been impossible for one person was easy work now, and we had him out of the tree well in an instant. I laid him flat on his back in the snow and his still-connected snowboard tipped to the left. Training had taught me that moving an injured person wasn’t the brightest thing to do until you know the extent of the injuries. Well, I didn’t know the extent of his injuries, but I did know the extent of one thing: he wasn’t breathing. Given the circumstances there was no time to waste doing an exam.
‘We gotta lose that snowboard, ladies,’ I commanded.
While the two women gently unstrapped the snowboard from his unmoving feet, I pulled off his right glove and held a finger to his wrist. ‘There’s a pulse,’ I announced. They watched in patient silence as I took off his helmet and pried his mouth open. There was a ball of solid ice blocking his windpipe, probably inhaled in panic when he fell into the tree well. I wrapped my fingers around the ice ball and pulled it out. Then I opened his jacket in preparation to do CPR.
‘What are your names again?’ I asked quickly.
‘Barb,’ said the orange.
‘Donna,’ said the purple.
‘Barb, could you go down to the lift and radio for help? Donna, can you assist me in CPR?’
Before I could say another word Barb wa
s back on her skis and speeding down the last part of the woods. She was skiing faster than she had been before and I prayed she wouldn’t get in trouble herself. Once she cleared the woods it was only a short run-out to the chair where a lift operator could radio for assistance and a sled.
I bent over the boy and started working to revive him. Pressing on his sternum with the flat of my hand, I gave him compressions, counting to a hundred and then starting over again.
‘You’re going to have to give mouth to mouth, you know,’ said Donna, adding, ‘I was a nurse at AVH.’
‘I was planning on mouth to mouth, but I wanted to start with the compressions.’
I was getting no results with the compressions, so I held his nostrils closed and forced breath into his open mouth. Five breaths later I returned to the compressions.
‘You look like you know what you’re doing,’ she said.
‘I’m patrol on Ajax,’ I informed her.
‘That explains it. Let me know if you want me to relieve you,’ she said, falling silently on to her knees beside me.
I kept at work, giving him hundreds of compressions to five breaths. While only about five minutes had passed since we’d pulled him out of the tree well, I was beginning to tire. It was tough work. His helmet and goggles were off and his smooth face put him around ten years old, though he was large for his age with the game-boy fat typical of many tourist kids. His hair and brows were dark brown and his blue oxygen-starved lips were full and generous. He looked so young and innocent, it troubled me to think of the pain his parents might have to suffer later this day. I worked harder.
Another few minutes had passed and my lips were to his, trying to breathe life into death, when I felt him pull back slightly. It took me by surprise at first, this sudden acceptance of my expired breath. And then it happened a second time and a third and within seconds the boy was breathing on his own. I looked up at Donna and she was smiling broadly. As his breaths became more and more regular, his color began to return, the blue of his lips ceding to white and finally to pink. His eyes popped open and, just as I had guessed, they were a dark brown.
He took in the two of us hovering over him in one long glance. Then he saw his snowboard off to the side. ‘What happened?’ he asked with undue calm as if finding two strange women over you in a snow-covered tree glade wasn’t an extraordinary event.
‘What happened is you fell into a tree well,’ I informed him. ‘What are you doing boarding back here all alone anyhow?’
‘I wasn’t. I was with my dad. I kept calling for him, but couldn’t find him anywhere.’ He tried to stand, but I settled him back down. ‘I’m cold,’ he complained.
I took off my parka and placed it over him, hoping my adrenaline would keep me warm. I put my gloves back on and beat my hands together to keep them warm. ‘Help will be here soon,’ I assured him. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Richie,’ he said.
‘I’m Greta.’
‘That’s a nice name,’ he said. I thought of the way Duane Larsen had said my name. I used to think so too.
The mounties arrived five minutes later, first a male ski patroller who’d been in the area when the call came in, then a pair of patrollers, male and female, coming from the top with a sled. They checked his vitals and after feeling secure there was no back or spinal injury, they transferred him to the toboggan and prepared to take him down to the chair where he would be uploaded to the top before taking the long slide down to the lodge and an ambulance.
I’d tried to stay out of things, but one of the patrollers corralled me and asked me what had happened. I explained about coming upon him in the tree well and the other ladies arriving in time to help out. Since I worked Aspen Mountain, I didn’t know many of the patrollers on Highland, and I was hoping to make a quiet exit when a fourth patroller, a helmetless woman with a long braid, came skiing up. I’d known Cindy Forman over ten years, going back to when we were both instructors. She stared at me in my civilian ski garb. ‘What are you doing slumming here, Westerlind?’
‘Was just looking for a change of pace.’
‘Hmmm, guess you got a busman’s holiday. Got this one on the radio. Father said he’d lost his son somewhere in the North Woods. I understand the old man is frantic, waiting at the lift.’
After the kid was wrapped up, the two patrollers with the sled skied out and started their descent as slowly as you had to in this steepness. Cindy and the other patrolman followed behind. Donna and I waited until they were out of the way and then started down ourselves. The sun felt good on my back after so much time in the shade without my jacket. We arrived at the chair just behind the sled.
Barb was standing beside a tall, dark-olive-skinned man in expensive black ski clothes. His face was lined and his thinning grey hair receded, but there was an assurance to him that complemented his good looks. He looked like the imaginary grandfather you always wished you had. He was clearly significantly older than the boy, maybe old enough to be that grandfather, but that’s nothing new in the land of second, third and fourth wives. He dropped to his knees beside the sled, his face wearing the look of someone who has pulled off a bluff against all odds in a poker game.
‘Richie, are you all right?’ he asked, his voice constrained by worry.
‘I’m cold, Dad.’
‘I told you to stay with me,’ he berated the boy, more out of his own fear than anger.
‘I tried. You were too fast. I didn’t know where you went.’
The man got to his feet and the patrollers pulled the sled up to the chair. ‘We’ve got to ride up with him, sir. You can take the next chair.’ The chairlift stopped and the liftie helped the two patrolmen strap the toboggan across the seat back and the armrest, so the ends were sticking out front and center. Then the patrollers took seats either side of it, holding it secure with their hands. The lift started up again.
This kind of evacuation was new to me. On Aspen Mountain you didn’t have to go up before going down. Unless someone like Zuzana McGovern freaked out on a run and we had to take her back up to the top on a snowmobile so she could catch the gondola down. She always took the gondola down.
The silver-haired man loaded solo on to the next chair. As the chair swung around behind him, he sat down and turned to Barb. ‘Once again. I can’t thank you enough. I waited and waited. And then when he didn’t join me here I just kept calling. They should really have better cell service here.’
‘Don’t thank me,’ said Barb, shoving a gloved hand in my direction as the chair swept him away. ‘Greta found him.’
‘Yeah, you have to thank Greta,’ Donna chimed in.
‘Thank you all,’ he said, adding, ‘you’ll hear from me.’
I rode up with Cindy, the patrol who had been there with us, while the birthday girls took the chair behind us. ‘That’s one lucky kid,’ I said.
‘You don’t know the half of it,’ said Cindy, flicking her braid with her gloved hand. ‘That kid was born lucky. You know who his father is?’
‘That guy there. Haven’t a clue.’
‘Pablo Alvarez.’
My shrug was indifferent. I neither knew nor cared.
‘Big Mexican developer. Owns about twenty acres in Starwood.’
‘Still never heard of him,’ I said, lowering my goggles as we neared the top. The toboggan was already on its way to the base, and Cindy skied off for further duty in the bowl. Barb and Donna were the next people to unload and the three of us stood to the side of the lift huddled in conference.
‘Real pleasure to meet you girls,’ I said to my new friends. ‘That kid wouldn’t be alive without your help. So I have this one question for you before we part.’
‘And what’s that?’ Donna asked.
‘What birthday is it?’
They smiled at each other and said in unison, ‘Eighty.’
Aspen women just rock.
THIRTY-THREE
The afternoon was still young, so I skied a couple more loops of the b
owl without any interruptions from boarders in tree wells or otherwise. My spirits had improved significantly despite the disarray in my life. That’s what skiing does for you. It’s the safe opiate. It elevates you above all things negative and depressing. Skiing wipes out bad vibes and replaces them with positive. And while my troubles were still significant, they didn’t seem quite as large as they had in the morning. Skiing is truth.
Needless to say, Duane dominated my thoughts on the lonely chair rides between runs. By the end of the day, I’d decided there was no getting around a stop at the courthouse to check out his status, hoping a great mistake had been made. It hadn’t. In fact, things had worsened. More evidence had presented itself. Dan told me they were thinking of transferring Duane down to the more secure prison in Glenwood. I’m no expert at criminal justice, but the move seemed a little extreme to me, and I told the sheriff so.
‘It’s not extreme if you knew what I know.’ After looking around to make sure no one was listening, the sheriff leaned in to me like he was doing me a big favor and said, ‘Now this is completely confidential, but it just so happens there are a couple of other Western Slope girls gone missing since Duane Larsen relocated out this way. One in Breck and one in Vail.’
‘So what makes you think he has anything to do with them?’
‘Timing. They both went missing on his days off. We’ve checked his work schedule. You know, neither resort is more than a couple hours from Basalt. He could make either in a day. And he’s a pretty good-looking guy. He’d have no trouble getting women to talk to him and who knows where he took it from there. I think we might just have a new Ted Bundy.’
‘Do you have the bodies of these girls?’
‘No, but they’re missing just the same.’
I didn’t find that a very convincing reason to transfer him from the Aspen prison, which was renowned for being pretty comfortable as far as detention facilities are concerned, to the more institutional-type prison like the one in Glenwood. During my first ski season in Aspen, I knew a guy who managed to get himself arrested for public drunkenness whenever he was between residences in Aspen in order to have a warm bed that night and a good breakfast the following morning.
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