First Tracks

by Catherine O'Connell

  ‘Greta,’ he said. ‘C’mon over.’ His arrogance never took a break, it seemed, but nevertheless, I walked over to the lip of the Jacuzzi. The air between us smelled of warm chlorine. ‘Why don’t you come in?’ he said in a voice far too suggestive for his eighteen or nineteen years.

  ‘Looks like you’ve already got your hands full, Carlos,’ I said, and without another word I turned on the heels of my Merrells and walked away.

  Back in the room, I had showered and dried my hair and was lying on my stomach making more work of Ovid when the phone rang. I picked up to hear Pablo’s warm voice. They were going to a party and he wondered if I wanted to join them. The last thing I wanted to do was face a bunch of people I didn’t know who didn’t want to know me, so I begged off, saying I was tired. His relief at not having to look after me was clear in his voice.

  Having not seen him since getting off the plane this morning, I was getting the feeling he wasn’t quite sure what to do with me now that we were all here together. He told me to feel free to dine in one of the restaurants or to order in room service – which is exactly what I did. Content in my hideaway, I ordered up a hamburger and a beer, watched a pay-per-view movie and was blissfully asleep before nine o’clock.

  THIRTY-NINE

  The next morning I was up and out the door by seven, wanting to thwart any invitations to ski with young Ricardo again. The lobby was practically empty, most of the hotel guests apparently sleeping it off. I stopped at the concierge to ask where the best off-piste skiing could be found and he suggested Diavolezza, translated as she-devil, twenty kilometers away in Bernina. When I asked about the best transport, he suggested I take a private car. Knowing full well the price was probably prohibitive, I did something quite out of character for me. I signed on for the ride. I figured Pablo Alvarez could afford it, and after babysitting his son the day before, I sort of felt he owed me.

  The driver of the shuttle was fourth-generation St Moritz. As we drove along the winding mountain road to Bernina, he lamented the changes that had taken place in his birthplace, both in the physical town itself and in the caliber of the tourist.

  ‘Of course, St Moritz has always drawn the wealthy,’ he said to me in German-accented English, ‘but the nature of the visitor has changed. It’s all new money these days, and the new money people can be so tiresome. And now the Russians, so many Russians. No class, the Russians, spraying bottles of champagne all over themselves as if it were free. Having money is new to them and it shows. You never would have seen anything like that forty years ago.’

  ‘I come from Aspen. I can share your pain,’ I said as we pulled up to the lift station. ‘We have the same growing pains in Aspen but not so much from Russians.’

  ‘Just wait,’ he said as he pulled away.

  The cable car was half-filled at the early hour with other hardcore skiers. The mountains were magical in the morning light, almost pink in the vestiges of the January dawn. It had snowed a few inches the night before, but in this Swiss Camelot the sky was already clear. As the lift rose higher, my excitement about attacking this mountain grew. I was ready to see what it could show me and what I could show it.

  There was casual conversation among the skiers in the car, dominated by a large group of English complete with their witticisms as well as a healthy dose of entitlement. They were clearly impressed upon learning I was from Aspen, though they did give my Thrift Shop ski suit the once over. Even if it was a Bogner. When I asked what runs they recommended they were quick to suggest the upper part of the mountain.

  ‘With last night’s fresh snow, it should be divine,’ said one of the women.

  ‘What about off-piste?’ I asked.

  ‘You definitely want to take the glacier run from the top. It’s about forty-five minutes all in and ends in front of the railway. We always do it at the end of day and hop on the train back to the base. Just be sure you know where you are going. There can be some deep crevices if you get too far off track.’

  Once up top I skied inbounds for the early part of the day, taking advantage of the sort of steep, challenging terrain I had been cheated out of the day before. The slopes were wide open as I swept back and forth in the fresh snow, my legs oiled pistons beneath my hips. As the day turned into afternoon, I decided it was time to give the off-piste the British had told me about a try.

  The signage leading to the glacier run was clear enough, and as I stood at the boundary trying to decide whether to venture into unknown terrain alone, the group of Brits I’d ridden with earlier skied past me on to the run. Now I’m a pretty good skier. And I’m usually a smart one. But I think because I was feeling so cheated about the skiing I missed the day before, I did something not so brilliant. I skied off on to terrain completely unfamiliar to me – alone. Well, I wasn’t entirely alone. At first. The Brits were there, and I just figured I’d tail them.

  The problem was they kept stopping, and that isn’t how I like to ski. So when they made one of their infernal stops I just blew right past them and kept going. The snow was fabulous, putting to rest, at least for that day, the idea that if you ski in the Rockies you won’t like the Alps. It was light and untracked and the terrain quite different from what I’m used to. I felt insignificant in the shadow of the savage peaks that rose to either side of me like heaped tufts of beaten egg whites. I was one drop in all the oceans, one grain of sand on all shores.

  There was not one other person in sight as I floated downwards under the power of my legs. I was Diana the huntress chasing her prey. I was Hermes on winged feet. I was Apollo driving his chariot across the sky. The skiing was fabulous and I didn’t have a care in the world.

  I must have been a half-hour out when I finally came to an exhausted stop. The sky was a bluebird and the sun warm on my back as I took in the valley below me. There were crevasses in the distance, but they didn’t worry me as they were quite evident and avoidable. Of course I had no idea where I was, and I knew I’d travelled quite a ways. But I wasn’t overly concerned since the Brits had said the run took about forty-five minutes, which meant I would reach the end of the run in another fifteen minutes, give or take. I sipped some water from my Camelbak and planted my skis downhill again.

  Another half-hour passed without seeing any sign of the end of the glacier run. I stopped and looked around. There were no landmarks, nothing stretching ahead of me but white fields of empty terrain. I told myself there was no need to panic. Yet. It was only around two o’clock, which left me plenty of daylight to find my way back. I was getting hungry, so I pulled out a few of the ever-present Snickers from the inner pocket of the insulated jacket that I always wore under my ski patrol uniform. I hydrated myself from the Camelbak and, feeling refreshed, started back downhill, confident that I would find the base sooner or later.

  An hour later the open terrain had ended and I found myself in a forest with no idea where I was. The sun was ducking lower in the sky and it wouldn’t be long until it was dusk. It wasn’t wise to keep skiing unknown terrain if the visibility wasn’t good. While the likelihood of a crevasse in the woods was low, there might be cliffs or a gulley that might suck me in. I knew I’d been lost since my first stop, but now was the time to admit it.

  It started getting dark more rapidly, the winter sun weak and the sky grey. I knew that I was in trouble. The first rule in a situation like this is to keep your head and not panic. I parked myself on the large root of an ancient pine and decided to take inventory.

  My Camelbak was nearly empty and I cursed myself for not filling it before starting out on this folly. The large pocket of my inner jacket held a baggie with ten mini Snickers. Another pocket relinquished lip protector and sun block, and a cloth for cleaning googles. A second baggie in that pocket served as a makeshift first-aid kit with aspirin and Tylenol and an array of different sized Band-Aids, and – yes, there is a god – the lighter I confiscated from the pot-smoking boarders on Aspen Mountain. I gave it a flick and almost knelt in worship at the flame. A fina
l interior pocket gave up four chemical handwarmers, the kind that you snap to activate before you stick it in your gloves.

  And I had my phone. I turned it on and switched it to roaming and was instantly rewarded with an all-caps NO SERVICE.

  I decided to try shouting in case there was someone in the area. I shouted and waited, shouted and waited, moving forward cautiously on my skis the whole time. I cursed myself out for not bringing the whistle that was always in my patrol jacket. And then since my attention was focused on listening and not skiing, one of my skis went into a rut and I fell sideways, smacking my thigh on a rock. Hard. It stung like hell, but there was no blood, so at least that was a blessing.

  It was getting dark at an alarming rate and the reality set in. I had to prepare to bivouac. The two biggest enemies to survival in the cold are hypothermia and frostbite. Hypothermia happens when your core body temperature drops too low. Besides causing shivering, hypothermia can lead to confusion which means bad decisions. Frostbite can cost toes, fingers, noses, and even limbs. I thought about the snowboarder who was lost for days in the High Sierras years ago. He’d survived by his wits but still had to undergo a double amputation of his legs. I didn’t even want to think of going there.

  The first thing to do while there was some light was prepare a bed and find wood to start a fire. I collected some fir branches and made myself a natural mattress. I found some other branches to use as a covering. And then I set out to build a fire.

  Night was really upon me now and I used the lighter intermittently to help me collect branches to fuel the fire. I gathered up as much as I could and tried to light it, but the wood was too moist and the fire didn’t take. The best I could do was get the needles to burn, but they burnt out quickly. I needed to find small pieces of wood to use as kindling. I was in complete darkness now, except for when I flicked the lighter to search for more kindling. My bruised thigh was throbbing and a sudden debilitating pain shot down my leg as I ran into a low branch. When I reached out reflexively to grab my injured leg, the lighter flew from my hand into the night.

  Thus far I had avoided panic, but losing the lighter set me near the edge. I got on my hands and knees and pawed around for it, but in the pitch dark the task proved impossible. I didn’t want to move too far from my makeshift mattress, because if I couldn’t find it and had to lay on the bare ground, I would be in real trouble. So I stayed put, reaching out for the lighter now and then in hopes of scoring a win. No such luck.

  I was dressed for cold weather and moving around had kept me warm, but now the temperature was dropping. I was tiring and beginning to shiver. I decided to eat half the Snickers and drink half the water and try and get some sleep on my bed of branches. My hands and feet were already cold and I thought of the chemical hand warmers in my pocket, deciding they would serve me better in my boots than in my gloves. I could take my hands out of my gloves and warm them against my body, but my feet were too remote. I unbuckled my boots and pulled the tongues out. I located the hand warmers in my jacket pocket and snapped two of them into service. Then I shoved one deep into each boot.

  It wasn’t long before the insides of my boots started to warm, and I found myself thanking God for chemicals. I lay on the pine branches huddled into the fetal position beneath a couple more branches I pulled on top of me, praying for sleep and for the dawn to come quickly.

  It was peculiar, but just like when I was buried in the slide outside Ruthie’s an odd peace came over me. It wasn’t that I was succumbing to giving up, but it was more an acceptance of where Fate and bad decisions can bring you. I wondered what the Alvarezes would be thinking at Badrutt’s about now. Were they wondering where I was? Would they send out a search party? But in the vastness of the ski area where could they search? I hadn’t told them where I’d gone.

  The Greeks believed our lives are predetermined. I prefer to think we are in charge of our fate to a certain degree. Fate had brought me to the mountains and for that I was grateful. If my mother hadn’t been who she was, if she hadn’t died and I hadn’t heard those people talk about what a wonderful place Aspen was, I would probably be working some dumbass job in Milwaukee with a couple of kids and a redneck husband. I’m not saying that would be bad necessarily. But it wouldn’t be the life I’d built for myself in the mountains.

  With the exception of the last two weeks, my life had been as good as it got. Living outdoors and skiing and hiking and communing with nature fed most of my needs. Friends, school and reading filled almost all the rest. The only true gap remained having that significant other, something not so pressing in earlier years, but as I moved deeper into middle age the desire to have another person in the picture had grown. But it didn’t own me, and I wasn’t going to settle.

  And then laying in the cold in the dark in some Swiss forest not sure where, not sure what my situation would be when morning came, my thoughts turned to Duane. In my heart I knew I had been wrong not to believe in him. He was a good man, and had I not turned my back on him, I wouldn’t be lying on a bed of branches thousands of miles from home. I’d be in Aspen, helping him find the right attorney, giving him all the moral support I could muster, maybe even helping to find the person who was truly responsible for Kimmy’s death.

  I drifted in and out of sleep and dreamt of being warm under down and wool in my loft, even as my body shivered out valuable heat. I tried to remain still, to preserve energy needed to keep me warm. My feet had frozen again, so I took out the last two hand warmers and stuffed them deep into my boots. This time the chemical warmth burnt my frozen flesh and I almost cried out at the pain of the circulation partially returning. I wiggled my toes as best I could, hoping to force nourishing blood into the tiny ventricles. It helped a little, but not completely. I lay on my side thinking that losing a couple of toes might be acceptable, but a leg was not.

  FORTY

  The dawn came slowly, the deep black sky giving way to dark gray to lighter gray to welkin blue. I was curled in a ball, barely able to feel my feet. My core and my head seemed OK, my torso insulated by good ski gear and my head by my helmet. I sat up on my bed of branches, shivering as I tried thinking of the best course to take. The lighter was in clear sight in the daylight, laying atop the snow just a foot away from me. I cursed myself out for losing it in the dark. A fire sure would have meant a better night. But I was grateful to have it now. It meant I could build a fire to warm myself before making any other choices.

  My hands felt like blocks as I gathered wood, but I could move my fingers – a good sign. And though my fingers were white when I took off my gloves to examine them, there was no black, which meant I’d avoided frostbite so far. My feet encased in the ski boots were solid blocks too, but I had to walk to gather the wood so I put their condition out of my mind and went about doing what needed to be done. When I’d piled enough wood into a stack, I used some small branches with pine needles as kindling this time and when I applied the lighter my heart leapt with hope as they broke into flame that spread to the larger branches. It wasn’t long before I had a roaring fire. I moved in close to the crackling warmth, practically hugging it with my frozen hands.

  I was careful enough not to warm my hands too quickly, however, and even warming them slowly made me want to cry out as the blood painfully found its way back into closed-off circuitry. But gradually all feeling came back and I flexed my fingers back and forth with the glee of a prisoner having a death sentence sent to appeal. It’s amazing how encouraging small victories can be when your life hangs in the balance.

  I had been holding my booted feet to the fire as well, and the warmth was working its way slowly through the plastic shells. Just as with my hands, there was the mixed victory of warming, of excruciating but encouraging pain. The boots had been frozen almost solid, so it was difficult to manipulate them, but as they warmed they grew more pliable and eventually I managed to move the tongue enough to slide them off. Then I literally held my feet to the fire. They felt alien to me, lifeless blocks som
ehow connected to me. I slowly peeled off the thin wool socks that are protocol for skiing. A huge wave of relief swept me at the sight of my white-as-ivory toes. Though they were frozen solid, just like my fingers, they were free of any black. Frostbite had not found them in the night either.

  I thanked the heavens.

  I sat in front of the fire until the sun was mid-morning high in the sky, and the day had warmed into the 20s. I decided it was time to get moving. My stomach was an empty cavern, but rationing was in order, so I only ate a couple of the Snickers. Wanting to retain what water was left in my Camelbak, I sipped as much of the melted snow around the fire as I could. When the last of the fire had burnt out, I put my thawed feet back into my boots, clicked into my skis and let gravity take over again.

  The terrain was tight and treed, and I had to be super careful picking my way through the obstacles thrown at me. The only good news about that was the effort of skiing these conditions kept me warm, even as it depleted my energy. My thirst was growing out of control. When it was noon according to my watch, I allowed myself the luxury of eating the last Snickers and draining the last drops from the Camelbak.

  I continued my trek through the woods, worrying about what would happen if I had to spend another night in the cold, wondering if another day of travel would be possible without food. My only consolation was the lighter, but without nourishment and water would a fire be enough?

  I forced myself to forge onward, hoping that just beyond every few turns signs of civilization would occur. But as the afternoon wore on I began to feel I was deeper into the woods than ever.

  And then the first hint of dusk began to level, hope began to wear thin and I resigned myself to another night of bivouacking. My legs felt like every turn was a newborn effort itself, but since I didn’t see a good place to put down I forced myself to go just a bit farther in search of a better place to spend the night. I probably made another hundred yards when I spotted what appeared to be an opening in the woods. I gravitated toward it and with immeasurable relief realized it was a trail. Trails lead to towns.