Snow Stalker

by M K Dymock

  She pulled the door shut to conserve what little heat the four of them generated. “James.” He mumbled an indiscernible reply. “James,” she said louder, demanding a response.

  “What?” he said in more of an annoyed tone versus sick, making her feel a little better.

  “What’s going to happen if you don’t get some medication soon?”

  “Probably nothing as long as I take it easy. I’ve missed a few days before.” All of this said in a low voice without opening his eyes.

  “You don’t look like ‘probably nothing.’”

  “Cold is making it worse than usual. When will the plow come?”

  “Might be a few hours,” Ryan said.

  “Hopefully, they got food.”

  Mina ran through a mental inventory of what was in the car. It wasn’t a long list when it came to things like food.

  James fell back asleep as if the effort of staying awake had been too much. He might say he was fine, but she didn’t believe it. They were at 8,000 feet, which meant lower oxygen levels and more strain on the heart.

  “I’m thinking about walking out,” she whispered to Ryan. “I’ve seen this canyon shut down for two days before, and this storm is something else.”

  “How will that help James if they can’t get a plow down?”

  “They can bring snowmobiles and pull him out on a sled or even borrow a Cat track from the resort. I don’t need to get all the way to town. Once I get out of the canyon, I can radio to the sheriff’s office. We could have him out in half a day.”

  “I should go,” Ryan said. “The drifts will be over your head one step out of the car.”

  “I’ve got a couple of pairs of snowshoes in the back.”

  “A couple, meaning two pairs?”

  “Yeah, I always keep an extra set if a friend joins me.”

  Ryan glanced back to where James softly snored. “Good. I’m coming with you.”

  “No, you should stay here.”

  “And do what? Eat more food, drink more water? Phil can stay. Out there, you could get stuck in a drift and would need someone to pull you out. You can’t save him if you get hurt.”

  Mina weighed all their options, and each came up lacking. She’d much rather go now than wait for James to have a heart attack. And two of them going would be safer than one.

  A mile to the top. “All right,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  16

  Mina would’ve brought different clothes had she known she’d be hiking through four feet of snow, some of which drifted high enough to cover her head.

  Despite the ever-falling snow, at least it would be easy to find their way through the canyon. The mountains on their left and the river on the right marked the path home. They walked in uncomfortable silence only to be broken by one of them, usually her having sunk through the drifts and having to climb out, much to her annoyance.

  “Where are you from?” he asked after helping her out, apparently done with the silence.

  “What makes you think I’m not from here?” Mina hated that question, because when she replied “California,” they didn’t like that answer. They wanted a foreign country of origin.

  “Sorry. Seems like in every resort town everyone is from somewhere else.”

  She would give him that. “I’m from Pasadena.”

  “No way. I’m also sort of a California boy. My parents are in Oakland.”

  “Sort of?”

  “When I was little, they moved around a lot to climb the corporate ladder. Eventually, like everyone else, they got jobs in Silicon Valley.”

  “What about you? Where do you live now?”

  “Outside Seattle.” The clouds lifted enough to allow them a view of the canyon walls. “Where’d you go to school?”

  She hated this question almost as much as “where are you from?” “Stanford,” she spat out, as if she expected him to argue with her. Two reasons brought out the terse response—one, people didn’t believe a ski instructor could go to Stanford, and two, she really wished she hadn’t.

  “That’s cool. My folks wanted to me to go there, but I didn’t get in.” He said this without trace of wounded pride. “My grades weren’t that good.”

  Her grades were that good and better. Her parents saw to that—lot of good it did any of them. “Stanford is overrated.” She softened her tone because her issues weren’t his fault. “Although I was on the ski team, so it wasn’t a total waste.”

  Ryan paused to pull out a small set of binoculars. He scanned the ridgeline.

  “There’s nothing up there,” Mina said. “Only a few biking trails and an old road, but nothing passable in the winter.”

  “Just getting a feel for where we are. With the road being covered, this place is as remote as the tundra. Hard to remember a few days ago I sat in a coffee shop crammed with a hundred people in a city of more than a half million. It’s unnerving.”

  “Last time I went to LA, I thought I was going to crawl out of my skin sitting in traffic. Yet I grew up there and thought nothing of it back then.” Her gaze followed his to the ridgeline and the thought of what unseen entity could be watching them. The enormity of how stranded they really were crashed through.

  Leaving the car had meant leaving their last grasp to civilization.

  “Let’s keep moving,” Mina said. It wasn’t only the isolation pushing her onward. Since that day in the trees, she’d been on edge. Something had been in that grove, barely out of sight.

  The cold couldn’t be beaten back. It immersed itself into her boots; the foot warmer she’d put in the night before had long worn off. With every step, she squeezed her fist and opened it to keep circulation flowing.

  With the cold came the opposite problem of the heat. Working through the snow worked up a sweat on her torso, which could freeze into thin layers. Usually when she went snowshoeing, she wore a series of thin layers that could be removed as needed. All she’d had in her car, however, was her thickest winter coat and snow pants—neither of which she could shed without freezing.

  A mile more, she told herself. Although the drifts made it feel like ten.

  Ryan and his long legs led the way through the snow, making a trail she tried to follow. But his longer stride required her to take a step in between his. He paused as the wind picked up. Ahead lay the canyon, and to their right a small four-wheel road led into a side canyon.

  “Anything up there?” Ryan asked.

  “No, it only leads to an old mine and some trails.”

  He unzipped the top of his jacket. “How is it possible to be so hot and cold at the same time?”

  “We shouldn’t stop for long. Our sweat can start to freeze.”

  He nodded his agreement as he reached into his jacket pocket. “I just remembered last time I was out hiking in the winter I stuck a couple of hand warmers in my coat. But I don’t remember if I used them or not.” He took off his gloves, revealing bright red hands to fumble around in several pockets.

  He challenged her initial opinion of him not being the outdoorsy kind. He still seemed like a walking contradiction, but so was she. Outside Lost Gorge, nobody looked at her race and size and thought, There’s an expert skier. Every time the resort assigned her men skiers to teach, she had to spend the morning kicking their asses so they’d spend the afternoon following hers.

  “I got it.”

  Mina jerked with guilt as if he’d reading her thoughts. Ryan held out a package with a pair of hand warmers. “Sorry, I guess I zoned out.” She shook her head to dispel thoughts that wouldn’t leave so easily. “Good, your hands could use them.”

  “Here, you take them. I’m okay.”

  “No.”

  As if sensing an unwinnable argument, he ripped open the package and handed one little white pack of warmth to her. “I’ll take one; you take one.”

  “Thank you.” She took the warmer and shook it; they required a little air to warm up. She tucked into her mitten and wrapped her hand around it, willing it to
heat up quicker.

  As he mimicked her same actions, he gestured to the canyon. “Intriguing place, isn’t it? It looks like ten feet in and you lose the light and a hundred years. Places like that always keep me on my toes. That realization you really don’t know what’s out there.”

  “Where have you seen places like this?”

  “I got lost once in a cave in Montana. No phone service, just a dying flashlight. I wandered for hours. Every breath resulted in nothing but coughing. Figured that was it and no one will find my body; my parents won’t ever know what happened to me.”

  “What did happen?”

  He laughed at the obvious question. “I got out, and stayed out of caves since.”

  “Can’t imagine that’s hard to do.”

  “You’d be surprised how much that comes up in my life. What about you? You often find yourself wandering through a blizzard in the forest?”

  “More often than you’d think. At least I have company this time.”

  “You didn’t last time?”

  “I found the body, the one everyone’s talking about.” Mina hadn’t spoken to anyone about the day, beyond the logistics of solving the death. She didn’t want to appear weak in front of Sol and Clint, didn’t want to worry her parents, and couldn’t talk about it in town.

  He stopped, one snowshoe lifted in the air long enough she noticed. He replaced it without turning around. “That must’ve been awful. I’m sorry.”

  “No, it’s me who’s sorry.” She stomped into the snow. “I’ve been on edge since it happened.”

  “You found a body. Anybody would be freaked.”

  “I’ve found bodies before. This was different.”

  “Bodies, as in plural? And you think I’m weird for frequenting caves.”

  She laughed, which she hadn’t done much in the last week. “I volunteer with Search and Rescue.”

  “That’s awesome, saving people like that.”

  “Not everyone.”

  As if sensing her discomfort, he changed the subject. “How far away is the ski resort?”

  She jumped on the change. “Not far as the crow flies. If we were on top, you could see the runs. After the next bend, the road straightens out for less than a quarter mile as the canyon flattens. I should be able to get someone on the radio soon.”

  Ryan clapped his hands together. “I’m buying you the biggest steak this town has once we get out of…”

  They came around the bend. An avalanche filled the road, the snow still sliding into the river below.

  It wasn’t the storm that kept the plows away.

  17

  Ryan hated winter. He hadn’t before, but now he wanted nothing so much as a day in hell to finally warm up.

  A few tree limbs and a lot more rocks and bushes littered the avalanche field. The snow slide filled the road at more than a 90-degree angle.

  Next to him, Mina sighed as she stared at the obstacle. He couldn’t really complain when the woman next to him didn’t respond with more than a sigh, could he?

  He waited for Mina to speak, and he waited a while. She pulled out a radio and called out through the static to no response. Wrenching the button around on top to several different channels didn’t help either.

  “I don’t know how long this goes or how sturdy it even is to walk on,” Mina finally said.

  “Think they’ll send a plow up from the Junction?”

  “Not as long as there’s avalanche danger.” Mina’s voice faltered, and Ryan inwardly begged her to keep it together. He knew he could hang on if she did. “I can go back to that side canyon. There’s a trail to the top of the ridge where maybe I can get a signal.”

  Ryan pulled off his glove and switched the hand warmer from one hand to the other. Pain struck each finger as numbness met heat. “Least we can do is reach the old prospector cabin. Isn’t that close to the top?”

  “You’re not going,” Mina said. “It’s not safe, and I can’t be responsible if something happens to you. This is my job, not yours.”

  “Mina, the math hasn’t changed. You, alone, can’t do it. Me, alone, can’t do it. James and Phil back in the car can’t go anywhere.” He turned and followed his tracks back down the canyon.

  What weak daylight they had in the canyon faded in the ravine under a tunnel of barren trees. The snow was shallower there, where the trees blocked the storm. Branches broken by the weight of the snow crisscrossed their path. If it weren’t for the trail’s steepness, the going would be easier than the road.

  Despite his height, Ryan huffed more than Mina. It would take time for his lungs and heart to adjust to the elevation.

  The trail grew darker the farther into the ravine they walked. Ryan stopped to catch his breath, collapsing on a nearby log. As casually as he could, he asked the question he’d been wanting to ask since he’d found out who she was. “What was the body like when you found it?” He knew it was an awful question, knew she probably wouldn’t answer it, but he needed to know.

  Their conversation came to a stop like a car hitting a brick wall.

  She faced him with all five-feet-nothing, and he took a step back. “Why are you here? Only a powder hound would risk coming up the canyon in those conditions. But you haven’t asked me anything about the resort—not the best powder stashes, not even where the best beer is. The only other people new to town are the…” Mina looked up at him. “You’re one of them?”

  “One of who?”

  “Those idiot Bigfoot guys who call themselves Squatchers.”

  “I am not an idiot,” Ryan said quietly. It exhausted him having to defend himself from everyone who made assumptions about him.

  “No, you just travel across the country searching mythical creatures. With it being close to Christmas, I’m surprised Santa Claus isn’t more on your radar.”

  “You don’t know me.” Ryan passed her to walk up the trail with her insults at his back. Her vehemence caught him off guard. He was used to ridicule but not anger.

  “Those jerks, one in particular, have been chasing me down all week, won’t leave me alone. ‘Did it rip the head off? How big was it? Did you run?’” Mina paused, and he turned to face her, unprepared for the betrayal in her dark eyes. “You came with me, not to help, but to pump me for information.”

  Her accusations hurt more than the taunts of those who mocked him. “I don’t tell people because they think I’m crazy.” He took a step toward her. “I swear I left the car to help you.”

  “You are so considerate.” Water dripped down Mina’s cheeks from her snow-soaked beanie and off the ends of her black braids. He wanted to brush them away but knew that would be the way to a butt-kicking.

  “My parents sent me to summer camp when I was a kid. But when I came home with stories I saw a wild ape man, they sent me to a psychiatrist and then to live at an uncle’s home. He wouldn’t let me online or watch TV, even confiscated my gaming system because it had ‘fantasy creatures’ in it.” Ryan met Mina’s glare. “I was fourteen, and I learned not to tell people what I saw.”

  “I didn’t see Bigfoot.”

  “Maybe not, but you saw something that’s got you on edge.”

  “We’re almost to the top,” Mina said, passing him on the trail.

  They climbed in silence. Yet another woman scared off by his “hobby,” and Phil wondered why Ryan had stopped trying. Most could accept he believed in Sasquatch, a few less understood a trip in the mountains to look for one, but none could get past his absolute conviction he’d seen one.

  Ryan gave up on gaining Mina’s forgiveness to focus on a more immediate problem. He could still wiggle his fingers, but his toes had the flexibility of a brick and no feeling. The boots he wore, while proving waterproof, were new and stiff.

  The trail crested on top of a ridge, revealing the canyon’s edge and back down to the river. The peaks that should surround them on all sides still lay buried in the gray clouds. They stood for a moment, both breathless and speechless.


  Mina pulled out her radio and turned it on to static. “This is Deputy Park in need of assistance.” Deputy? That was new information. No one responded. A red light flashed on top. “Battery’s low,” Mina said.

  She took off to a clearing in the thinning pine trees. Another attempt and static.

  “Maybe we should turn it off. Give it a try when the storm clears out some,” Ryan said.

  “Storm’s socked in. It’s not clearing out today.”

  A break in static interrupted their debate and a man’s voice broke through. “Mina, that you?”

  “Yeah. I’m stranded in Lost Gorge Canyon with three tourists. One has a heart condition.”

  No answer.

  “Sol?”

  “We’ve got two avalanches. You’re going to be stranded for a while.”

  18

  Ryan and Mina huddled in the old mining shack for warmth. With holes between slats of wood, the cabin kept them only marginally more sheltered from the storm.

  He’d lost feeling in both feet but hadn’t communicated that to Mina. Rescue was a long way out, and there was nothing she could do about it anyway.

  Sol told them to stay put and they would attempt to send snowmobiles along the ridge to them. As the crow flew, Mina explained, they weren’t far from the ski resort. The terrain, however, with its deep ravines and rock, forced a longer route.

  “I never thought I’d hate the snow,” Mina said in utter disgust.

  “Spoken like a true SoCal.” Ryan sat on a log someone had dragged into the cabin. “A few inches and you people freak out. We Northern Californians know how to handle snow.”

  She side-eyed him for a second as if to gauge his intent before laughing. “True, four feet and I am undone.” She stood and paced. “We should keep moving.”

  “I’m not leaving the cabin.”

  “No, I mean pace the floor. We sit, we fall asleep, and that’s death.”

  He thought of the last time he’d been close to death. He’d done the opposite and held perfectly still and lived. He still climbed to his feet to follow her advice.