Avalanche

By Barry Fields

---

Blake paid no attention to the swoosh from above. A rustle that could have been the wind. Jill, his fiancé, skied just ahead of him, while Marty, her father, lagged behind. Heading downhill, their skis sank into the wet snow with each kick forward. 

Seconds later the whisper built into a roar that echoed through the ravine. Blake and Jill looked up at a billowing white cloud plummeting down the steep mountainside. 

Blake saw Jill’s terror when she looked back. “Dad. Come on, come on!” Thunder swallowed her words. 

Blake glanced over his shoulder, and he sucked in his breath. Some fifty yards behind, Marty was kicking towards them frantically. Blake shouted at Jill. “Go! Move it.”

Jill raced ahead. Blake, stronger, had to stop himself from overlapping her skis.

“Faster!”

The trail was near the bottom of the ravine. In an awful moment, Blake knew they wouldn’t make it. The wall of snow was about to crash over them like a tidal wave.

Noise as deafening as a jet engine, a blast of icy wind, and the snow swept Blake away. For a few disorienting seconds he tumbled, then abruptly stopped, face planted in snow. He lifted his head and heard Jill screaming. Snow covered the lower half of him, his legs immobilized as if encased in wet cement. He shoveled with gloved hands until he freed himself. 

Blake stood up and barely sank in the compacted snow. One of his skis was nearby. The avalanche ended twenty feet ahead, untouched snow beyond. If they’d had another few seconds, they would have skied out of its reach. 

Blake lurched over the bumpy mass like a drunk to reach Jill, still crying for help. “What’s wrong, honey?” She was sitting, and he got on his knees.

“The pain. Oh, God. It hurts so bad.” She touched her right leg. “Below the knee.”

The ski, its tip torn and hanging by fibers, was still attached to her right foot. It must have wrenched her leg, breaking one of the bones. Her other ski was planted vertically in the snow several feet away. Gloves off, he worked to release the stuck binding, then raised her pants to the knee. When he felt the leg over her long johns, she yelped. It was badly swollen, but no bones stuck out. 

“Where’s my father?”

Looking back, Blake saw a convoluted white surface stretching away. “I’ll have to look for him.” 

“I’m going to help.” 

She reached out her arm. Blake pulled her to her feet. As soon as she put weight on her leg, she screamed and fell back onto the snow, breathing heavily.

Blake assessed the situation. The ravine was over twelve thousand feet high in the Elk Range. Miles separated them from Margy’s Hut. Jill couldn’t ski or walk. On their sixth day of backcountry touring, their phones had no juice. Cell service didn’t reach this deep into the mountains, anyway.

They were in trouble. 

Jill was whimpering when Blake left her to pick up his ski and begin the search. He prayed that Marty, his mentor and coworker, was in better shape than Jill. Blake would need his help to get her down to safety. Circumventing a spruce tree that had been snapped in half, he floundered through an obstacle course of snow boulders, rises, and depressions. At a high point, he saw that he and Jill had been lucky to be swept downslope at the edge of the slide in shallow snow. Here in the middle, where Marty had been caught, it was a monster, ten to fifteen feet deep. The avalanche cut a long swath out of the mountainside, demolishing trees and carrying large rocks along with it. An exposed cliff high above marked where it had begun. A jagged cornice hung precariously above the vertical rock.

“Marty, can you hear me?” 

No response.

Heart hammering as much from alarm as effort, Blake jabbed the snow every few feet, using both arms to drive in his ski. He made his way slowly in a widening spiral, looking for anything that might suggest a presence below. The violent probing could break Marty’s ribs or smash his skull, but it was Blake’s only tool. 

He had to stay focused through his fear. Find Marty. Time was against him. Twenty minutes might have passed since the avalanche. He widened his radius beyond where he expected Marty to be. There was no point in calling out his name, but Blake did it anyway. “Marty.” And again, “Marty.” He combed the area, fighting the rugged hard-pack with each step. It was taking too long. He reached the terminus of the avalanche, which had crossed the bottom of the ravine, and retraced his steps. Searching, probing, shouting. Over and over. The minutes ticking away.

Blake no longer shouted aloud. He stopped to rest, agitated in the preternatural quiet. Precipitous slopes rose on two sides. A long, snow-capped ridge was visible miles away. He had to wrap his head around it—Marty lay entombed under feet of snow compressed so tightly it was like ice. Even if he hadn’t been killed in the initial crush, he would have run out of air long ago. 

Marty, still and lifeless in a frozen grave. A horrifying image Blake couldn’t shake as he stumbled on rubbery legs back to Jill. 

She sat up when he approached. “Where’s my father?”

Blake plopped down beside her. “I’m sorry. There’s no sign of him anywhere.”

“He’s got to be out there somewhere. You’ve got to find him.” The shrill of desperation strained her voice.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I looked and looked. We’ve got to face it. The avalanche buried him. It must be more than an hour by now. There’s no way he could survive that long.”

Jill looked at him accusingly. Her voice cracked through unconsolable crying, taking on a hard edge of anger. “I don’t believe it. You didn’t look hard enough. Go back and look again.” 

“I did everything I could,” Blake said. “He’s gone, Jill. We can’t bring him back.”

Jill’s broke out in hoarse, disconsolate wailing. As Blake held her hand, memories welled up. His first day at the law firm where Marty had hired him. Blake, Marty, and Jill on their first Aspen hike together, climbing to sparkling Cathedral Lake when summer flowers bloomed yellow and red. Blake introducing Marty and Jill to the mountain world in winter and teaching them how to cross-country ski. 

The loss of Marty carved out a heartbreaking void in Blake, but for Jill it had to be immeasurably worse. Her mother had died when she was young. Blake never minded that she loved her father, dogs, and him in that order.

Tears were running down Jill’s face and onto the collar of her parka. “If he’s gone, it’s my fault,” she said.

“No. It’s no one’s fault.”

“I said to come this way.”

“He pressured you, Jill. In the end, we all agreed.”

“You didn’t want to.”

This wasn’t the time to argue. “Look, we can’t stay here. I have to find my other ski.”

Blake estimated the avalanche to be about four feet deep here. He probed the area, but all he found was a pole. He returned to Jill.

“I’m cold,” she said. 

Constant activity was keeping Blake warm. He gave her a sweater from his pack. Jill removed her down parka for a few seconds to put on the extra layer.

Blake couldn’t locate Jill’s poles, but he retrieved her second ski. The binding was so loose he pulled the screws right out of the carbon fiber core. Between two people, one of whom couldn’t walk, they had two broken skis, one good one, and one pole. How were he and Jill going to make it to Margy’s Hut, five or six miles down through the forest? Or the next six miles from there back to Aspen? He could feel the temperature dropping under a sun that offered no warmth. 

It was impossible. No one knew their whereabouts. Dread gripped him, edging into panic. They were going to freeze to death.

Stop it! 

He had to keep his thoughts clear. Act rationally in spite of the odds. On his knees, he lashed the three skis together with nylon cord. The two self-inflating sleeping pads went over them. Jill lay on top, and he bound her, legs and all, to the ensemble. 

“Does it feel secure?”

“Yeah, I guess. But the pain. I can’t stand it.”

Blake didn’t ask if she meant physical or emotional pain. He dumped everything unnecessary onto the snow and consolidated emergency gear and warm clothes into his pack. He shouldered it and slid the harness connecting him to the makeshift sled around his waist.

Blake started off. He hadn’t anticipated how much of a struggle dragging Jill would be. The rope pressed uncomfortably into his abdomen above the pack’s waist belt. Off the avalanche, he sank into the snow past his knees with each slow step. At least it was downhill.

***

Marty had introduced Blake and Jill eight years earlier, but they’d only connected five years ago, both of them thirty, when Blake decided to get a dog. Jill ran an animal shelter and had become a local celebrity for saving countless dogs and cats. She answered pet questions in a column for the weekly free newspaper. It was rumored that animals took to her so quickly, they didn’t want to leave the shelter when adopted. Blake chose an adorable floppy-eared puppy named Jasper.

“He’s a heart-throb,” she said. “We got him yesterday and I’m already in love. It would break my heart if he didn’t have a good home.”

“Come over in a week and see how he’s doing,” Blake suggested.

She came with her rescued mutt Aurora. A year later they formed a family of four. Blake and Jill took most of their vacations with the dogs. Walked them together every day. Blake helped at the animal shelter when he could. They had to shoo dogs off the bed to make love.

The backcountry ski trip to Colorado had been Marty’s idea, his treat for Jill and Blake’s engagement. They had four gorgeous days of blue skies, temperatures in the mid-twenties that made for perfect Nordic skiing on dry, packed powder. Glistening peaks and vistas stretched over the vast Rocky Mountains from high passes, and towns nestled in long valleys far below. They spent nights in primitive Tenth Mountain Trail Division huts shared with more than a dozen others.

Yesterday had turned cloudy and warm. It snowed all night. By morning, over a foot of wet snow had accumulated. The front had already passed, and the sky was a startling azure against a sea of white, the conifers majestic with their dark green, snow-laden branches.

The three of them ate freeze-dried eggs and potatoes with their coffee that morning, their sixth and last day, looking forward to the downhill ski back to Aspen. After cleaning their dishes and filling their water bottles from the communal pot’s melted snow, they spread the trail map on the table. Most of the other skiers had already left. According to the map and guidebook, a stretch of the route led through a deep ravine.

“You’ve got this heavy, wet snow sitting on top of feet of older, dry snow,” Blake explained. “The slope’s steep. Perfect conditions for a slide. I don’t think we should risk it.” With his finger, he traced an alternate route that led in the opposite direction. “It’ll take an extra day, but it’s safer.” They would spend another night at a hut before looping back to the McNamara Hut, down through Hunter Creek Valley, and into Aspen. 

“We’ll miss our flight,” Marty objected. “I’ve got a trial to prepare for. It’ll cost a fortune to buy new tickets. If we can get them. Flights could be sold out. We don’t even have hut reservations.”

They’d had to reserve their spaces in the huts months in advance, and when they’d gotten their plane tickets returning on Presidents Day weekend, the flights were almost sold out already. “We’ll sleep on the floor if we have to,” Blake said. “If we start super early tomorrow, we might make it in time to get a later flight out of Aspen. If we’re lucky, we’ll still make our connection in Denver.”

“That’s a lot of ifs.” Marty turned to Jill. “Sweetheart, you don’t want to spend an extra day, do you? Don’t you want to get home to your dogs?”

Jill looked from one to the other. “I guess I’m with Dad.”

“Two to one,” Marty said. “A little bit of risk to save a few thousand bucks and get us home on time. I got the trial continued twice. The judge won’t do it a third time.”

The argument continued until Blake gave in. Not wanting to seem callous. “All right. I don’t like it, but it’ll probably work out. We’ll have a nice dinner in Aspen tonight and go home tomorrow.”

***

They left the ravine behind and entered the shade of the conifer forest, following a faint track with occasional yellow blazes on trees. In places branches had dumped large amounts of snow. Every time they came to a patch, Blake wasted time locating the trail again. Once, he flailed so long in the dark shadows of trees searching for a track or trail marker, he cursed in frustration. 

The snow had settled deeper in the trees. Lifting a leg high out of the snow step after step and sinking in, often up to the thigh, wore on him. The rope dug into him painfully. He figured they were making a half mile an hour at best. Up to twelve hours to reach the hut.

“You okay back there?”

She didn’t answer. He stopped and turned around. 

“Say something so I know you’re alive.”

“I was thinking about my father. It’s my fault. I killed him.”

“The avalanche killed him. You had nothing to do with it. You can’t keep talking like that.”

“I’m slowing you down so much, we’re both going to die out here, too. Leave me. You can make it on your own.”

Blake stared at her, helpless on her back. “We’re getting married in a few weeks. I’m not going anywhere without you.”

“Then we’ll freeze to death together. I love you too much to let you die because of me.”

“I love you too much to let you die because I left you.” 

Blake trudged on. She was probably right. At this rate, making it to the hut was a long shot. But everything he looked forward to in life included Jill. Having children. Expanding the animal shelter. Honeymooning in Costa Rica and walking in the rain forest. No way would he abandon her.

Light faded as the sun sank behind the treed slopes. They had to stop before it got dark. They came to a snowdrift on the side of a boulder the size of a small bus. Blake let the rope around his waist fall to the snow.

Oh, God, was he tired. 

On his knees, he burrowed sideways into the snowdrift. His gloves filled with snow. He hollowed the hole out further, digging and pushing snow out of the opening until he made enough room for two people. As he worked, his knees packed the snow beneath him into an uneven floor. At last, he sat against the rock, the roof a foot above his head with room for both of them to lie down. He spread out a Mylar bivouac blanket on the floor. He unbound Jill from the skis, put their self-inflating sleeping pads on the blanket, and their sleeping bags on top.

“Crawl inside.”

Jill cried out in pain but did it. Blake helped her into her sleeping bag up to her waist and she leaned against the rock. He did the same beside her. He’d barely drunk water for lack of thirst but knew he needed it. He polished off one of his bottles, which he packed with snow and stuck in his sleeping bag. 

“I don’t want any,” Jill said. “My leg hurts so bad.”

“You have to.” He put her water bottle in her hand. She took a few small sips.

“Who’s going to take care of Jasper and Aurora when we’re gone?” she asked. The dogs were staying for the week with one of the shelter’s volunteers.

“Don’t talk like that.” 

Blake wedged his pack across the entrance to trap the warmth inside while letting in adequate fresh air. Their bodies slowly heated the space up. They kept their socks and pants and long underwear on to dry them.

“All the time being dragged behind you, I kept thinking my father was going to catch up to us and say he was sorry he caused us so much worry.”

“I kept thinking about him, too,” Blake said.

Trail mix had been lunch for days. They were sick of it, but they had to eat something. Then they slid further into their bags and lay down. Time for sleep.

When Blake woke it was already light. He shook Jill awake. They drank water, ate the last of their trail mix, put on their uncomfortably cold boots, and went outside. The temperature had plummeted. Not for the first time, he helped hold Jill in a semi-squatting position to pee. Unpleasant for both of them. A full bathroom break would come soon and would be worse.

The arctic cold had frozen a thick crust on the wet snow. The rope around his waist, Blake took a couple of steps on top it. Terrific. He could walk almost like normal. The next time he put his foot down, he broke through and plunged almost to his hip, pulling him off balance. Snow spilled into his boots. He braced himself with his pole and fought his way out, made worse by his heavy backpack. He took another step and it held. The next one didn’t.

“Damn!”

Struggling out of the hole with his pack on was exhausting. They had no cord left and he gave the pack to Jill, who wrapped her arms around it. Blake set off again. He hated every step, not knowing if the crust would hold or not. Falling through drained him. With her weight spread out on top of the skis, Jill glided on the surface. The only benefit to the conditions.

As they descended, trees crowded together so tightly Blake had to guess half the time which way the trail went. The crust thinned and eventually disappeared. His hip felt raw and painful where the rope rubbed against it. The weight of Jill kept his pace at a crawl. His beanie protected him against snow that occasionally dumped on them from overburdened tree limbs. His fingers were cold, although the gloves had partially dried during the night. His feet were the real problem. A deep, painful ache settled into his freezing toes.

Hours passed. Blake plodded on, barely able to lift his feet, dragging Jill. He stopped for a rest. A couple of ponderosa pines soared high against the sky. He helped hold Jill in a sitting position. She refused to drink. 

“I’m slowing you down. You can make it on your own if you leave me,” Jill said.

“I already told you. I can’t do that.”

“Get real. It’s our only chance. We’re not going to get there today. You think we’re going to survive out here another night?”

She was right. They were both weaker. Out of food. Unless they came upon another big snowdrift, a cold death awaited them. “We’re sticking together,” he said.

“You have to go alone. Send someone back for me. I’ll be alright.”

Blake stood still without answering.

“You’re wasting time. Go already,” Jill urged.

They were in an area of gently sloping forest, nothing with a snowdrift that he might dig out for a cave. “Alright,” he said at last. “I’ll send help back for you.”  

Blake unbound her from the jerry-rigged sled. Freed from Jill and without a pack, alone in the quiet of trees and snow, his speed more than doubled. 

After laboring for a few minutes, he stopped. It didn’t feel right. There was no way to know how far he was from the hut. Even if he got there soon and could communicate with the outside world, assembling a rescue team with a toboggan from Aspen would take time. They wouldn’t get to her until tomorrow. He shuddered when he pictured what they’d find.

He retraced his steps in the track he’d already made.

“What are you doing?” Jill asked.

“What does it look like?”

“No, Blake.”

“Yes, Jill.”

He strapped her onto the sled and pulled the rope harness over his sore hip bones. “Hold onto my pack.”

Blake toiled through the immensity of the forest. They didn’t speak. Maybe another hour passed. Maybe two.

In his deepening fatigue, the beauty of the day, the evergreens, and the occasional mountain views made no impression on Blake. He had one focus—the hut. His mind numbed in the tedious plodding, step after grinding step. 

Lack of feeling replaced the cold pain in a few of his toes. He knew what it meant. Tissue dying. The kind of deep frostbite you didn’t recover from. He forced himself not to think about it.

Jill let go of his pack. Resting his weakening legs, he sat on top of it and listened to the whoosh of wind through the treetops. Jill was shivering violently. 

“Can we see Jasper and Aurora now?” she asked.

A bad sign. Without moving, Jill couldn’t maintain her body temperature. Severe hypothermia was leading to mental confusion. If they didn’t reach safety soon, her body temperature would continue dropping. Hallucinations would begin. 

Then she would die.

Jill couldn’t hold his pack, and he no longer had the strength to blunder on carrying it. He left it behind and continued the interminable slog. They would make it to the hut that day or it would be their last. Another realization he had to banish from his thoughts. 

A load of snow from a fir tree cascaded down on him. Snow slid under his parka and ran down his back. More cold. Descending further, the trail wound through stands of aspens. He was stopping frequently now, the weariness in his legs unremitting. Ice clogged his water bottle.

He didn’t have it in him anymore. They would never reach the hut. All he wanted was relief from the staggering, the endless deep snow trek. 

Yes, a permanent respite sounded good. When he looked back, Jill had stopped shivering.

“Jill?”

She stared with glassy eyes, barely conscious. He was losing her.

Blake willed himself to go on through tears of grief and exhaustion and shaking legs. There was still a chance she would live if he didn’t give up. Except that time wore on and on, and still the green and white world of the mountain vastness enveloped them.

Blake pushed until he no longer could. He sat in his tracks. After a minute, he struggled to get up and immediately collapsed. He had no reserves left. He lay on his back and closed his eyes. Maybe after a while some strength would return. 

Cold slowly seeped into him and he shivered as Jill had. He grasped without interest that his body temperature was falling, his mind dulling. Jill, motionless, was probably dead. The snow made a nice bed, even if a cold one. There was nothing more to do but lie there in icy stillness.

He saw the exercise yard at the animal shelter. They were throwing balls for a couple of the dogs, a cute beagle mix and an Australian shepherd. The dogs were barking and loving it. He was having fun and Jill was hugging the dogs and he was loving Jill. It was all so nice. 

“Hey. Are you two alright?” 

A man’s voice.

He opened his eyes. Standing over him were a man and a woman. A look of horror contorted her face. Blake tried to speak. A wordless, croaking sound came out.

The couple helped Blake to his feet and gave him water.

“You’re just off the main trail, a couple of hundred yards from Margy’s Hut,” the man said. “Can you make it?”

Blake staggered forward two steps and sank to his knees.

The man released his ski bindings. He helped Blake into them, put poles in his hands, and took Blake’s single pole. The man stepped into the rope harness and began pulling Jill. Skis and snowshoes had packed the trail, but the man sank to his knees with each step. Blake slid slowly behind him, the woman following on skis. 

They reached the hut, on the edge of a large clearing. Blake plopped onto a bench at the first table he came to. The man and woman dragged Jill inside, put more wood in the stove, and took off their jackets. It must be warm, but the chill permeated Blake’s insides. His uncontrolled shivering continued. The woman handed him a cup of lukewarm water. He downed it and she refilled it. 

Jill lay on the floor, unmoving. The man felt her wrist for a pulse.

“Is she still alive?” Blake asked.

“I’m not sure. What happened?”

“Avalanche. A few miles up from here. We lost Jill’s father.” If Jill was gone, too, none of the rest mattered. A hollowness formed in his chest that had nothing to do with cold.

The woman took off Jill’s mittens and replaced them with her own, then lifted her to a sitting position and poured a little water into her mouth. Jill choked and spit it up.

 She was alive. Thank God, she was alive. If only he could stop shivering, he would be overjoyed. 

“Careful,” Blake said. “Her leg’s probably broken.”

The couple dragged a mattress near the stove and put Jill on it, a sleeping bag over her. The man had Starlink and made a call. He talked for a few minutes. When he hung up, he gave Blake the details of the coming rescue. 

Blake sat on the floor next to Jill and touched her cold face. “Honey, we’re going to make it. Okay?”

Jill, eyes open but unfocused, gave no sign she heard. Blake sat on the bench again.

The man took off Blake’s frozen boots and socks. All of his toes were white. The man poured water from two stovetop pots into a plastic basin, added cold water, and tested them with his hand. 

“Put your feet in there.”

The woman stayed with Jill, whispering inaudibly to her, and got her to take a few sips of water. To Blake she said, “You look like you came from a war zone.”

The man handed Blake a small mirror. The hard snow had cut his face. Blood had oozed over his cheeks, nose, and mouth and dried in crusty splotches. He barely recognized himself.

The woman made tea and handed a cup to Blake. As his feet thawed, the pain became excruciating, as if his toes were on fire. All but the little toe on each foot. There was no feeling in them at all. By the time he heard a chopper thumping in the distance, they were starting to turn black. The sound grew louder and louder and the helicopter landed near the cabin. 

The wilderness ordeal was over, but not the suffering. The loss of Marty would haunt them. Blake’s dead toes had to be amputated before the gangrene spread. Jill would be in intensive care and could have permanent damage to her heart or kidneys. 

Paramedics wrapped Jill and Blake in self-heating blankets, strapped them into stretchers, and carried them to the helicopter. They slid the stretchers inside the helicopter and locked them in place. Blake looked blankly at the white ceiling overhead. The roar of the blades was deafening as the helicopter lifted off the ground.