02 Avalanche Pass (3 page)

“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.

THE PREVIOUS WEEK

I
t 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 last 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?

N
ow, 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.

There was no wind, but her own speed created one and she felt that freezing rush around her face, felt her hair streaming out behind her like a banner. Her forehead started to ache with the intense cold but she gritted her teeth and ignored it, hunching down in the collar of her ski suit for protection.

She was reeling him in fast now, skiing in a straight line, cutting across the smooth rounded curves that his skis had cut in the snow, traveling maybe half the distance he was and moving a lot faster as well.

He was swinging off to the left, down Calf Roper, to head for Four Points Hut when she caught up with him in a drifting cloud of snow. He looked up, a little surprised at her rapid arrival and violent stop.

“Jess? What the hell are you up to?” she said. They were already too low to access the chutes and as far as she was concerned, that meant a wasted run. They’d have to ride up the chair again. He shrugged, but she noticed that he wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“Just getting my legs,” he said briefly. He turned away to ski off, but her hand was on his arm and she stopped him.

“Getting your legs? You got your legs twenty years ago! We didn’t sneak off to ski the kiddie runs, Jess. Let’s do some real skiing here, okay?”

She saw his shoulders straighten a little as she said the words “kiddie runs” and he replied with an obvious undertone of anger in his voice.

“Okay fine. Let’s get to the chair.”

He tried to shake her hand off his arm but she held tight. A worried frown creased the skin between her eyes and she pushed her yellow-tinted goggles up to see his face more clearly. His own eyes were covered by dark brown Bolle aviator glasses, which made it difficult to read his expression.

“Jess?” she asked tentatively, her own voice softening with concern. “Is the leg giving you trouble?” He didn’t answer immediately.

“Maybe a little,” he said. She could sense the worry in his voice and she shuffled a little closer to him.

“You know the doc said it’s fine. It’s completely healed. Maybe the muscle tone isn’t back to what it was, but that’s just a matter of exercise. There’s no physical problem.”

He looked at her then and she could see she had stung him. “You’re saying it’s in my mind?” he challenged and she shrugged awkwardly, wishing she could take her earlier words back. How often do we wish that? she asked herself as she tried to pick her words more carefully.

“Well, maybe that’s only to be expected,” she said. “But so far as I can see, there’s an easy way to get rid of any doubt. Just ski the chutes and prove to yourself that you’re okay.”

“As easy as that,” he said in a flat tone. She shook her head in frustration.

“Yes, as easy as that! Jess, what is the problem? You ski like an angel. You know it. I know it. You’ve been skiing the chutes since you were nine years old!”

“Maybe I don’t feel I’m ready for it yet.”

She stepped back, looking at the trees and snow around them as she tried to find the right words. She couldn’t believe they were having this conversation. Skiing had been second nature to Jesse virtually from the time he could walk. The chutes were a double black run, certainly. But to a skier of Jesse’s standard, they should have held no fear.

“This is crazy! You’ve skied in those trees hundreds of times! Thousands maybe! I tell you, there is no problem Jess. You’re fine. You’ve just got to get over it and believe it, that’s all.”

“And what if I try it and I can’t handle it, Lee? What then?”

She shook her head, scarcely believing what she was hearing. “That’s not going to happen. I know it. Sure you might fall, but you’ve fallen in there hundreds of times—and only once was it a problem.” She tried to lighten her tone. “You know what they say, ‘If you ain’t fallin’, you just ain’t tryin’.’”

There was a stubborn set to his jaw. “I’m not ready.”

“Jesse, this is crazy. You’ve got to try.”

“I
have
tried, goddamn it! And I can’t handle it! I start to panic and I can’t control the skis and I lose it.”