Clear to Lift (20 page)

I start the hike down the snow-filled couloir—a wide thirty-degree swath that runs close to two thousand vertical feet. It's the easiest way down this mountain, by far, but as I sink into knee-deep snow, a creeping disquiet moves through me. The only protective layers of clothing between the lower half of my body and the snow are a single base layer of polypropylene long underwear, my flight suit, a pair of socks, and steel-toed flight boots.

“Longhorn Six, Longhorn Ground, over,” I say, speaking into my handheld radio.

“Longhorn Ground, Longhorn Six, go ahead,” Boomer says.

“Longhorn Six, I had to leave the Notch. The weather's not looking too good up here and I couldn't stay. I'm climbing down the couloir now. Just plan on finding me lower down, over.”

“Roger that. We're fifty minutes out.”

I trudge my way through the snow in switchback fashion, gritting my teeth against the cold as the snow finds its way into my socks and boots. And while the polypropylene base layer I wear is moisture-wicking, my flight suit is not. But that's okay, because the sky directly above me remains clear, and my ride is only fifty minutes away. I can do this.

*   *   *

Distances can be deceiving in the mountains. I falsely believed I could descend the length of this couloir to the shelter of the extra-large boulders at its base in thirty minutes, maybe forty minutes tops. That was two hours ago.

If I had to guess, I'd say I've made it three-quarters of the way down. I can't say for certain where I am, because the visibility has been reduced to zero. Ten minutes after I started my descent, my worst fears were realized, as the darkening storm moved over the summit of Basin Mountain, swallowing it whole. God, the speed of it. The enormity. The winds turned on in earnest—thirty miles per hour? forty?—and the clouds let go, snow pummeling the mountain, pummeling me.

A helicopter rescue? Out of the question. According to Boomer, when they arrived in the area, what I had thought to be a local weather phenomenon, affecting the high mountains only, had in fact moved into the valley. Boomer even had to fly an instrument approach to get into the Bishop airport, due to the low ceilings and accompanying low visibility. The “good” news is that our maintenance guys repaired the oil line on Longhorn 07, which now sits side by side with Longhorn 06, neither able to fly in whiteout conditions.

I always thought that flying on a pitch-black, moonless night would be one of the most disorienting things I could ever experience. I'm proved wrong in the blinding snow that whips frontways, sideways, backways, up, down, and around. Wholly vertigo-inducing, I'm reduced to crawl speed, guessing where to step next, knowing I can't stop in the open, always hedging to the left—where I think is left, anyway—to the rocky border of the couloir for some shelter from the wind.

From the waist down, I'm so wet and cold it hurts. My muscles throb from the shivering and my feet and hands sting. I shove my pained hands under my armpits, cursing the fact that I wear a flight suit and boots. I'm dressed this way because when pilots act as victims, a routine scenario is for the aircraft commander to remain in the helicopter while the copilots rotate through, one doing the flying while the other waits for pickup. Bottom line, we're all dressed for flying.

We are
not
dressed for hours of exposure in a snowstorm. I thought I had done my due diligence in bringing an extra fleece, a hat, and a jacket shell in a backpack, but I never could have anticipated this.
Where the hell was this storm in our weather brief!
I may as well not be wearing shoes at all, the steel in my boots voraciously hoarding the cold, the pain akin to stepping on shards of glass.

The shivering started in earnest forty-five minutes ago. Whether this is the reason for my loss of coordination, or if it's my brain function deteriorating in the throes of hypothermia, I don't know. But I've fallen several times, losing both my pack and my hat somewhere along the way. Somehow, I've managed to hang on to my radio, which is a miracle, since my flight gloves are soaked through, and my hands
burn
with cold. God, they burn.

The alarm runs thick, because I know I'm in trouble. Desperate trouble.

I tuck my head, pinching my eyes closed to shield them from the snow that slaps my face, while keeping my ear to the radio.

I've been privy to a few intermittent calls, the key word being “intermittent.” Maybe it's storm interference? Or maybe it's my wet radio—I've dropped it how many times? Whatever the reason, from what I gather, Boomer knows I'm in trouble, too.

“Mono … SAR, Rescue Six … affirm. She … Basin … hours. Way to get … some … for her?”

I'm lucid enough to recognize that Boomer is using the call sign Rescue rather than Longhorn. And yeah, that's probably right, too.

“Rescue Six … Mono County copies. Going … impossible … whiteout.”

I try to answer, pressing the radio switch with my wrist, since my fingers are useless. I hear the momentary static of the keying sound, so it seems to be working, but I receive no response to my calls.

I continue blundering downward. Snow clings to my exposed neck, my hair now frozen into hard plates. I shield my eyes with one hand while keeping the other one “warm” under my armpit, rotating every thirty seconds or so. The exposed hand suffers a sustained piercing, the wind slicing straight through the soaked fabric of my flight gloves.

Add to this, my legs aren't working right anymore. Numb from the waist down, I move my feet, not really knowing if they're doing what I'm asking them to, particularly since I can't see a damned thing. I could walk straight off the side of this mountain and never know it.

An icy gust pounds into my chest, and I stumble once again, plunging headfirst into the snow, my legs flipping over the top of me in a clunky somersault that leaves me head down, feet upslope … I think. I push myself up, completely disoriented. Right? Left? Up? Down? My only recourse is to begin walking, feeling for that downward pull of gravity, the steps taking longer if I'm tracking downhill.

My foot slams into solid rock, a jarring shock to the knee, but a welcome one. I put my hands out, feeling for the rock wall, scooching along its sides to find any relief from the wind. My hand slips around a corner, finding a space between a fallen boulder and the rock wall lining the couloir. I drop into a tiny ball and back into the corner. It's not great, but it's better than where I was—in terms of exposure, anyway.

The sounds are a different story. The wind takes voice—a tenacious roar in the opening in front of me, a high-pitched caterwauling through the cracks in the rock above. I pull my knees more tightly to my chest, tucking my face as best I can into the collar of my jacket, all of me shaking.

And I think,
What just happened?
How did I get to be here—in what I would now classify as dire straits—in so short a time and without warning?

My jaw aches with the effort of clamping down so my teeth won't chatter. All my muscles ache, actually—contracting and shuddering in spasms in an involuntary effort to keep my body warm. It crosses my mind, just briefly, how ridiculous this is going to play out in the local news—search and rescue team member dies of hypothermia during SAR training.

Slowly, although I no longer have a reliable sense of time, the notion of dying from hypothermia takes solid root, as the shakes begin to subside and my mouth widens into a yawn. Oh, no. This is how it happens, right? Didn't I learn about this? In the late stages of hypothermia, the victim becomes tired. All they want to do is sleep. My hand moves shakily to cover my mouth when the next yawn comes.

It's all happening so fast, and yet, it's not.

I'm dying.

Shit, Ali. You're in a life-or-death situation here, and you're utterly helpless.

This is a jarring thought, because I've always been able to take care of myself. I've made it a point of pride not to have to rely on anyone, so it should be no different now. Except that I don't have the faintest idea what to do.

This is the point in the story when the hero comes to the rescue, right? God, how embarrassing.

But I don't need a hero. I need a miracle.

 

22

Will carries me.… At least, I think it's Will. A balaclava covers his face, no skin exposed. The hood of a yellow ski jacket is cinched tight over his head. I peer into goggle lenses tinted gold, comforted by the familiar blue eyes behind them. He is speaking; I see the lips moving behind his mask. But this dream is soundless. I close my eyes, strangely at peace.

*   *   *

“Come on, Alison! Talk to me!”

Warm, moist air rushes over my face. My mouth seeks the source, my head turning. I breathe in deeply. Ahhhhh. Like drinking in the sun. I inhale again, the heated air moving over my palate, warming my throat.

“Alison! Hey! You can't go to sleep on me, Alison! Come on. Wake up!”

My eyelashes are heavy, frozen, but the unknown thermal source works to thaw them. I bring my hand to my eyes, fumbling, pulling, trying to draw them open.

“That's it, Alison. That's it.”

The voice is warm, too. Like the air over my face. My left eye springs open, freed from the cold's frosty hold, followed by the right eye.

I've awakened into a dream. Will's face hovers just above me, his mouth open. I hungrily suck in the precious hot air contained in his exhalations, and my lungs fill with the life-giving warmth.

“Will?”

A strong arm lifts me to a sitting position, hugging me close, but my head lolls backward. I only want to lie down. My body slackens.

“Alison, stay with me! Come on, stay with me!”

A hand—the dream-Will's hand?—moves across my face, fingers pulling at my eyelids.

I blink, opening my eyes, coming eyelash-to-eyelash with the dream-Will, another rush of warm air across my lips.

“Look, we have a fire,” the dream-Will says. “You're going to warm up here in just a second. But I need you to wake up.”

“Is it you?” I ask. “Are you real?”

“Yes. It's Will. It's me. I'm here, okay?”

“Will…”

I raise my hand to touch his face. The stubble across his chin and jaw confirms it. He's real. He's here.

He loosens his hold just briefly, turning and reaching for something.

“Here, you need to drink this.”

He raises a thermos cup to my lips. Warm liquid dribbles into my mouth, spills a bit, drips down my face. Sugar …

“That's it,” he says. “This'll work miracles, if we can just get it in you. Keep drinking, Alison.”

I take a sip. And another. Warm sugar water.

“Do you think you can hold it?” he asks.

I wrap my fingers around the cup, bringing it to my lips. Without warning, the shivering starts again, my body racked by a series of uncontrollable spasms. I cough, sputtering, spraying Will's face.

“Sorry,” I say, as he takes the cup from me.

His mouth spreads into a smile. “Hey, I'd much rather have you awake and spitting up on me than unconscious.”

He brings his hand to my face, wiping the spill.

“This is pathetic,” I say, looking at my trembling hands.

“I'm sure if you could control it, you would. So don't beat yourself up. Especially not with what you've been through today.”

He positions the cup at my mouth for another try, and even though we miss a little, I get most of it down. Like manna from heaven, it melts in my throat, warming me from the inside out.

Releasing his grip, Will reaches for the thermos to refill the cup, and I bring my hands to my throbbing head. As the shaking that started so violently begins to ebb—the sugar elixir working its magic—I scan my surroundings, trying to figure out where I am.

Granite walls behind me, to the sides, and above. I sit in a rounded alcove, sand and rocks covering the floor. The space is large enough that Will would have room to lie across the width of it, and if he stood upright … well, I think he'd have
just
enough clearance. In front of me, a tunnel in the rock, about fifteen feet in length and four feet across. The opening at the far end is a blur of white as snow blows sideways across it.

To my right, an archway in the stone, leading to another tunnel, which terminates in a rounded cavern, like an anteroom to the main chamber. Will has propped his skis and a pair of snowshoes there, along with his backpack. Above his equipment, he's placed a battery-powered lantern on a tiny ledge jutting from the rock itself.

Moving my focus back to the tunnel, I see that a fire burns in a ring of stones about five feet in front of me, the concentrated flames heating our tiny space, providing adequate light, as well.

A foreign, hollow keening rises and falls in sporadic intervals, but then, a familiar sound. A yip and a bark. Mojo nuzzles into my chest, rapping his tail against the dirt.

“Hey, you,” I say. “Where did you come from?”

“Wait just a minute there, big guy,” Will says, shooing Mojo away. “You'll get your turn.”

Having refilled the cup, he hands it to me, steam escaping the top, and I wrap my now-steadier fingers around it, guiding the flow myself. I take several lengthy swallows while he looks on, attentive, watchful.

The tunnel starts to spin a bit. Overcome by a rush of dizziness, I set down my drink. I bring my hands to my head again, squeezing my temples, trying to shake away the cobwebs.

Will places a steady hand on my back. “Are you okay?”

“Yes. I just … Where are we?”

“A mine tunnel.”

“A mine…?”

“We're at the bottom of Basin Couloir. This is an old mine tunnel we use for bivouacking.”

As if suddenly realizing his nearness, he pulls his hand from my back and scooches away, clearing his throat. “Uh, yeah. So it's a good thing this place is here.”