Джеффри Дивер - The Final Twist

In his survivalist training sessions, Ashton spent hours lecturing the children about avalanches. And Colter sees instantly how dangerous these conditions are. Snow is at its least stable immediately after a storm, as now. And it’s particularly erratic on north faces, like this. The south sides of mountains get more sun, which melts and packs the fall. North side snow is hoar , as in hoarfrost, unpacked, loose and slippery as grains of sugar. Another factor: any incline above thirty degrees makes a mountain avalanche prone, and this slope is easily that.

Colter and Russell trek as quickly as one can on snowshoes and burdened by their rifles and backpacks.

The couple pauses, balancing on the tricky angle, and shoots some pictures that are surely magnificent and that also might represent their last view of this planet.

Of fatalities in avalanches, seventy percent are due to suffocation, thirty to blunt trauma. Few snowslides are exclusively of fine powder; most torrents are filled with sharp slabs of gray dirty pack and crushing ice like blocks of concrete.

The boys are about a hundred yards below and twenty behind the couple. They are breathless from the altitude and from the effort of climbing quickly uphill.

Finally Russell gestures his younger brother back and continues forward about ten feet, stopping on a high drift. He’s right on the edge of the field, though how safe he and Colter truly are is unknown. Snow travels in any direction snow wants to travel. It can even go uphill.

Cupping his hands to his mouth, Russell shouts, “Hikers! It’s dangerous! Avalanche!”

The wind — which happens to be another risk factor — whips his words back behind him; they didn’t hear.

Both boys are now shouting.

No response. The man points into the distance and they take more pictures.

Russell starts uphill once more and edges into the field, telling his younger brother, “Stay back.”

He stops and calls again, “It’s dangerous! Get back! The way you came!”

A high rocky path led the couple to the mountainside. Once on it again they’d be safe.

Colter notices tiny white rivulets rolling down the hill from where the trespassers stand. Like white-furred animals scurrying from danger. The bundles travel fast and they travel far.

He wonders about using his rifle to fire into a tree and get their attention. Ashton lectured that most experts don’t believe that sounds, even a big-caliber rifle shot, will start an avalanche, but he isn’t going to take the chance. Also, indicating your location by firing a weapon is usually useless, thanks to echoing.

Russell moves closer yet to the couple. “It’s dangerous!”

“Avalanche!” Colter shouts and waves his arms.

Finally the two look down and wave. “What?” The man’s shout carries easily on the wind.

“Avalanche. You’re in an avalanche field!”

The man and woman look at each other. He lifts his arms and shakes his head broadly. Meaning he doesn’t hear. They plod along the difficult slope in the ungainly shoes.

Russell hurries back to his brother and they climb onto a rocky ledge on the border of the field. “We’ll go up through the trees.”

Just as the brothers start uphill, Colter hears a faint scream. The woman has lost her balance. Her legs go out from under her and she begins sliding on her back, arms splaying to stop the descent. There’s a technique to slow yourself using snowshoes but she doesn’t know it or, in panic, has forgotten.

Here it comes, Colter thinks.

But there is no avalanche.

The woman slides downward amid a cloud of powder and comes to a stop about even with the brothers, thirty, forty feet away from them. She struggles upright in the thigh-high powder, anchored by her wide mesh shoes. She checks her camera and other gear. She touches her pocket, shouting uphill. “Phone’s okay!” She actually laughs.

Her friend gives a thumbs-up.

The woman is now in hearing range and Russell explains the danger. “You have to get out of there now! Both of you! It’s an avalanche field. Dangerous!”

“Avalanche?”

“Now!” Colter calls. He thought her tumble would start one. People are the number-one cause of avalanches: skiers, snowmobilers and snowshoers, who go carelessly where they should not. But so far the massive ledge holds.

Russell says, “Get over here, off the slope! Unhook the snowshoes and pull them out. And your friend, he needs to go back to the trees, the path you were on. He needs to turn around!”

She looks up and waves to him and then points to his left, meaning to return to the path. He gives yet another raised arm of incomprehension.

She pulls her gloves off and digs out her phone. She makes a call. Colter sees him answer.

“Brad, honey, these boys say it’s an avalanche area. Go back to the trees. That path we were on before we started across the hill.”

Russell says, “Tell him to move very slowly. Really.”

She relays this information, puts the phone away and bends down to unhook her shoes. She gets one undone and, after a struggle, yanks it out.

Can’t she go any faster?

Uphill, Colter sees, the man starts toward the safety of the path.

He glances down and sees the trickles of snow accelerating away from beneath his feet.

More and more of them.

He panics and charges forward, slamming the oval snowshoes hard on the surface.

“No!” Colter and his brother shout simultaneously.

Just as the man scrambles out of the field, literally diving to safety, a shelf of snow breaks away and cascades downward. It is only ten feet wide or so and shallow but avalanches are a chain reaction. Colter knows this will trigger a much bigger fall.

The woman evidently hears the whoosh too and looks up at the wall sliding toward her. A brief scream. She is still forty feet from the safety of the high ground where the boys are. She’s trapped in place by the remaining snowshoe. She bends down into the froth and frantically tries to undo the strap.

Colter assesses:

Odds that the whole field will give way? Eighty percent.

Survival of somebody who has no deep-snow training? Five percent.

Somebody who had some training? Unknown but better than that.

He drops his backpack and discards his weapons.

Russell is staring at his younger brother.

“Colt, no. Don’t! It’s not our job.”

No time for discussion. Colter leaps off the ridge and runs quickly across the field, in the ungainly lope of a snowshoe jogger.

Just as he reaches her, the rest of the mountain cuts loose, a vast swath of snow, fifty or sixty yards wide, dropping, tumbling, picking up speed. Tides like this can easily exceed a hundred miles an hour.

As he pops the quick release of his shoes and steps out of them he sees her panicked face, tears streaming. She has large dark eyes, an upturned nose and lipstick, or sunscreen, that matches her violet snowsuit.

“Your other shoe?”

“What’s going to happen?” she cries.

“Shoe?” he snaps.

“Undone.” She straightens up and tries to pull it out. She blinks as she looks him over, maybe realizing for the first time how young he is.

“Leave the shoe!” Colter orders.

He lifts her camera off and tosses it away. In the turbulence of an avalanche, solid objects, even small ones, can maim and kill.

A glance crestward. They have thirty seconds.

“Listen to me. When it hits, don’t fight it. Pretend you’re swimming, kick with your arms and legs. Swim with it, like you’re in the surf. Got that?”

No answer.

“Have you got it?” he insists.

“Yes, swimming.”

Twenty seconds till the tide slams into them.

“When you feel yourself slowing, curl up and take a deep breath, as deep as you can. And with one hand clear a space around your mouth for air. Lift the other arm up as high as you can, so the searchers know where you are. Make a big space around your mouth. There’ll be enough air for a half hour.”