Chapter 1

A Wing Beat in Kamchatka

         It was ten p.m. on December 7th and Jim Hughes, the Chief Forecaster for the National Weather Service in Boise, sat silently in front of a blue computer monitor. So total was his concentration that except for the rapid flight of his hands across his keyboard he might have been hypnotized. Despite his slumping shoulders and fixed expression, Hughes was not in a trance. Fascinated perhaps, certainly mystified, he sat without moving, his eyes studying the statistical phenomenon that flickered across the screen.

         Two weeks had passed since the Arctic Oscillation began to intensify.  Stretching from Mackenzie Bay in the Yukon to the East Siberian Sea above Soviet Russia, it gathered and held tributary vortexes adding one to another in a twenty below zero reservoir of cold air. At some point, something had to give.  When it did, it was as if an immense dam had fractured, spilling cold water onto a dry spillway below.  On November 25, the day after Thanksgiving a thousand-mile-wide battering ram of frigid air flooded south from Ambarcik in Soviet Siberia to Point Barrow Alaska.  Ignoring political boundaries it rolled over the Brooks Range, down the Bering Strait and across the barren Chukchi Peninsula.  Throughout Alaska's interior, regional cold air sinks responded to its massive drive draw forces and in the following hours small currents and tributary watersheds stirred then joined the raging torrent.

          By dusk of the first day the newspapers were calling it the "Siberian Express."  NOAA thermometers in Anchorage Alaska plunged to sixty below.  The cold found cracks around windows, foundations and doors.  Residents stoked fires, plugged in engine heaters and piled extra blankets on their beds.

          The bitterly cold air broke across the Aleutian Range and spilled onto the Gulf of Alaska where, flowing over the warm ocean, for the first time the artic outbreak met resistance.  In part an oceanographer was correct when he claimed a vagrant spur off the North Pacific Current caused the storm.  Unlike the mountain ranges, the warm ocean air resisted the assault by sliding above it.  As the cold continued to push south, it lifted the warm air higher and as it cooled, its moisture precipitated into clouds.

         In the hours that followed, an eddy formed eight hundred miles from the Alaskan coast. Tied inextricably to the earth's rotation, ocean temperatures, a cyclic transfer of energy between the equator and poles and a wave pattern circling the northern hemisphere, the warm and cold air masses began to rotate one around the other.  Fueled by the cold air, the system spun in a slow, counterclockwise mass.  For the next seventy-two hours this movement intensified.  Then, slowly, westerlies began to push the mass south and east, toward the California Coast.

          On a satellite photo the storm resembled the main sail of a nineteen-century Clipper Ship.  Hughes had always taken pride in his ability to integrate vast and diverse dimensions into an understandable pattern.  He had anticipated the barometer’s initial drop, but the magnitude was enormous.  Staring into the monitor, he marveled as the storm continued to spin its heavy cargo of moisture slowly inland.

          During the past twenty-four hours, the West Coast had begun to feel the storm's strength.  From Cape Blanco below Coos Bay, Oregon as far south as Monterey, fifty mile an hour winds pushed onshore.  Eureka, San Francisco, Sacramento, San Jose, and Santa Cruz experienced three inches of rain in as many hours and the evening news showed frantic sandbagging and muddy creeks in place of roads. 

        By itself the Arctic Low was sufficiently powerful to break records. But a week before “Jersey,” a category three hurricane, had raked Hawaii with torrential rains before departing on an erratic path to the north. For the past days Hughes had tracked the two fronts.  While the southern jet remained fixed on San Francisco, the Arctic Low had stalled five hundred miles west of Portland.  It was now pumping moisture into Washington, Oregon, California, Montana and Idaho. As long as nothing changed, the Intermountain West could count on record snowfall. 

         Hughes triggered the latest data from NOAA’s main computer.  Still three thousand miles away, “Jersey” had made a course correction to North-North East.  If it held that heading, there was a chance the two systems would collide.  The computer estimated that probability was at best, twenty percent.   Under most circumstances, one in five offered little cause for concern.  By the time it reached the coast, if it reached the coast, its punch would be dissipated by the cold northern currents. 

         "Weather Service," he answered an incessant phone, then glanced at his watch.  Five fifteen a.m.  "Hughes here."

         "Yea Jim, Del Harper."

          Hughes glanced up from the monitor "Hey Del, you’re up early, getting any snow?" he did not smile at his joke.

          "An inch or two less than two feet in the past twelve hours," the Snow Ranger stared into the opaque snowfall.

          Hughes was not the only one tracking the storm.  Harper had monitored its progress through the night.  A hundred and fifty miles to the northeast of Boise, Ketchum felt the storm's first tendrils the day before.  At five p.m. a white midge landed beneath Ketchum's lone stoplight.  Shortly after seven p.m. the low pressure began to intensify and, within an hour, an inch lay on Ketchum's back streets.  By midnight six inches had fallen.  At two a.m. snow was still pouring out of the dark sky.  The new accumulation was now thigh deep.  "Any idea how long this two inches an hour will last?" Harper focused on the avalanche report that lay open upon his desk.

          Hughes studied the monitor. "The depression should move out in the next four hours." He opened a file that showed winds aloft.

          Harper crossed to the window and stared into the dark snowfall. "What are you forecasting for the next twenty-four hours?"

          "Thirty mile an hour winds as the depression exits the state followed by ten, maybe twelve hours of clearing."

          "And then?"

          "A second depression, about as powerful as this one."

          "Christ," he stared into the raging blizzard.

Set on the Great Basin’s northern edge and subject to the blocking effect of the Cascade Mountains, Sun Valley rarely received deep snow until after Christmas. There had been drought years in the mid-seventies when natural snow failed to fall until early spring. 

         NOAA failed to predict the powerful jet stream would plunge out of Canada in early November until the storms swept across the Cascades and into Central Idaho. Riding that renegade jet, frigid Pacific storms blessed Sun Valley with its earliest opening in eighty years.

          Hughes had predicted the December 7th low would be big. Until then, however, a major dump amounted to two feet in two days.  Not two feet in twelve hours. "Del, any prediction I make about this storm is little better than a guess," Hughes hesitated, glanced at the monitor then continued, "there's a chance the low will accelerate.  If that happens you might only get another two feet."

          Harper dropped his pencil on the desk's green blotter.  "Another two feet?

         "That's minimum," Hughes advised him.

Chapter 2

Relay

         A relay on Sun Valley’s Challenger Quad blew at 6:30 AM throwing an arc of yellow sparks into the driving blizzard. The detachable quad jarred to a stop, its empty chairs swinging in the falling snow.

         Dispatch sounded on Del Harper’s radio. “Relay fried. Mechanic’s taking a sled to the top. Will keep you advised.”  Harper glanced at the Challenger’s silent bull wheel and waited.  Experience told him replacing the relay would take thirty minutes. There was nothing to do but wait.  Wait and shovel snow away from the lift.  Shoveling would keep his blood flowing, his shoulder, back and thigh muscles loose. 

         Ten minutes passed before the patrol team leader asked. "How's it coming?"

          Mountain control answered a second later.  "The new relay is almost wired in.  Ten, maybe fifteen minutes."

         Someone swore.  The profanity spoke of long stressful days, sleepless nights and too much snow.

         Wind driven flakes cascaded onto Harper’s parka and whispered against his exposed chin.  Caught in the ferocious snowfall . . . if he were to remove his goggles he would have been blinded by the torrential snowfall. Staring through the salmon-colored lens he watched his breath freeze against his jacket collar.  His thermometer read twelve degrees--far too cold for an early December storm.

         To keep their feet from freezing, the hooded patrolman slid their skis in place Then the chair un-expectantly shuddered and began to circle around the bull wheel.  The patrolmen shuffled forward, pulled their packs on their knees and settled into the moving quad chairs.  Harper shook the snow off his parka and joined Walt Evans, head of the ski patrol.

         Evans laid his pack on his knees, crossed his arms over his chest and made fists in his gloves. A black face gator muffled his voice.  “Any record of when it last snowed this hard?”

         “None.” Harper gritted his teeth against the cold and checked his thermometer. Twelve degrees.  Almost too cold to snow. 

          Harper kicked his skis together. The snow spiraled in airy lumps that dissipated before they touched the ground. “When did you check that hoar layer?"

          "Yesterday...it hasn't bonded." His thigh and calf muscles tightened against the cold.

          The patrol leader swore softly.  "How long is this supposed to last?"

          "At this rate? Hughes figures another four hours," Harper shivered as the chair climbed through the fog into the heavily burdened spruce. 

          “What’s your guess?”

         “NOAA’s forecast is as good as any other…” Harper clenched his teeth.  The cold had crept out of his hands to his arms.  It would soon claim his shoulders and his chest.  He had been able to ignore cold in his youth but he was older now and far wiser about the cost of frostbitten fingers and toes. He had earned both during a night out at altitude.  Covered by the falling flakes, Harper remembered how.  Helicopter straining to clear a Canadian Rockies ridge…the drive failed, the ship lost lift…there was a grinding impact… the pilot knocked unconscious, six skiers injured, all scattered across a forty-degree face.  No need to dwell on the broken limbs, head injuries or the fatalities, just the fierce wind, cold and the aching numbness before the feeling left his fingers, hands, toes and feet.  Since then he held no allusions about the power of snow laden west winds.  

         Evans waited for his answer,

         “Ten, maybe eleven o’clock.” Harper replied.

         “Four hours?”

         “Give or take.”  Harper watched the black lift standards loom out of the massed flakes. Engineered to carry the heavy shivs, cables and loaded chairs, they passed like ghostly Ts--placed precisely beneath computed force vectors.

         “Three feet and ten o’clock…locals will go nuts.”

         “Out of bounds hasn’t bonded since that last storm.  The southeast faces are loaded.”

         Evans swore.

         The Challenger quad crested onto Baldy's flat summit then braked for the ramp and massive bull wheel.  The wind dragged skeins of snow around the lift shack.  Harper unloaded, shouldered his pack and followed a deep track to the patrol shack where he kicked off his skis, drove them into a snowbank and stepped down into the low, humid room.  The smell of wet clothes, sweat and coffee filled the crowded, wooden hut.  None of the patrolman had controlled a three-foot dump and between the sagging ceiling and worn floor, the narrow room echoed with plastic boots shuffled on worn wooden planks, nervous voices and subdued laughter.

         Shaking the snow off, Harper stepped around a patrolman and dropped his pack in the corner.  Technically he was only an observer, but before he was hired as Snow Ranger he had headed the patrol, knew the routes and procedures.

          "Alright, listen up!" Evans shouted.  A sublevel of noise continued.  Patrolmen sorted packs, shovels, locators, first aid kits and dry gloves.                                                     

         Harper wiped a tanned chamois skin across his goggles.

          "First team Stilehung," Evans said. "Second team Warm Springs.  Third team River Run South Slopes.  Fourth Team Christmas Ridge." he glanced at the team leaders.  " I guarantee we’ll trigger slides. Bowls, Stilehung possibly Exhibition––the usual suspects will be doubly dangerous this morning. I don't want anyone caught when they go . . . no chances!” He looked around the room then glanced out the window where the two-inch an hour snowfall continued unabated.

        Harper joined the first team along the trees next to Ridge Run––a moderate but exposed pitch that followed one of Baldy's three main ridges.  During his twenty years as a Heli-guide, Harper had led hundreds of powder skiers down exposed runs where deep low pressure buried vertical faces beneath cold powder.

         Visibility was down to fifteen feet and Harper skied as much by touch as sight, his skis sorting out the rise of a deeply buried mogul and the soft powdery shock of a trough.  He made a dozen turns before the dark conical spruce that lined the run appeared on his left and he felt the grade ebb across the flats above the intersecting Blue Grouse where he pointed his skis through the fog toward the high faces above Roundhouse Restaurant.

          Facing the southeast, Stilehung had once been part of the famed Harriman Downhill.  Ex-racers described the sheer face as “terrifying” for it was here that the flats abruptly ended and they would carry out and down toward the Round House Restaurant's roof and the high speed traverse to Exhibition.

          Visibility lifted to twenty feet when First Team stopped above the steep south face.  The leader lobbed a charge into the whiteout where it landed without sound.  Forty seconds passed before a dark column erupted out of the deep snow.  For an instant, nothing happened.  Then the face fractured.   From above, Stilehung rippled smoothly then quickly gathered momentum before it was swallowed by the torrential snowstorm. Three feet deep and thirty feet wide, Harper could only guess how far it traveled.

          He stared through his goggles' cheerful tint and exhaled deeply.  The avalanche had released on November's unstable temperature gradient. 

          "We just got one on River Run south slopes," Team three reported. "Can't say how big it was but it went on that old TG layer."

          "Control," Harper heard the team four leader respond.  "Same here, forty feet wide.  No telling how far it traveled."

          Harper traversed fifty feet over to the Rock Garden face that dropped to the Christmas Quad.  "Try another here." Forty seconds passed before a column of pulverized snow and black powder erupted out of the untracked surface.  Nothing gave.

          Harper knew Baldy, knew its moods, when it was dangerous and when it wasn't.  Three thousand vertical feet, a consistent, steep grade, Baldy was an expert's mountain.  With its wooded glades and the tremendous open chutes in the Bowls, the superb north facing runs on Warm Springs, River Run and Seattle Ridge, locals claimed it was the best mountain in the world.  That same diversity made it dangerous.  Hidden on its flanks were a hundred steep lines where skiers could make a dozen turns in untracked power . . . or drop into trouble.

Chapter 3

The Bowls

         It was past eleven a.m. when the Ski Patrol finally opened the Bowls.  Walt Evans gave the signal and five hundred skiers dropped into Christmas, Easter and Mayday Bowl's long chutes.  Floating from edge to edge they cut sinuous arcs down the steep faces and into the shadowy glades.  Despite the vast terrain, in four hours the powder was skied out.

         Until the company built the detachable quad, Seattle Ridge was little more than an eastern spur off Bald Mountain. Skiers once reached the north facing runs by traversing across the Upper Bowls.  The traverse spared Seattle Ridge.  After ten minutes and a thousand vertical feet riding a left edge, most tourists assumed they were lost, began to link turns and missed the connecting cat track that disappeared into dark spruce.

        The Seattle Ridge Quad finished all that. Transporting ten thousand skiers per hour, it overloaded Seattle's three major runs.  During the first hour the powder was skied out.  And, from then until the lift closed, it cycled ten thousand more over the same compacted surface.  The crowds discovered Christin’s Silver, Southern Comfort and Gretchen's Gold, loved their gentle detours around islands of subalpine fir, their small moguls and their predictable fall lines made more predictable by constant grooming.

        It was late afternoon when Mike Purvis, Allan Fisher and Ken Cook glided away from the detachable quad.  Unlike the other skiers who turned north toward the groomed trails, they poled south toward a bright orange tape that marked the ski area boundary. Hesitating, they kept their backs to the signs that stood to one side of the groomed runs. 

         Mike Purvis could not remember a day that compared to the previous six hours on Bald Mountain. Cold and deep, the powder would haunt his dreams.  Standing with his back to a frigid southwest wind on the exposed ridge, he studied the orange boundary tape that fluttered between a line of black poles and tried to flex feeling into his numb hands and feet.  Staked across the ridge, yellow signs warned, "Danger! Out of Bounds! Avalanche Area!”

         “It doesn't feel right . . .” The sixteen-year-old said

        "Backside powder won't keep another day," Cook reminded him through gritted teeth. "We commit now or fuck it."

         Fisher turned his back to a harsh, ice filled wind that gusted down the ridge and tried to zip his jacket tighter. "Why don’t we ski Fire Trail.” He glanced toward the heavily moguled chute to their left.

          Keeping his back to the wind, Cook asked,  “It’s beat to hell.  You coming?”

         “Nope,” Purvis shook his head.

         “Al, looks like it’s you and me,” Cook said.

        "Hold on Cook," Fischer glanced at the boundary tape.  He was damned if he did and damned if he didn't. If he stayed, Cook would go alone.  If he committed, Purvis would think he was stupid.  Eleven years almost to the day since Fisher met Purvis and Cook on  Sun Valley’s Mighty Mite ski team, he vacillated, waiting for one or the other to act. 

        "Is anything specific bugging you Mike?" Fisher made fists in his gloves then crossed them under his arms. "So far nothing's moved."

        "Because the Patrol bombed the shit out of everything.  What did Harper say?" Purvis gritted his teeth against the cold.  Each powder morning the Forest Service Snow Ranger aired an avalanche report on KSKI, the local radio station.

        "I didn't hear." Fisher pounded his pole into the powder.  Two feet of fresh.  The backside would be epic.

         Mike Purvis’ parents had moved to Sun Valley when he was four.  Now seventeen and a junior at Sun Valley’s private Community School, he raced on the Sun Valley Alpine team.  Ranked top five in the Mountain West, he loved deep powder and never missed a storm.

         Purvis knew the principal would understand when three quarters of the student body called in sick.  His parents had skied all their lives and understood that nothing Mike would learn in a classroom would compare to his memories of that day on Bald Mountain.  Some lessons stuck, some didn’t.  His parents knew it was useless to insist their only son sit in a classroom while the storm raged outside.

        Purvis studied the distant ridges. No sign of an avalanche could be seen. Innocence lived in rays of sunlight through the departing clouds and the frigid wind that gusted diagonally across the open ridge.  In back of them Bald Mountain sparkled like a pyramid shining beneath the deep snow.  Snaking up the distant ridges, the chairs carried black figurines that unloaded and turned silently downhill.  "It's too soon," He looked south down the Wood River Valley toward Hailey.

        Cook lifted his jacket's elastic cuff to look at his watch.  "It's three . . . by now Turkey has bumps on it.  We'll be lucky to find an untracked line."

         “The snow depth and the temperature are working against us." Purvis's eyes were barely visible between his dark ski hat and red neck gator. "This layer needs a day to settle.  Let's ski Scorpion instead." He named a sheer face on Baldy's north exposure.

        "Mike it’s skied out.  The untracked is here," Cook nodded across the flats.

        Cook and Purvis were the same height, Purvis six two, Cook an inch taller but where Purvis had black hair, dark blue eyes and olive skin passed on by a Sicilian grandfather, Cook was fair.  His surname might have been English but he owed his powerful build, light blue eyes, reddish blonde beard and freckled skin, to his mother's Swedish father Sven who had immigrated to Minnesota.

        Cooks legs were an athlete's legs, with heavy muscled thighs and indestructible knees.  His hands, head and shoulders were proportionately large, and standing in the early afternoon light of Seattle Ridge, his build belonged to a high school linebacker or, just as likely a framer for his father’s construction company. Standing in the frigid wind was not helping his mood.  Purvis had wasted five minutes and now Cook was within seconds of slipping under the tape. "What's up Purvis? You know something we don't?"

        "Only what I can't see," Purvis could not stop his teeth from chattering.  Despite the cold, during the last three runs he had sweated profusely and now with a wet undershirt and sweater clinging to his chest was quickly cooling. The cold would numb his hands before it moved into his chest and stomach.  Soon after he would begin to shiver

         Purvis was twenty pounds lighter than Cook but he was also a better skier.  Cook was stronger but Purvis possessed a grace that appeared on a racecourse.

        Now with Cook seconds away from skiing onto the unpatrolled south slopes, Purvis studied the powder and knew something was wrong. Under different circumstances, he would have blamed a visceral sixth sense that depended on the movement of tides, the feel of unsettled snow and a hint of ice in the northwest breeze.  All of these and if they'd asked him, none of these made him hesitate before the boundary's flapping orange ribbon.

         "Fuck…” Purvis swore quietly. "It's still too soon." None of them were carrying locator beacons, probes or shovels.  The three seniors ranked among the mountain’s best skiers.  Trained on Baldy’s steepest runs, none feared high speeds, tight gates, boilerplate racecourses or big air.  They were confident in the way of young men who were wise in the consequences of a dislocated shoulder or strained medial collateral ligament, that nothing would happen.  None could count how many times they had ditched off the mountain into the Warm Springs Burns, or unpatrolled Cold Springs South Slopes or the Seattle Ridge South Slopes.  Nothing happened then, no slide had released, no one had been buried, no rescue was needed, they were just too skilled to get caught by a slide.

         It was Fisher who now half seriously suggested, "Let's take a vote."        

        "I'm not voting," Purvis turned from the warning sign.

        "Purvis, we're freezin'," Cook shook his head,  "We've wasted half a run and if you aren't coming, Fisher and I'll ski it alone." He slid under the tape.

        "Mike . . . I'd feel better," Fisher hesitated a moment longer.

        A beginner panicked while unloading, crossed his tips and landed on the ramp.  The lift attendant stopped the chair then helped him to his feet.  Behind them no one complained about the delay or the eight above zero temperatures.  Riding that cold chair was an expensive privilege for, over the years Baldy had earned the reputation as a vast amusement park where satisfaction was found in carved turns on groomed slopes.  The cold only made the snow better, the reward more definite.  To fight the cold most gritted their teeth, a few laughed and occasionally one of the passing hundreds stared at the three teenagers standing next to the tape.  No one, however, glanced at the ski patrol toboggan leaning against the upper lift shack.  It was a studied reaction--a skier’s way of exorcising bad karma.

        "Would you feel better if I called Del?" Cook lifted the tape.

        "Good idea Cook," Fisher shivered.  "What did you have in mind?  Something like, uh, ‘Hey Del, we're sneaking out of bounds into that second monster avalanche chute down the ridge.  So, if we don't call in half an hour could you, uh..."

        Purvis smiled behind his icy face gator.

        "If it'll make you feel better, I'll do it!" Cook said.

        "I don't think I would if I were you." Fisher imitated Walt Evans.  "Out of bounds means out of luck.  Screw up boy and we won't come looking for you."

        Purvis quietly laughed. “Dumb ass is right," he said as Cook slipped under the tape.  Fisher followed a second later. 

        Cook completed a smooth series of turns before he reached a small rise. "Mike, you were right!" his voice drifted back. "It's fucking hell out here, a downhill run straight to hell!" The grade increased and he picked up speed. “I'm starting avalanches, each turn, avalanches...stay back, go for help,  Helllll...!"

        Purvis listened until the strangled scream turned to Cook's hysterical laugh that in turn died away. "Fuck," he whispered then poled under the tape and followed the deep track.

        He found them standing knee deep in powder snow on the lee side of a wind-stunted fir.  To the east, the gentle ridge dropped to alternating open meadows and groves of pine and aspen that overlooked Highway 75.  Beyond the road were the Cold Springs and Gimlet subdivisions where blue wood smoke and plowed roads marked the houses.  Directly below were the south slopes--steep, open chutes that funneled into a narrow valley.

        "Glad you made it," Cook said staring into the steep open bowl.

        "No reason to let an avalanche hazard scare you off," Fisher agreed.

        "Let's not get carried away," Purvis drove his pole deep into the snow, searching for buried voids.

        "Not get carried away? You're missing the point," he laughed.  “Which is to get completely carried away."

        "Fuck that," Purvis interrupted him.  "This is the one time you need to think before you mash the throttle."

        "Then praise the lord and pass the vertical.  I'm prepared to meet my maker." Cook started downhill.      

        "Cook . . . remember, no big chances " Purvis yelled.  He knew he was repeating himself."       

         The slope increased, Cook gathered speed.

          "Cook?" Purvis yelled

          "Say what?" he yelled over his shoulder.

          Cook skied into a large bowl that dropped twelve hundred feet without a major pitch change.  Who named it Turkey Bowl and why, was a mystery for there was a symmetry about this chute.  Geologic time and combinations of ice and moving water had sculpted the flawless fall line into a vast, unblemished gutter.  From the sides which curled evenly away to the gutter itself, it offered spectacular skiing––Cook was convinced the best in Sun Valley which, most locals would argue, was the best in the world.

          Purvis watched Cook ski the chute's edge. The snow swirled behind him in a crystal vortex, filling one turn before he started the next.  Cook skied into the bowl then quickly traversed out.  He cut across the gutter to the opposite ridge, glanced back then jumped back in, made four turns down the fall line then traversed back out.  He was testing it, minimizing his risk.  There was no sign of instability.  Nothing gave.  He dove in again, this time hanging on for six turns.  Still nothing gave.  Then without stopping he traversed back into the gutter where he linked thirty more before traversing off to the side where he stopped.

        "Make eights!" he yelled.  From above he was a small figure in red pointing to his tracks.

        "It's safe," Fisher shook his head at Cook's crazy courage.

        "He was right, I was wrong," Purvis admitted.  Though Purvis did not speak of it, he sensed that if Cook continued to take that kind of risk, it was only a matter of time before he would get caught.  When it happened his luck would be gone, wasted on deep powder turns in unpatrolled bowls.

          Fisher was next.  Turning his skis into the fall line, he reached down hill with his pole, un-weighted, made a second pole plant, un-weighted and began to link turns.  He was an elegant skier.  Each turn was a perfect replica of the one before and the one afterward.  He linked a dozen round arcs in the deep powder , then cut onto the south face west of Turkey Bowl. 

         From seventy feet below, Fischer watched Purvis edge close to the gutter. Skiing was a natural as running, bicycling, climbing or fly-fishing.  Raised in the Wood River Valley, he had no memory of a time when he couldn’t ski. Bald Mountain provided a winter playground and after a dozen years, Michael Purvis now skied with an economy of movement that Fischer admired.  Shoulders and hips square to the hill, knees rising into his chest, skis arcing across the fall line, snow blowing up his chest and over his head, one turn a perfect copy of the last––little wonder Purvis was hired by local photographer’s to model ski action.  

         "Nice,” Fisher said when Purvis stopped a few feet below. 

          "This snow is addictive.” Purvis agreed. 

         “Quit dicking around!” Cook yelled from below.

         “The Pit Bull is throwing a tantrum,” Fischer stared downhill then punched his pole into the snow.  Air light down to a base but no voids, it was safe. “Cook’s a tail wagger one moment, then latched onto your ass the next. You take first tracks.” He used his pole to point to the line.

        Purvis swept his goggle vents free of snow.  The lens slowly cleared.  “You sure?”

         “Just hold your line.  I’ll eight your tracks.” Fischer swept his pole over the untracked bowl and laughed. “God, I’m glad we skied Turkey today.  By tomorrow, these south slopes will be cut to ribbons.”

        “Fuck!!!!” Cook yelled from below.  “What’s the hang up? It’ll be dark before we reach the road.”

         “Give me a second to turn on my GoPro.” Fischer slipped off his glove and touched the record button on his helmet-mounted video camera. “It’s not every day I get to ski the steep and deep with a pro model,

         “Not now Allan!” Purvis leaned on his ski poles.

         “I’ll download the video tonight.” He said, “I might even be able to sell it to one of the ski videographers for stock,” Fisher kick turned to face the same way as Purvis and slipped his hand back into the glove. “Anytime you’re ready!”

         Purvis stepped into the fall line, squared his hands, shoulders and hips to the hill and pushed off in a short traverse. He unweighted then settled into the next turn that carried him in a short perfect arc into the bowl.  At that instant the bottom dropped from under his skis, stopping him chest deep in the light powder.  He looked perplexedly at the fine snow crystals gusting across the smooth surface and then the smallest fear eddied onto his face.  Ever so gently he started to pole.  And, just as gently a crack appeared ten feet above him.

        "Shit," Fisher gasped as the crack raced diagonally across the bowl and the mass slipped.  Slowly at first, infinitely slow.

        "Fisher?" Purvis said, the fear wrapping around the edges of his voice.

        "Get out Mike," Fisher ordered him.  "GET OUT ..." he yelled as the slab gathered momentum, breaking into smaller sections as the upper bowl fractured like a vast mirror.

        "Oh Jesus...!" Purvis said as the mass sucked him toward the narrow valley. 

Chapter 4

Swept Away

         Mike Purvis was not sure whether the crack appeared a second before or at the same instant the snow shifted around him.  In those first panicky seconds he cried for help.  One glance uphill at Fisher, however, told him there would be no help.

         Then he began to move.  So slowly that, at first, he wondered if the slide had stopped before it ever started.  It felt as if he had stumbled in a deep river and now was forced to run with the current.  In those first moments he tried to turn his skis downhill but the sliding snow sucked the shaped GS under and, locked in the bindings, he started to lean forward.  Time compressed.  A minute passed in the next second.  Ten minutes in the next.

          Until that instant Mike Purvis had an abiding, youthful faith in his own immortality.  In his sixteen years he had risked his life and had been brushed by death, but he had never been seriously injured.  Now he told himself there was no reason why this moment should be any different.  He was caught in the middle of a terrifying nightmare but, as always, would be spared the bad ending.  If he could keep his balance, the massive white ground swell would break and, like a freak sea receding from a high-water mark, leave him standing on its crumbled deposition with one hell of a story to tell.

          The slide accelerated.  He started to lose his balance.

          The fall before, he had dumped a Kawasaki rice rocket on an oil slick corner on Galena Summit.   At eighty miles an hour there was no transition between one second and the next.  The bike had hooked viciously and he went down, sliding toward an oncoming motorhome.  Yet, even before he slammed onto the pavement, before the sparks stopped, the howl of the free winding motor ceased and the scorching heat soaked through his leathers he knew he would survive.  During that slow motion slide, it was as if he was seated in a darkened theater, watching a 3D Winnebago expand toward him from the screen.

          The third second passed.  Snow swirled around his waist.

          He remembered lying beneath the Winnebago's black slab of a gas tank, the Kawasaki's motor screaming, exhaust fumes filling his helmet.  One glance took in the differential, self-contained plumbing, holding tanks and electric harnesses.

          And then he crawled out.  Unhurt, he stared through his tinted face plate at a young girl in a Ford station wagon that was stopped in the middle of the road.  Her hands were clenched to her temples.  Her face wore a silent, tortured expression.  She was screaming.  Once again he had bet his life on the Come line and won.  But, wasn't that the way immortality worked?   Before the lights came on didn't your name always appear under "Stunts"?

          Another second passed.  Snow covered his shoulders.

          In another second it will stop, he told himself.

          Then the avalanche sucked him under.  His right ski clicked off.  A moment later his left went.  And he continued to believe in his immortality until a shale outcropping broke two ribs.  Then, and only then, a sudden, nauseating fear filled him and as the slide slammed his face into the shale, flipped him onto his back then dislocated his shoulder.  Swirling currents of ice and rock kicked him in the stomach, back and chest.  The slide broke his arm and tried to crush him, and when he fainted, shook him awake. He cried for help and the snow filled his mouth, clawed deeply into his throat and searched for his lungs.

          By the tenth second he was beyond pain.  The beating obliterated details.  He had long since stopped caring when the mass started to slow.  Using the last of his strength he fought for the surface.  The mass continued to slow and he searched for daylight.  He could feel it settling around him and beat at the snow in front of his face.  Then it stopped.

Chapter 5

Panic

         "JESUS..." Allan Fisher screamed when Purvis disappeared beneath the disintegrating surface.  And he continued to scream as the bowl drained into the narrow valley below.  In seconds the fracturing slab spawned a crystalline cloud that billowed into the cold afternoon air, blocked the afternoon sun and cast a thin shadow across the open hillside.  Then as quickly as it started, the avalanche slowed and stopped, leaving a fracture line four feet deep and a hundred yards long across the top of the bowl.  From above it appeared as if a huge bulldozer had lowered its blade and descended inexorably to the valley floor.  Exposed rock outcroppings and isolated sage bushes contrasted with the adjacent unbroken snow cover.  A grove of aspens had completely disappeared and far below a vast slug of broken debris now dammed the valley.

          Fisher was screaming--his voice ringing high and panicky in the cold silence that followed the avalanche.  He tried to tried to get a handle on his hysteria, but his screams continued, bursting from him of their own will.  When they finally stopped, he realized he was alone on the untouched ridge.  Cook and Purvis needed his help but he was too terrified to move. 

        Shivering violently, he wondered where would it slide next? On that ridge?  In the next bowl?  It was waiting.  A trap waiting for him to ski onto the trigger.

        Hypnotized by the floating ice crystals that sparkled in the bright sun he repeated, “Slow down!" The sound of his voice calmed him.  Purvis and Cook were buried below him.  He tried to think.  Del Harper’s course in back country safety taught him to search downhill from where the victim was last seen.  A thousand vertical feet separated him from the deposition.  Studying the massive debris, he was sure both Cook and Purvis were dead.  Beneath the snow's crushing weight, life was counted in seconds.

          Fisher told himself he could not leave them. He had to search.  Taking a ragged breath, he started downhill.  He fell twice before he reached the spot where he had last seen Cook.  Close to panicking, he searched the debris for a glove, goggles, a hat any clue that would give him hope.  Three minutes that seemed like three hours passed.  He was close to giving up when miraculously, twenty yards below and close to the edge of the avalanche path, he spotted a tiny patch of red.

          The wind blast had blown Cook onto his face and a minor current eddying out from the main path had buried him.  Fisher floundered downhill and started digging frantically with his hands.

          Two minutes passed before Cook lifted his head free of the snow.  He was desperately short of breath.  "Where's Purvis?" he gasped as Fisher worked to free his arms.

         Fisher felt the hysteria returning. "He's buried," he said his voice cracking.  "Gone...it's huge!  Jesus if you could have seen it release!"

          "We need help," Cook yelled as Fisher worked to free his right arm.  He rose to his knees then jerked his other arm out pulling a bent pole with it.  "I'm skiing out!" Cook stood and slapped the snow off his parka.  "Hike back uphill.  Look for his glove, googles, a pole—anything!  The patrol will be here in ten minutes!"

          "You're skiing out?  And leaving me alone? I don't stand a chance of finding him!  Not alone!" Panic filled his voice. "You can't leave!"

          "We need help!"  Cook shouted, shoving him uphill.  "We need probes and people!  Christ, don't just stand there!  Move!" He stepped into his skis and started to pole across seventy yards of debris. "Climb back to where you saw him last and work back downhill!  And listen!  He might still be conscious!"  Cook reached the other side of the slide path and tucked.  Shadows were deepening in the chute.  The temperature was dropping.  Fisher watched him gather speed and then he was alone.

          "PURVIS...!" he yelled until his ears rang then waited.  The only answer was the sound of his own voice, echoing down the narrow valley.